I don't know about you, but I long for adventure. When I hear stories about people, whether they were walking with Jesus as his disciples, or they are living today as missionaries, I catch myself being jealous of their active faith. I so badly want to be God's feet and his hands, and I want him to activate the gifts he's given me!
About 2 years ago, our YoungLife leadership team had a guest speaker from Rwanda, named Jean Baptiste and he told us of his experience with the massive genocide and he spoke about this school they were building, KCS, as a way to use what they learned from the grief they witnessed, and reach that many more people for Christ! I remember being so moved by the extreme measures this man was willing to go in order to build up more committed followers of Jesus. He invited us leaders to join him in the mission and come to Rwanda to help build the school! I was so on fire about this and right away started praying about whether or not God would have me go to Rwanda for a 2 week mission trip.
After a few weeks, I got the drift that my parents weren't that excited for me to go to Africa, especially to a country that had experienced a genocide a decade ago, so I dropped it..... until I started thinking and praying about what God had in store for my future after this year.
Around October, I re-evaluated my passions, my desires, and my gifts. My passion is to do youth ministry. I love hanging out with kids with the intention of showing them who Jesus is. I am gifted with relating to teens and can befriend them at the snap of a finger. God has gifted me in these ways; I can't take credit. I love to goof around and make a fool of myself, which I'm sure is helpful when trying to make friends with teenagers :) I also want a chance to experience teaching as a tool to minister to kids. While student teaching, I struggled with the balance between wanting to be kids' friend, and having to be their teacher, who has to discipline them and such. I would like to become a teacher who doesn't have to say Jesus' name in order to point kids toward him! In addition to those, I have the gift of singleness. It's not always seen in a positive light, but even Paul gloated about his gift of singleness! I am 23 with no real job, no real attachments, and a heart for the lost. My hope is that God would put all my passions, gifts, and desires together to match his perfect plan for my life.
In turn, I started thinking about going abroad, but I didn't just want to teach english anywhere... I don't even know how I would teach english! It's been 5 years since I've had an english class, and my slang is getting redonculous. So I started praying about where God would have me go. Not too long after that, the passion from 2 years before about going to Rwanda raced back into my heart. I started looking for opportunities to teach in Rwanda,and could only find a couple schools online. Go figure, they don't post their openings online like the US does. I found KICS and KCS and was able to read all about their schools and even was able to print out the applications. While doing this, I think I was still not in full consciousness about what I was applying for. I argued with God for awhile about him having me maybe go to Rwanda. It was an exciting idea, but the reality was scary.
So when I emailed David Dodrill to see if he could answer my questions about what it was like in Rwanda, you can imagine my surprise when his response was, "Well I'm going there in a month, Wanna come?" I was terrified. In my mind, I might have said, "Oh no! I thought I was just fantasizing about this adventure! Now I REALLY have to consider it!" I didn't have long before I had to tell him, "I'm in!"
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