We all have those moments that we will remember forever. Those defining moments that are a public expression of something that was long on our hearts. I remember I was anxious that day, a little six year old approaching some adult missionaries I didn’t know, but I knew I had to tell them. I had to tell them that I wanted to be a missionary too. I remember walking to the front the church after the service, and I remember them praying over me and this dream I had. This dream that would take 15 years to come to fruition. When I was six, being a missionary just seemed like the most logical thing to do with my life. If I loved Jesus, then shouldn’t I go to all the world to tell others about him? It started as simple childlike faith. As that has grown over the years, it has morphed and changed, but it’s been my one constant dream. If you’ve known me since high school, you know that I’ve always been a dreamer. The one with big ideas and hopes for the future. I know they weren’t always the most realistic, but they stemmed from a belief that the Lord could honesty do anything. I changed my mind so many times on so many things. Some of my friends would even ask when I came home, “so what’s your new plan now?” But ministry has always stuck for me, it’s been the one thing to never change.
When I was ten I got to meet Alma, a distant relative of mine who served in the Philippines for many years. I don’t remember the specific day, but she always retells me the story. She says, “I remember exactly where we were when you told me that you wanted to be a missionary, and I knew we had a bond then”. She voiced that dream when she was ten (eighty years ago now), and since that day that we met, the Lord has blessed us with each other. I got to spend a lot of time with Alma last summer and hear about her heart and her time abroad. It’s been an incredible blessing.
I remember when I was in fourth grade, I started my “missionary fund” in a little jar in my room. I figured that if I was going to do ministry some day, I would need the funds to do it and I had better start saving. If I saved until graduation, maybe I could save enough to go. I even convinced my best friend at the time to start it with me so that we could do it together someday. I was a little scared that she wouldn’t want to do it ten years later, but I knew that I would.. We fell out of touch a long time ago, but I’m thankful for her encouragement of my dream. As my family can attest, I was always a saver, but that was because I knew the future held something good.
When I got to middle school, I met some of my best, best friends. One of them (shout out Kaitlin 🙂 wanted to do missionary work someday too. We shared this vision for the future, a vision of helping people around the world, and knew that God had a plan for us years in advance. We were probably pretty intense for 13 years old, but we’re going on 9 years of friendship, and I’m thankful for all of the years that we’ve dreamed together.
When I got to my senior year of high school, I was convinced that I was going to go abroad. I remember sitting my parents down in their bedroom, ready to convince of this idea I had. I told them that I wanted to live an uncomfortable life for the Lord and be willing to go anywhere that He called me, even if that was hard. I knew that life with Him, even if hard, would always be worth following. I remember being shocked but thankful when they were on board; their belief in me has always been one of their greatest gifts.
When I decided to go to college right after high school, Megan and I planned a trip to Honduras for the following summer to serve abroad. We have so many good stories together, for which I will always be thankful (gotta love that wasp one Megan 🙂 But in that time, I realized that missionary work wasn’t quite all that I had glamorized it to be. It was so much harder but also so worth it. I wrote this while I was there, and I know that eight months will be enough to feel all of these things. It continued to affirm that someday for more than a month, this would be my life.
What I didn’t realize was that while being gone for a week can be a mountain top high, a month is long enough to have the mountain top highs but to also crash and experience the lows. For your heart to break over the lives of these kids, for sleepless nights when you can’t sleep thinking about the thought that you are literally 2000 miles from home, to be discouraged by the language barrier, long enough to question their culture and then question ours, for the days when you wondered why you traveled 2000 miles across the world when it didn’t seem like they wanted you there, long enough to wonder if you got bit by a scorpion or if you had lice, and then long enough to deal with it when you did, long enough for the rainy season to come and soak the clothes you needed to be dry for the kids to wear, long enough to question if God is really good amidst all of the pain there, long enough to miss home desperately, and long enough to somedays wonder if I was making a difference at all.
And yet it was also long enough to love like I never had before, to get a glimpse of how beautiful and yet how hard being a mom must be, to be daily blown away by the goodness of God, to be inspired by their selflessness and love, long enough to be given hundreds of hugs everyday, to be told that I was beautiful on days when I looked terrible, to be able to make a kid beam when you told them they were “guapo, o fantastico” or you told them that they did well at at a job that they were never recognized for. Long enough to be used as a human jungle jim, to laugh with them, to be excited when you had food, and experiment eating theirs, long enough to know what made them each smile, long enough to have my hair braided a hundred times, to be served by the kids and to serve them, long enough to feel so purposeful, to know the feeling of wanting to give them the world, to feel the peace of God as truly indescribable, to be given a new perspective on life and what really matters, to learn more Spanish and feel like a ninja when you could translate for other people, time to learn about myself, the hard work that is involved in ministry, and to learn how very different cultures can be, and long enough to fall into my bed for 28 days and feel utterly exhausted but like the day meant something, and that is a feeling that was precious as gold. Most of all, it was long enough to fall in love with 50 boys, to want to make them feel valued and special, and everyday, no matter how I felt, strive to give them as much love as I could give and pray for that love to come from the Lord.
When God called me to Eastern, I met some of the greatest people my heart has ever known. The Lord gave me people to hope with and to dream with. As those dreams become reality, it’s amazing to see these beautiful friends walk it with me. To see me get to do all these things I had hoped of as a freshman in college and every year since then. I met friends that pushed me to love better, to dream bigger, to seek justice, and know more of the Lord. I wouldn’t be ready for this journey without them.
All of these things and so many more have been a glimpse of what I knew someday would be…
So that all leads here… I leave for Quito, Ecuador in 9 days. I’ll be there for eight months, and I’m so nervous and out of my mind excited for this journey God has me on. Some days I remember that I’m leaving a lot behind to go there. That really the only thing pulling me to Quito is knowing that God has something for me there, and that’s a little scary and incredibly unknown, but I trust it will be worth it.
To everyone that’s been a part of the journey, I really can’t say thank you enough. You’ve been an encouragement when I needed it most, and a reminder to me that God is for us. Thank you for that.
Mucho amor y les hablaré a Uds. pronto,
Annie
beautiful in its time 