My journey to the mission field #004
A missionary talks about how she became involved in missions, starting in high school through support raising, finding a husband and in her present role as a recruiter.
My journey to the mission field #004
My journey to get to the mission field began, actually, when I was in ninth grade. A friend of mine got me involved with Child Evangelism Fellowship at that point, and that summer, during the missionary training that I had with them, I just really felt the Lord calling me to be a missionary in my future. And I had no idea where that would be, or when that would be, or what that would look like — really, it was kind of vague — but I knew that the Lord eventually wanted me to be a missionary.
And, I started trying to make that happen. I tried to go to a Christian college, and hope that I could major in missions. And then suddenly the Lord was leading me elsewhere, to a completely nonChristian university. And I was scratching my head, saying, "Lord, they don't have a missions program here, what are you doing?" And then after I graduated I ended up trying to do an internship or some type of a job shadowing opportunity with some missionaries that I knew, and those totally fell through. He just kept shutting the doors. And I didn't understand. I'm saying, "Lord, what are you doing?" And I finally got a job teaching in the public schools, and so I just thought, OK, maybe the public schools are my mission field for now.
And eventually I met my husband. And on our first date he said to me, "Well, I'm in the process of raising support to go into full-time ministry. So if you don't see yourself as a missionary wife, or if you don't see yourself on the mission field, then we just need to be friends." (And I didn't even know why we were bothering to have this conversation, because I thought we were just friends anyway.) But I just told him that, you know, "It's OK, God called me to be a missionary when I was in ninth grade, and so we'll take it one day at a time, and see what happens."
And it's really neat to see how the Lord actually worked through my journey, and through going from a couple of different schools, and then through trying to make it happen and it not happening, because now, one of my focuses, one of my roles at the HCJB Global Technology Center is recruiting, and working with college students. So now I have experiences at actually four different schools, all different types of schools, from community colleges to a big nonChristian university, and also a Christian university. So I feel like I can relate to more students in different areas and at different types of schools, so that can give me just some experience that is helpful in recruiting college students to use their skills for Christ.
Credits:
Produced by Mission Data International
Video Editor: Paul Nielsen
Cameraman: Peter Armstrong
Creative Commons Copyright
2011 Mission Data International
Some rights reserved
PreparingToGo.com
2011 Mission Data International
This entry was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 7:10 am and is filed under Dating and missions, Flexibility, Journey to the mission field. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 6th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Hi my name is Diane and I’ve been called to be a missionary but I don’t know how to get started…could you help me please? Please email me if you can help, thank you!
July 30th, 2011 at 8:15 am
I’m going into my 10th grade year at my ihgh school and this past summer I went on a Mission Trip with my youth group that God practically forced me on (So glad He did too!) and I think that God wants me to be a missionary. I take it back–He DOES want me to be a missionary.
Ever since I thought that’s what God wanted me to do I asked him to show me that it was from him–to renforce what he said. He has. We had a missionary come to our chuch and speak; my family went over to a friends house where the mom talked about her daughters- two are in missions–so I got to ask her a few questions… But virtually I know nothing about missions. “Should I go to collage?” is one of my main conserns– also I don’t know if God wants me to get married or do missions or do missions AFTER I get married.
I know nothing about where I want to go and I don’t know any other language besides English. (Although I am learning Spanish in school.) Basically I don’t know what I should do! I don’t know what kind of missions God wants me to do… Is there any way I can find out?
September 10th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
Hi my name is Emilee and I am a senior this year in high school. God called me to be a medical missionary almost a year and a half ago. I am trying to figure out the next step with colleges, but I really would like to talk with you briefly about missions. It would be so awesome if I could have this opportunity. What do you say?