It’s been almost exactly a year since I’ve started this journey and I remember, very clearly, the day that I had first heard about GoCorps. I was sitting in the living room of my on-campus apartment at William Jessup University, catching up with my friend and former mentor over Facetime. We chatted about the changes of life, the beginning of the end of my schooling career, and where I was to go from there. I expressed my longtime desire to go abroad for a while and do ministry in a different cultural context, but I had no idea where to start. There were so many great organizations out there, how could I possibly choose? Then my friend made a single suggestion that would completely change the course of my life for the next three years.
I visited the GoCorps webpage that same day, thinking at once that it was all too good to be true. GoCorps not only offered an impressive variety of ministry opportunities all over the globe, but they guaranteed at least a two year stay and a way to pay off student loans while overseas. Seriously?!
I came to the jarring realization that this was exactly what I wanted.
I waited eagerly for the 2016 application to be launched, checking the site almost everyday for updates, until finally, the time had come. After much prayer, thought, and anguished conversations with loved ones about where God needed me the most (they were all very supportive and patient, I was the basketcase), I made a confident decision to apply for the anti-trafficking team in Rome, Italy. I was amazed at how much peace I felt after making that decision. Months passed, I continued on with the application process still carrying with me the same peace as I had started with, and then December came around.
I was at my friend’s house one evening, and we had just come back from a local Christmas festival when I received an email notification from ReachGlobal, the organization I had applied to. It was an official welcome onto the Rome City Team. I sort of wish I could say that I was overcome with emotion and shock; that I started jumping around like a crazy person, crying and laughing, while blasting the news all over social medias, but this was not how it happened. To be honest, the experience was rather anticlimactic. Again, I was pervaded by an unexplainable sense of peace, as if I knew all along that the Lord was going to swing this door wide open and usher me through.
So, here I am now, exactly a year later and inching closer to my departure date with the same unrelenting peace that gets me through the days of waiting and uncertainty. These last few months have been difficult. Support raising has come with with significant challenges, and I am tired but certainly not defeated. The challenges are what makes this journey worth the while, and I’m becoming a stronger person because of it.
Without the Lord I would never have never reached this potential, I would have never walked through those open doors, I probably would have never even had that conversation with my friend a year ago. And I definitely would not have procured the peace that has carried me through all of it. I'm discovering more each day of what it means to walk with faith into the plans that God has made, even though I can't always see where I'm going.
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11