child, I told my parents I wanted to be a missionary. God gave me that desire at a very young age
and I never forgot.
I rededicated my life to Christ, I could NOT get enough God – I want to learn
more and more! In addition to the Bible,
I have read a number of books. The one
that first brought missions back into my mind was Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan. Now, this book is not
specifically about missions work BUT there is a part in book that asks you to
think about where you live now – how did you get there? What would your impact be if you left? And I started thinking about Sarasota, Florida
– Why am I here? What is the impact I’m
having? And I just had a feeling: This is training me for something else.
FEBRUARY 2010: I applied for my Dietetic Internship (an
internship you have to do before becoming a Registered Dietitian). I told God I only wanted to be accepted if that was how I
was going to get into international missions work.
MARCH 2010: I started thinking about missions work and I
just felt to do MORE. I’ve been on one
mission trip in my life to Nassau,
Bahamas when I
was 18 with my college campus ministry. I’ll
be going on a mission trip this July to New
Orleans which will be my second mission trip ever. So I did an internet search for “adult mission trips” and the Adventures in Missions website popped
up. Then I saw a little icon for The
World Race -11 Countries/11 Months. Now,
that sounded interesting…I started looking at the routes, looking at the blogs
and it sounded so cool! Then I saw the
price, and thought “I would never be able to afford that…” I put it out of my mind.
APRIL 2010: I found out that I was not accepted into the Dietetic Internship I applied for. Three weeks later, my
parents came to visit for my birthday and the message at church was about going
out into the community to evangelize. Afterwards, my parents brought up that I used to talk about being a
missionary when I was a kid. That night,
I looked at the World Race website again – taking the money out of the equation, I
really wanted to go. But, I didn’t want
to go for me, I wanted to go if it was God’s will.
MAY 2010: Every
book I read, every church service, every bible study I went to, I felt that the
message was for me, about this trip. God
kept confirming that it was HIM not me that wanted this. After asking God to confirm it over and over
again, I finally asked one more time (in my kitchen before work): “God if it’s your will that I go on the World
Race, give me a sign so big that I won’t question that it’s
your will, not mine.” I got in the car
and these words came out of the radio “I want to your hands, I want to be your
feet, I’ll go where you send me…” Audio Adrenaline’s song “Hands & Feet”
was on…I started laughing and said “Okay, okay I’ll go!!” The week of 5/9/10, I applied, had my phone
interview & got accepted!
