Dating and Missions
How did your missions calling affect your dating life?

How important is it that the person you're dating has the same call to missions as you? I would say it's very important.

Well, maybe we should rephrase and say, at what time in your relationship is it very important.

For me, I didn't even want to start dating someone that wasn't open to the possibility of it. And so that was just kind of something that we were talking about. But I knew from my first year of college that I was heading to North Africa and so I wasn't going to start dating some —

Nice, quality, wonderful girl.

Some Barbie girl who has got to have her nails done every week. So there are some things that are obviously priority there. But even after we had been dating a few months we sat down and had the talk and it was already obvious by, just the things I was interested in, and what I was putting my time into, that this is where I am going. I'm going to Africa and I want to do these things, and this is where God has me going, this is the passion He's given me. And I'm headed this direction and if you're not, then we need to — this relationship can't go any further from here, because it's just going to be harder the longer it goes on. So that was — obviously it worked out.

Yeah.

But I'm glad that we did that early instead of later on down the road and kind of roundabout.

But it's important to realize, too, that not everyone knows where they're going to go the first year of college. It wasn't until I had been out of school for a year that we met and then I really felt a call to missions. I felt a call to Jared and was willing to go anywhere in the world. So just because someone doesn't know from age 10 that they're going to be a missionary doesn't mean that they're never going to feel a call on their heart. If you're dating someone that is open to God's Word and to God's voice, and if you like them a lot and they like you a whole lot, then probably your interests are pretty similar anyway. But just knowing that God will call people corporately, He won't just call one, and they won't go to China on their own and leave their beloved behind. But to know that people can change, and God can change their hearts, and so don't despair if you've been dating supreme hotness for a month and she has no interest in the mission field. I think it's pretty obvious sometimes when you know that people are never going to feel a call to missions and if you are a diehard in your heart and you know you want to serve overseas you don't have to date those people.

Some people feel called to the mission field in general, like, I want to go and serve internationally. And then I have a friend who wants to be a missionary doctor working in war torn countries, like fixing up the people that are land mine victims. And that's a pretty specific calling.

He might meet her there.

Yeah. He needs to be pretty selective, I think, of who he's going to marry if he's going to follow what God has in store for him. So a lot of it, some people are just kind of general, like I'm heading this general direction—

I'm open for whatever.

Like I want to teach in a school internationally. That's a huge, broad spectrum. But then there's some people that have a very specific calling. So I think a lot of it is based on the scenario, too, and where they're feeling called to.

Listen to God and don't make hasty decisions, one way or the other.

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Produced by Mission Data International
Video Editor: Paul Nielsen
Cameraman: Paul Nielsen

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