Looking Back

Lead Us, Lord is playing as I look back...

...and remember the faithfulness of the One who has led me so far.

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Three years ago



I was young.  Stubborn.  A bit idealistic.

I visited the MTC with my dad for the first time that September (for an interview).  The experience was somewhat unsettling, at least at first.

Wanting to become a missionary had never seemed so far fetched as it did then.  Every creature I feared was there: poisonous spiders and snakes, scorpions, ticks, and gigantic wasps.  It was uncomfortably humid at the end of the summer.  And it was out in the middle of NO-where...in fact, it felt like it could have just as well been the end of the earth.

The first night fear gnawed in my heart, whispering that if I couldn't make it in Missouri - which was in my own country - how could I possibly begin to think I'd make it overseas?  I wrote: Here I am at the MTC... And for the first time...I think I'm actually scared...wondering if I can really make it.

I wanted to be strong, but instead I felt small.  Alone.  Out of place.

The next day was Sunday, and we visited a church in town.  I don't remember everything, but I remember this song.  And I remember Pastor Bob's message on Caleb - how he followed the Lord wholly and did not let anything hold him back.  Not fear, not what other people said, NOTHING.

He asked that morning, "If I were to resign from myself, where would God use me?"

It was exactly was I needed to hear.  Exactly.

God was faithful.

(I learned to love Missouri and life at the MTC, by the way.  Leaving there was like leaving another home.  And that message quote is on my desktop, a good reminder to this day.)

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A year ago



I was frustrated.  Overwhelmed.  Wanting to quit.

It the midst of my last and hardest semester - linguistics.  (Linguistics: a mass of information that does something mysterious to one's brain, so that it is never entirely the same after.)

My training was going to be over in a matter of months, and I still had no field.  All summer I'd prayed for direction, but received only "Wait".  Was time running out?

I wrote to a friend: So even though I really have no reason/inkling to choose one field over another at this point, it seemed the best thing to do [is] just pick a few and write to them...get more information...you know, see if any might be ones the Lord wants me to pursue.

And that's what I did soon after.  At that point, I had no idea that God was going to drop one right into my lap, and it was going to be a most (if not THE most) unlikely place I could have chosen.  West Africa.

...Which, Lord willing, is where I'll be a year from now.

(That boggles my mind a little!)

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He was faithful.  Is faithful.  Will be forever.

In our weakness and confusion and need, He is there.

Come and lead us, Lord.