How I Was Called Into Missions: Seeds Planted Long Ago

First off surprise! I'm going to be a missionary! That's pretty neat!

If you haven't been kept updated and this has come completely out of the blue, my apologies, I've been keeping a lot of things on the DL for a while but I promise over the next few days I will divulge to you in a series of blogs my full story.  Because never once did I expect to be a missionary.

Before I get too far let me explain a little about the work God has called me to do.  I work with a mission agency called TeachBeyond.  TeachBeyond specifically partners teachers with cooperating schools that serve primarily the children of missionaries. For more information on TeachBeyond, check out their website at www.teachbeyond.org. TeachBeyond helped partner me with Faith International Academy in Davao City (Philippines). I will be serving there primarily as a high school math teacher.  For more information on Faith, check out their website at www.fia.edu.ph. Or instead of visiting those websites, just call/text/message me and I would love to explain things more in detail.

But what I would like to explain in detail is my call, because it's one of those things that has God's hand all over it and I just want to make sure He gets the credit and praise due to Him for the amazing way He has made this calling of mine evident to myself and those around me.

But first I want to take a step back and rewind. Because although I didn't know this until now, this journey really started 3 years ago.  Three years ago I accepted a job at Lake Ann Camp as a counselor. At the time, it seemed just like a fun summer gig. I had no idea what I was getting into.  I could rave and rant about how that summer forever changed my life and anyone who knew me before that summer and saw me again after that summer could testify to that fact.  It was there that I first really fell in love with the Lord, saw how someone could even live out that relationship with Him in a way that goes so beyond Bible studies and Sundays, saw that my life had something to offer, and developed a passion for serving God and those around me.  I could speak of that summer forever recounting how God revealed Himself to me and the stories of my precious campers and how each of them shaped my life in little and big ways. Ask me about it. Seriously there's almost nothing I love talking about more than my summers at camp. But there's one story that I had no idea how it impacted and shaped me until now and that's the one I want to share here.

It was week one, my first summer counseling.  There was a constant awareness in my head of how much I didn't know, how much I didn't belong in this place with people that knew God so intimately when I felt like a spiritual baby in comparison.  But here I was with five high school girls in my cabin. Who needed healing. Who needed love. Who had big dreams for God. One of those girls in particular really inspired me. We'll call her Shannon. Shannon shared with me her dream of going into the field of sports missions, a place where you could teach the principles of the Gospel through training others in sports camps. As she talked about it, my heart pounded with two thoughts. Firstly I sincerely hoped I could learn to love God as much as it was apparent she did and that my dreams for Him would become as big as hers. Secondly, I could use sports (which I love love love) as a way to serve God?  Like this is something I could make a job of and explore the world with? That's so cool. Please tell me more. Shannon and I talked about this quite a bit that week and at the end, I told her if it was the Lord's plan, I'd go pave the way for her and someday we could work together at these sport missions camps. But while the idea seemed really neat, there was that reality in the back of my head that that was probably never really going to happen. 

But for some reason, the idea has stuck with me for the last 3 years.  I'd see Shannon return to camp each summer after and we'd still talk about it. But I knew that I belonged at the school I was at, not only serving in my campus ministry, but also studying to be a teacher. I knew that that position was something that God wanted to use. They were just two realities that seemed so inconsistent to me....until TeachBeyond came into the picture. Now I have the opportunity to put together my talent of teaching with discipling and missions, which I could not be more ecstatic about.

What blows my mind though is that this seed of a dream I never thought of before was planted 3 years before I even heard of TeachBeyond.  God knew the time it would take for my heart to grow fond of this idea and how it needed to grow in me. So He put a camper in my cabin who had dreams that would later inspire mine. Because He's God and He does things like that.

But that's not where God quit planting seeds. Flashback to later that year (so 2 and 1/2 years ago) when I went on my first and only mission trip to Haiti. A group of my college friends and I went down over our spring break to help build a church. While we worked really hard each day, each night something happened that fascinated me.  We lost electricity. So we'd light lanterns and enjoy telling each other stories, playing card games, and just being together.  And anyone who knows me well knows how I hate the fast-paced, technology-consumed American way of life so this new possibility became fascinatingly beautiful to me. That there really did exist somewhere in the world that I could just leave and escape it all. But that wasn't what sold me. The event that sold me that I would someday love to return to Haiti or someplace like it was on the last day as we rode across the countryside in the back of a pickup. It was here that I saw a land 3 years after a tornado, with millions of people still displaced. And I knew that I wanted to go to places like that where I could help people in a physical way as well as teach them (because education is the key to improving any economy). But I had no idea how or if this would come about. But God did.

Now on the verge of being a missionary, I look back and smile at how God started planting seeds long before I had any interest in an idea like working at a school in the Philippines as a missionary. And without the planting of these little seeds, I would never have jumped on board with this new idea. But God slowly but surely tugged at my heart and planted ideas and dreams in my mind that were so unlike my own. I think that maybe those are the ideas and dreams that we need to pay extra special attention to. And what amazes me is how God starts a process in us long before we even know He's up to anything. Think of where you're at right now. What has God done to bring you to that point? Or how might He be planting seeds in your life now for ways in which He wants to use you?