It's honestly crazy to think how fast 2 years of overseas ministry went by. The whole experience taught and shaped me so much.
From the very beginning, as soon as I got there, the first calling to be faithful was in language learning. I was very unsure and skeptical of if I could really do this and learn to speak another language. Thankfully, I had teammates that have been there for 10+ years and appeared to be experts in the language. They also reminded me well that God has called us all to do this for the sake of our ministries and that the Holy Spirit will be with you and helping you in this process.
Another challenging experience came from wanting to be strategic in ministry. In the ministries I'm doing I've had to balance working towards setting and achieving long-term goals and also taking things day-by-day, walking in steadfast faith with God. And even in all that another challenge has been reminding myself that I'm doing this with God. I want to do all these good things for God but often forget to include Him and ask Him what would be the best approach and decision.
Many time before, I've longed and prayed to God seeking to be more faithful to Him and now He's giving me more opportunities to do just that. I didn't exactly pray and ask for challenging experiences/situations but from them there have been opportunities needing to demonstrate faithfulness. If I want to be more faithful to Him then I need to be put in opportunities to do just that, which is a hard ask and prayer for sure.
It's truly amazing to get to see, more and more, how big the body of Christ is outside of the West. Not that I thought of the East not to have believers or churches out there but you never really know what things are like until you finally go over.
Before I fully decided to join GoCorps, I thought to myself, "Okay, if I live to have about an 80ish year livespan then is 2 years of overseas ministry really that long of a time?".