The Story - Long Version: Chapter 1

This is the version of the story that I get so excited to tell because it's full of all of the little details, all of the little ways that God has made His presence known in a BIG way. So to be nice to you guys, I'm going to break it up into chapters which will hopefully be a bit more manageable. Here we go!

Chapter 1: Let's take it back about ten years

In 2001, I had the opportunity to go with my home church on a week-long mission trip to Puerto Lempira, Honduras, to aid in construction of a building that would later be used as a training center for pastors from the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua. Kinda cool - they actually had a training conference going on while we were there, and we were able to sit in on a couple of their worship sessions. But being an 18 year-old female on a trip with mainly older southern men, there was not much chance that I was really going to get to participate in the construction activities, though that was the main objective of the trip. Even worse, there were five young women, ranging in age from 18 to 20 on this trip, and the biggest tool the men would let us wield was a hammer, so we had the great privilege of making wobbly chairs and tables not so wobbly. 

My sister, Rebekah, and Sarah making a wobbly table not so wobbly.

Woo. I remember being quite frustrated by this. I wanted to get dirty with the rest of them. Looking back on this, it baffles me that the trip made such an impression on my life...until I remember the people...the ones who should have been the REAL focus of the trip in the first place. 

Melissa, a sweet girl that we met as she was tending her parents' clothing shop in town. She came to the airport (dirt runway) to see us off the morning that we left. This picture was taken at the 'airport.'

Lorenzo climbing a coconut tree.

The natives of Puerto Lempira are such a peaceful and loving people. They are so thankful for EVERYTHING that they have, and by our standards they have nothing: a few clothes, no running water, no electricity, tiny houses for an entire family made, quite literally, out of nothing but sticks.

Stick frame of a house.

Family home typical of the region.

But while they are poor in material goods, they are extremely wealthy in spirit and in love, and it is very evident that they understand just how rich they are in God's blessings. They know and understand the value of His saving grace and mercy with a depth that too many North American Christians can not even begin to comprehend. They have little in the way of worldly goods, but their hearts are full of a contentment and joy that only a deep relationship with the Savior can bring.

We had the amazing opportunity to trek for miles along the coast to the nearest church on Sunday to participate in a local worship service. The service was conducted in the native language, Miskito, translated into Spanish, and then translated into English for us. This photo shows the congregation after the service.

And I quickly came to the realization that I could do this. I could easily give up the luxuries of life in North America to live among and serve people with such full hearts. I could easily leave the chaos of life here to live in the peaceful beauty of His creation. I didn't want to leave. I was filled with such a peace and stillness while I was there that thinking back on it even now overwhelms me with emotion.

God used that experience, one that could easily have viewed as a wasted trip, to make a very deep impression on me and to begin preparing my heart for His service. As a response, I decided during my sophomore year of college that I wanted to do mission work as a career. I had also always wanted to be a medical doctor, so what better than a career in medical missions? And thus I spent the rest of my undergraduate career pursuing two degrees: one in biology to prep me for med school and one in Spanish to prep me for mission work in Central or South America. Along the way, I was involved in a number of extracurricular activities, serving in leadership positions in some of them, I was involved in a number of volunteer activities, I served as an active member of the Lion's Club, I studied abroad, I did a summer research internship to boost my med school application, I job shadowed in an orthopedic clinic one summer, and while doing all of this, I managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA in both of my majors and graduate with honors as the "senior with the highest average." Phew! Impressive, right? Apparently not so much. I applied to 11 medical schools and failed to receive even a single invitation to interview. NOT EVEN AN INTERVIEW!!! Everyone expected me to have a choice of schools to go to, and yet I couldn't even manage to obtain a single interview. I even had a professor who was angry because it made no sense! And so I slammed into the first of walls that God would erect in my life. I was running along at a nice pace that I had set, in a direction that I had chosen without really considering God's will. I wanted to do medical missions. Why would I need to ask God's permission to do mission work? Because that's not where He wanted me at the time. So He put up a wall that would knock my off my feet and make me reconsider where I was going and, more importantly, go to Him for direction (I have since come to the conclusion that I must be a bad listener because this seems to be God's choice method for making Himself known to me). And I didn't understand it. It didn't make sense to me that He would not want me be His servant, but I accepted His humbling message and started seeking guidance for a new direction. This was just the beginning to an entire series of seemingly nonsensical events that would shape my life and eventually bring me full circle and lead me to where I am today - sitting here blogging about my upcoming journey to the mission field...