Africa Calling

Why am I going to Africa for 9 months to be a missionary?

 

It all started a few years ago when I said “I don’t want to be a missionary, I will never be a missionary.” I was going to have a normal life, with a mission trip here or there. But my life was not going to be as a missionary.

 

Fast forward a bit, and I spend part of a weekend at an amazing retreat. I learned what it really meant to surrender my life, and give it up to God. Although I had been a Christian my whole life, for the first time I actually wanted to obey and serve Him. A friend and I decided we wanted to go on a mission trip. Threw some “coincidences” and “random” meeting, we were lead to a mission trip to Ecuador.

 

The team fundraised enough money to send us and close to 200 inner city Ecuadorian kids to a Bible camp. We spent 2 weeks in Ecuador. One at the camp and a week in the main city, including a few nights in the so called slums where the kids came from. Because of the difference in langue it made some things hard, the camp had Ecuadorian staff for Bible stories and devotions and the Canadians were there just to love. And never under estimate the power of love, it speaks no language. This was a mission trip, a mission and a trip. The mission really took place before, the fundraising, getting to send the kids to camp. And we were privileged enough to take the trip and see it all come together. I wish now that I had realized this before, I would have put more heart and energy into the fundraising and not just the trip part of it.

 

If you would have asked me right after how the trip changed me, I would have only been able to sum it up in one word, “compassion”. I wasn’t able to express much further then that. The impact of the trip wasn’t felt right away, it has been an impact and change that has been growing in a way that is hard to describe.

 

The best way I can attempt to describe it is like this. You see car crashes on the news. Usually you don’t think too much about it. Maybe a “wow” or “that sucks”, and if its a young girl that dies, maybe you say a prayer for her family, but that’s it. Now what if you’re watching the news and you see a car crash, and that young girl is your best friend, or your sister, or daughter? The impact and change that it has on your life is completely different if you know the person. There’s a funeral, cleaning up her room, first Christmas without her, her birthday, every car crash reminds you of her.

 

When I see and hear about children in need all over the world, weather they’re Asian, African, Indian, it doesn’t matter, I see the faces of the Ecuadorian kids I know and love. I feel like I know each child personally. And it stirs up a change in me that you cant imagine. This is a young Ecuadorian boy I especially fell in love with, Jaun Hiro. I see his face in all those kids. And it breaks my heart.

 

Fast forward some more. I was driving across the country on my way to college with a few friends and we stopped at a camp in Ontario for a week. One of the guys has signed us up for it, I had no idea where we were going and I didn’t even know the name of the camp. This was a surprise blessing to me. At this camp I saw for the first time the “Invisible Children” video. (A video about child soldiers and children’s rights in Uganda, for those that haven’t scene it.) It broke me and tugged at every fiber in my being. I became very interested in going to Africa on a mission trip.

 

I stayed at College only for the first semester, as planned. And came back home and started looking into mission trips to Africa. I wanted something longer then a 2 week trip, something that would have more of an impact on the people. I found the First Year Missionary trip to South Africa. Nine months, got to love that! But for someone that said she didn’t want to be a missionary, the title freaked me out. A first year implied that there might be a second, or third, or fourth year, that it wasn’t going to be just a trip, but that start of a life of missions.

 

I could feel the calling building inside of me, but I was still fighting God on it. After some time I gave up and admitted that I was being called into missions. While working at camp that summer I applied very late for the mission trip, but was still accepted. Because of my lateness and commitment I had to the camp, I didn’t have the time or effort to fundraise or prepare for the trip. It was only a few days before the flights were supposed to be paid for and I didn’t have any paperwork or money done. I had to admit to myself that the mission trip wasn’t going to happen.

 

At the end of that summer I spent another week at the amazing camp in Ontario. Once again learning more about the mission field. I learned lots about human trafficking and the sex trade. Which has now sparked a passion in me for my future to fight against such things. To bring them the freedom and peace only Gods love can provide.

 

I prayed for 2 months, waiting for God to say yes, to tell me to go. He wasn’t saying no, and he wasn’t saying yes. I was getting nothing. One night I realized that his lack of an answer was an answer, and as much as I wanted to go on the World Race, it wasn’t what God wanted. And the second I let it go, and said “Ok God, you don’t want me to go, I wont, I desire your will above mine”, then he put this FYM trip into my heart immediately. I had kept it out of my mind for so long because it was a disappointment to me that it didn’t work out the first time. So I said to God, “If you want me to go, I will go. But I need to know it is what you want, show me a clear sign, something that I can’t mess up, and I’ll go.”

 

I went out that evening and told a few friends that I knew the WR wasn’t the right thing for me, and that I had a huge tug in me for the FYM trip again. I got home that evening and had an email form AIM, and the title was “Spend next year in Africa!” I started laughing and laughing out loud. A clear sign doesn’t get much clearer then that! I click on the email and it’s an advertisement poster for the exact trip I was praying about. (I was wrong, it did get more clear.)

 

So obviously, I followed Gods call. I’m preparing to spend the next 9 months in Africa serving God, fully admitting that I want to be a missionary, for life. I’m very much looking forward to what God has planed next!