The Opportunity

Well,
great excitement
is happening all around me.

But I guess I should start at the
beginning.
Because,
of course,
every good story has a beginning.

Mine starts almost two weeks ago.
I was writing my former supervisor, Larry,
to see if he had a copy of our
performance from last summer.
(I am really curious to see what it
actually looked like,
since I was always in it.)
Anyway, when I sent him the message,
he responded pretty much immediately,
and we got to talking, like friends do,
and he asked me about my plans for the summer.
Always a huge question to ask.
This is one question I never like to answer.
Because I hardly ever know what I'm going to do.
So I told him what I've been planning:
staying in Raleigh, finding a job, and moving into an apartment.
I had looked at different
mission possibilities
with NAMB,
but God never captured my heart with any of them,
and they just kinda fell to the wayside.
Anyway, he asked me to start praying over something.
What's that? You may be wondering.
He told me that he was still in need of a
summer missionary
to come to
American Samoa
for the month of
June
to work VBS's and
with the community to
share the name of Christ with them.
My immediate answer?
Heck yes!
I wanted to go to American Samoa
and serve God!!
That would be awesome!
Here's the catch:
it would be a volunteer position.
Meaning: I have to raise the money
to get out there and back.
So I said I would pray about it.
And that's what I immediately started to do.

So, over the next couple of days,
I went back and forth in prayer about all this.
I didn't want to go,
because I would have to ask people to
support me and help me.
Ultimately, this would mean I would have to
suck up my pride and
ask for help.
Finally, though, God broke through that
barrier in my thinking.
He really showed me that I was being stupid
and that I just needed to trust Him with this.

I also needed to make sure that my
motivations for going on this trip
would be
pure.
You see,
I've always wanted to go on an
overseas missions trip.
It's been a dream of mine since I was a
little girl.
So I didn't want to be thinking that
this was my
big chance.
I only wanted to go if my
heart
was in the right place.
I wanted this trip to be about
serving God,
loving people,
and sharing His love with them.
So after asking God to show me my
motivations
and seeing that they
were aligned with His passions,
I knew that I was to go.

So, the next day,
I emailed Larry.
And I told him that I wanted to come!

I'M GOING TO AMERICAN SAMOA!!!
Ah!
I'm so excited!

I've started,
with my parents' help,
to send out letters asking for help
with money and prayer.
This is such an important task
that God has given me,
and it's not something that I want to take lightly.
I want people to join me in prayer.
I want them to be praying for the people
I will come in contact with this summer.

God is so gracious and good!
I never thought that I would be taking a trip
halfway across the world
to share the Gospel with others.
Especially while this young.
I had always hoped that
one day
God might grant me the privilege
to go serve overseas somewhere.
But I never once presumed that
it would actually happen.

And here begins the journey.
Or should I say,
here continues the journey.
This is just another step in my
walk with Christ.
I don't even know where this step
will lead me,
but I am confident
that He has a magnificent plan.
He will draw me closer to Himself.
He will make Himself known through my life.
And He will receive the glory for it all.

Blessings!