What is next?
That is a question I often find myself pondering after coming back into America in the same area and same profession as I was in before I left. Why had I just travelled to eleven countries to serve the Lord and now I am back in North Carolina teaching?
I don’t know all of the answers, but God has been gracious enough to give me some answers. He always guides us and directs our paths which is so beautiful. Really, the God of the universe loves us so much that He will not only know us but also direct our paths?! AMAZING!
“I am the Lord your God…who leads you by the way you should go.” Isaiah 48:17
The vision that the Lord has given me for my future is to be a mom to abandoned children on an international scale.
I do not know where, even though the Lord has given me a tremendous passion for southern African countries. Tons of children are orphans there due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
I do not know when, it will be in His timing. I currently need to get out of college debt. However, I have learned that if He wants you to do something, He will provide to further His kingdom here on Earth.
Let me tell you a lot of the signs that I’ve seen how the Lord has let me up to this moment of knowing this is the plan He has for me.
- When I was seven years old I wrote in my journal that I didn’t see the purpose in life. Everyone seemed to do the same thing and go through the same life stages. I had a desire for my life to look different than what I saw around me. I was not a Christian at this point.
- After I became a Christian my senior year in high school, every single time I saw a video about missions, I felt my heart beating faster. It just all made sense. Why would anyone not want to do missions? Now I realize that is a specific calling and not for everyone full-time.
- My sophomore year in college I worked at a Christian summer camp. A third grader asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At that time the Lord started putting Africa on my heart heavily. However, I told her, being silly, that I wanted to be a lion tamer. She sat there for a few moments and looked up at me. Then she told me that I should go to Africa and work with the children there. My jaw dropped. Literally. She laughed because she didn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth were from the Lord!
- I just so happened heard at that Christian camp that there was a program in NC to send students on 10 week mission trips all over the world. They would be sending two individuals from NC to South Africa the next summer. I applied last minute because I was scared, yet I got accepted to go with another girl who became a great friend. I got to work at the Door of Hope orphanage in Johannesburg, South Africa which was an orphanage that started because they saw children in trash cans outside.
- While working in South Africa, we had the opportunity to spend a few nights in the hospital taking care of some of the sick abandoned children. In this one room with a baby crying for thirteen hours straight, I lost it. I was in uncontrollable tears. I kept wondering why this baby had no one to love him. Why was this child abandoned? Why did he have to suffer so much? It then phased me, the Lord hates to see us suffer so much. The Lord began giving me more of a specific call to abandoned suffering children. I now had a HUGE desire to let children who had been not loved that they have a God who loves them tremendously.
- After returning to school, I couldn’t decide upon my major. I was debating between Education, Religion, and Social Work. The woman, who set up my classes, broke down in tears in front of me. She told me she felt God had bigger plans for me and that I was clinging to something comfortable trying to control it. I never told her anything about my passion.
- Fast forward a few years. I graduated. I taught first grade and second grade. While teaching, my heart broke for the children who were suffering. I had children who were being neglected because their teeth were rotting in their mouth, who were molested by family members and struggling with normalcy, and children who had been abused across the world and came into my classroom not knowing any English. I wanted to be more of a mentor to the children than anything else.
- I went on the World Race. The Lord kept putting the orphanage idea and a potential coffee shop to fund the orphanage on my heart. In Cambodia, I vividly remember lying in the one room building we all slept in and being so anxious because I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave everything comfortable and go overseas and be a mom to abandoned children? That is where my heart was, but how would that look? How would it work out? When? Where? Is this just a dream of my own?
- I got on my computer within that week. I had a friend from back home that I had never told anything about my dream of missions to. This is what she wrote to me:
I remember the children were orphans, had dark skin, bright beautiful smiles and no shoes. The weather was very warm. There was joy and hope in their eyes. That stood out the most to me, their eyes. Then it changed to you being stateside and fundraising to open a school overseas for the kids. You were not alone. It was a combined effort but I do not know whom with. You were educating people here on the need as you were fundraising.
Without a doubt in my mind, I know this is what the Lord wants me to do. This just confirmed it clearly. Since I have been home, I have been a wreck when praying for the children who do not have anyone to love them. It breaks my heart.
Now? Well, I am in a training period before being sent out full-time, Lord willing. He is teaching me how to love children well through teaching. He is teaching me patience. He is teaching me how to be selfless and be a good shepherd to these kids. I hope to do short term missions in the summers until I can go somewhere full-time.
Prayers
Please be in prayer for me as sometimes I don’t know when I’ll go back. Sometimes I doubt this is His plan for me, even when He has made it so evident and has given me SUCH a strong desire for it. It is hard in the midst of waiting. Yet, he has been my refuge and strength through it all. Please pray that I continue to trust His plan and His timing. Please be in prayer that I can get out of debt soon so I can begin this endeavor. Please pray for guidance and direction and discernment.
Thank you so much for everything J I have learned so much and am so excited about the next part of His plan.
