About Me
Hello! Ciao! Salve! My name is Sienna Bigelow, I am a freshman at Kalamazoo Valley Community College and my major is in Business Administration. As a business graduate I plan on opening my own interior design company and creating home decor that expresses my Christianity. I have many passions including music, interior design, traveling, photography, going on spontaneous adventures, and teaching my faith and beliefs to others. However, my greatest passion is doing charity and mission work alongside faith-filled young adults and leaders.
My Call To Missionary Work
God’s call for me to engage in missionary work began when I was very young. My mother used to take my older sister and I to a soup kitchen for the homeless in our city where we would sit and talk with the less fortunate. Listening to their life stories and seeing how joyful they were in the midst of such trials and tribulations struck my heart in a life changing way. On our drive home from these events and from school my mom would listen to a Danielle Rose CD; my favorite song on the track was “Of My Free Will,” a song about following Christ wherever He goes and leading souls to His kingdom. I remember singing this song in the backseat of our minivan and telling my mom and sister that someday I would be a missionary and lead souls to Christ.
My calling to missionary work was not just a phase — like becoming a doctor or an astronaut — it was deep and constant. At ten years old, my friend Lily and I made and sold bracelets at arts/craft fairs. The proceeds from the bracelets was donated to a charity that grew soybean fields in Guatemala (where Lily was adopted from). Flash forward five years and I was given the opportunity to donate my birthday money to Helen DeVos Children’s hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Every month I receive a letter from the hospital explaining how I was able to help the children there; this experience and seeing how my small act made such a huge impact on others lives was eye-opening and amazing.
The summer of my freshman year in high school I attended a mission trip in Detroit, Michigan where I worked as a VBS leader for children in very poor areas. Being among such joyful and faith-filled children reminded me of Jesus saying in Matthew 18:2-4 “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” I realized that I must have the faith of a child in order to stay close to my Lord. This previous summer I was given the chance to go to Kentucky and do a bit of mission work with my youth group (shoutout to JMJ and CHWC). Here I built a shrine with my small group in the woods at a Franciscan monastery. Having endured sleep deprivation, physical labor and exhaustion, bug bites you would think everyone would be grumpy by the end of the trip but that was not the outcome; at the end of the trip everyone became family and left with a new kind of love, joy, and stronger in the faith.
Fundraising
This year, with your help and prayers, I will be able to continue my missionary journey with The World Race on Route 4 — Costa Rica, Swaziland, and Cambodia (#9n3).
If you are able to make a donation or sponsor my trip you can mail a check to AIM or click DONATE on my blog: siennabigelow.theworldrace.org.
Cash donations will also be accepted.
Whether you are able or unable to donate at this time please pray for my team and myself to reach our fundraising goal and to have a safe journey and return.
I cannot wait to see what God has in store for me and my squad.
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap,if we do not give up” – Galatians 6:9
