Over the past few years, the Lord has been working in my life in tremendous ways. Through three short term mission trips over the past few summers to Peru, Vietnam, and Kenya, God has reignited the flame to serve long term that had been tucked away when I was a teenager. Serving others and showing the love of Christ to all has been a deep desire and driving force for the majority of my life. The Lord really did a work in my heart through the shared experiences and relationships built during these international trips. I began to pray about serving overseas. After much prayer and guidance, I decided to explore and contact The Mission Society as a sending agency. I applied, interviewed, and accepted their invitation to serve with them. Since then, I have been attending required trainings, working through my required reading list, and forming my support team. One of those required trainings was three weeks of intense cross-cultural training in India, which I did last July, 2014. My next training will be Regional Conference, a two week training, coming up in October in Albania. I also have five weeks in Colorado at Mission Training Institute, but don’t know what session I will attend just yet. Before these trainings, I am going to Thailand for the month of July to explore different options for long term placement. I can't wait to go on this trip so I can share more details with you of what my mission will be! For now, my main goal is to build relationships and share the love of Christ with others.
For a long time Romans 12:2 has been my life verse, but over the past year I have added verse one to it as well. It reads, "And so dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice--the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." I can't think of a better way to live out my life verse than being a part of bringing Christ to all the nations. I am excited to join The Mission Society's vision, "The kingdom of God advancing among all peoples, bringing about redemption and reconciliation through Jesus Christ." I look forward to sharing the love of Christ with the least, the lost, and the left out by reaching out to the lonely, the abandoned, and those who need a friend. There are many ways I can do this in Thailand!
What does it mean for me to give my body to God as a living and holy sacrifice? I believe we are called to God-sized assignments designed to impact eternity. I know that human effort doesn't make a dent in the stuff we are called to. As amazing and wonderful as we truly are, we are inadequate for what we are tasked to do. Jesus is the only One who can heal, rescue, transform, and bring peace and hope. It is the overflow of Christ in us that impacts the hearts we love and serve. As a living and holy sacrifice, I become a vessel in which Christ flows from freely.
I don't want to be counted among the faithless who never claimed the land God promised them like the Israelites. We can completely miss our earthly destinies, and our carcasses, too, can fall in the wilderness (Hebrews 3:17). Satan has tried one ploy after another to destroy my life, my witness, and my fruitfulness. Will I let him have the satisfaction of cleaning my carcass to the bone because I let them drop in a desert of defeat? I’ve been there before. Ever read the story of the valley of dry bones found in Ezekiel 37:1-14? This story challenged me to name my dry bones and to imagine what it would be like to have the living Spirit of God breathe life into my dry bones. What would that mean? As verse 11 speaks of our hope being gone, God revealed to me that my dry bones were actually hope for my future and dreams. I had allowed Satan to steal from me my hope for the future and the ability to dream. To breathe life into these dry bones would mean that I could be free to dream dreams once more and have hope and confidence in Christ to make my dreams a reality! I began to pray regularly for a new dream or for God to revive a past dream long forgotten. And this brings me full circle. My dream, my calling, my future was revived when I got the opportunity to go on my first international mission trip to Peru not even a year after beginning that prayer. My heart was set ablaze on a long since dormant dream of being in missions. Ever since then, that’s where my heart has been.
"But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent?" Romans 10:14-15a
