Hello! My name is Christopher (or is it?)! I am a 2025 Goer; here is a little testimony about how I became a Goer.
Growing up, my family lived in one home; we never moved, not even once. I had extremely little missions exposure and never planned to go on the mission field. I had some vague interest because it seemed like a good experience for my faith, but my career dreams/goals always centered around something more practical and/or scholastic (I love school). My immediate family is Christian and we each have strong relationships with the Lord; those relationships just didn't involve missions.
However, I began to really dive into my faith and to take my relationship with the Lord seriously. I began to read the Bible and to pray on my knees every morning because I wanted to. I knew the Lord, and I loved Him enough to make a spiritual discipline out of it. The fruit of this time with the Lord was an increased awareness of His voice, and a sense that He wanted to tell me something. Like all good Jonahs, I did not listen for a while. However, I eventually caved and paused to listen. With complete certainty, I heard Him tell me to go on a mission trip with my university to the Philippines. And so I began the fundraising journey to go overseas for a month.
After fundraising successfully (which is a series of amazing stories in itself), I came to the week before our departure. I went to my church's Young Adults group and we did an activity called "Immanuel Journaling." This activity is a series of prompts that you answer in your best impression of God's voice. One prompt began, “Dear child of mine,....” I wrote down my response as follows: “I dearly desire to give you more though not without its cost. I want everything from you and in turn I will give you more than you could imagine or dream. I have called you to draw my people to myself and to reconcile nations. I am the LORD. Do not be afraid. In me you will have peace.”
Words cannot quite describe what I felt except perhaps terror. I believed that this was truly the LORD, but that belief only increased my fear because I know that my God does not speak in vain. Other than having what I believed to be a strong faith, I believed myself extremely unqualified for this task. How am I supposed to “reconcile nations”? The only person who has done that, as far as I can tell, is Christ–or perhaps some other figures from the Bible. The world I lived in no longer felt real. (I mean that literally! For several days, I doubted everything I looked at. The physical world felt un-real in comparison with the invisible realm of God.) I believed what the Lord said, but I asked for some kind of confirmation to know that it was truly He who was calling.