Fifteen years ago I felt God's call on me to become a Missionary. It was a bit difficult to answer at the time because I was twelve and had no money nor a mature viewpoint on the world and how God fits in it. And so God started me down a path toward a life on the Mission Field. Throughout my teen years, I was blessed to be able to take part in Nashville Work Camp, a trip to the inner city of Houston for a week-long VBS, as well as a trip to Jamaica to help build houses for the poor in the community and run a VBS for all the kids in the community. While in Jamaica, God affirmed his previous call on me by opening my heart to a point where I didn't want to leave. When I went to college, I decided to get a Bible degree with an emphasis in Missions. After that first year I organized a trip for myself and one of my classmates who is from Sudan and was a Lost Boy, to visit the refugee camp, Kakuma, in northern Kenya as well as an orphanage in Nairobi. While I almost died in the refugee camp, I still hated the idea of leaving Africa.
Towards the end of my first semester of my sophomore year I met my would-be wife, Sarah. After we had our first kiss we had to have the talk. I remember letting her know that after I graduated I was moving to Africa to become a missionary for the rest of my life, and that if she wasn't interested in that, then we should just leave the relationship altogether. Happily, she admitted that she had felt as if God was calling her into the mission field as well. The rest (of the relationship at least) was history.
Throughout the rest of my schooling years, I was blessed with the opportunities to visit the City of Angels in Cozumel during spring break for four years. It was there where I fell in love with the idea of doing missions in Latin or South America. The summer before my senior year, Sarah and I both went to Lima, Peru on a Medical Mission trip where we both fell in love with the people and both hated leaving. Oh, we also got engaged there. Yay!
After getting married, though, things got in the way of our calling. Sarah had to work for two years at Vanderbilt so that they would pay off some of her school loans. I started Graduate School at Lipscomb, and the plan on getting to the mission field got further and further away. We eventually even bought a house after we got pregnant. At about the time when our twins turned one, God let me know that it was time to go. After years of waiting and praying and hoping for God to open that door and let us know we were ready, he had told us to start looking.
A quick google search brought us to South America Mission. We loved their theology of Missions and felt good about the places where they served in South America, and so we decided to meet the Agency. After we met them, they invited us to Candidate Orientation where God showed us a place that seemed to fit both of us almost perfectly.
And so, it is with great pleasure, excitement, anxiety, and fear that I tell you that this is the beginning of our journey to the Ami Training Facility in Chapada dos Guimaraes, Brazil. We can't wait to tell all of our friends about the mission and hope to partner with as many people as we can so that we can get down to Brazil.
