Hearing God's Call

Today in our mentoring meeting we were talking about what it means to be called by God to do something, and what said calling can look like. It got me thinking about it, and I realized that I haven't really shared with many people how it was that I felt God calling me to be where I am right now. So here is my story, at least part of it. If I wrote every detail it would be too long to read :)

So let's go back a few years, about 7 or 8. Cue 16 year old me, working at Chick-Fil-A and just beginning to learn a little Spanish from my coworkers. Then I started high school and spent the next 3 years learning to love the language and the culture even more, thanks to both my coworkers and my amazing Spanish teacher :) (There was more that happened in high school that relates to this story, but I'll get back to that).

Now we move on to my college years...I continued to study Spanish, meeting a lot of great Latino people on the process, but that was just par for the course so I didn't think much of it. I also frequently stopped by the study abroad tables, wanting to go but never having the guts to go through with it. It was also during those years that I "coincidentally" met several people who had spent time overseas in different capacities, but I didn't really think much of it. Then, in late 2012 I realized that I was going to be graduating college a semester early. Cue the future planning.

Now, I'm really not sure where exactly I got the idea of semester missions from, but for some reason I started looking into it as a possible post graduation option. Not long after I started google searching missions projects, the lovely lady Taryn came to church and talked about her time as a Jman in Spain. Coincidence? I think not. So I filled out an application, not really sure what I wanted to do, but thinking I'd just put that option out there. Then summer came.

I headed off for my second summer at the amazing Camp War Eagle, and who should I be put with as co-counselors but missionary kids and girls planning to do missions when they graduated. Seriously? It was becoming ever more apparent that God was trying to get my attention. But I didn't want to leave home and family. I'm the girl who went to a university 20 minutes from home. I couldn't make it 5 months away from my family. And then I read these verses in the Bible: "Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Matthew 10:37-39

Talk about a clear message. Add to that the way that God provided for this trip financially and its about as close to a neon sign as you can get. So when I got the email saying I had been accepted to do a semester of missions in Mexico, my decision was pretty much made for me. And that is how God called me to Mexico.



Oh yeah, the other high school thing! So, because of the way things worked out for me starting public school when I did, I ended up being in high school for an extra year. That year I was much more involved in school activities and also took SO classes. Thanks to that year, I starts college with 12 hours of credit and $3500 a semester in scholarship money. The 12 hours are what put me graduating a semester early, and the scholarship money allowed me to save some of my work earnings. Those savings, in addition to the donations given by several amazing, wonderful people, are what played for these 5 months here. All of this to say, GOD IS SO GOOD!