Hello All! I am sorry for not having something up sooner. Life is busy to say the least. I am truely excited about having a blog to tell my story on how God is using me to tell his story. Hopefully I will have access to the internet and can make somewhat frequent updates. Honestly I am not good at keeping up with the "extra" stuff like blogging because I so busy with all the "required" stuff. But I think this is important enough to give it a shot.
In case you do not know I am going to Thailand.. YES THAILAND... for two months this summer to serve as a missionary. I will fill you in on all the details next post but thought first off I should explain the story on how I got to the point of going to Thailand.
Obviously you do not wake up and say " I think ill move to Thailand for the summer", in fact far from it. No, it was a lonnnnnggg process that started about a year ago. I am a extremely detailed person and if you know my mother you know why.. so I will try to hit the important highlights of the process.
I just finished up my junior at Texas State University her in San Marcos Tx. Last year, my fist year her in San "marvelous", I pray and prayed for God to provide for me a place where I could grow. Soon after I started attending our BSM ("baptist student ministries" for all my methodist family ;) ) I absolutely fell in love with it and the people. Their purpose was simple, spread the name of the Father across the campus. Throughout that year God really was breaking me to do missions. But I had no clue what that meant. I really felt him calling me to somehow serve on my campus since thats where I am.
So fast forward to this year, long story short, after much prayer I am now a student leader at the BSM. I help lead the missions and fundraising aspect. Ironic?? At first it seems so but I believe it was all part of Gods perfect plan for me. This allowed me to talk ALOT about missions with students, which in turned I informed myself on missions
I began to feel God again pulling at my heart strings for missions. But this time it was different, bigger, and much scarier. The Lord revealed to me in so many situations this past semester how faithful he is. He is the God of comfort and understanding that deserves all the glory. So it was now time for me to be faithful to him and to truly trust in him. I was honestly scared of what that might entail..... what did giving up my time for missions really mean? Did it mean another weekend with TX state students or did it mean allowing God to totally interrupt my plans for the summer and send me to Kalamazoo?
Well after much prayer it ended up not being Kalamazoo, but pretty darn close, Bangkok. Finally I decided that I have on average 77 summers in my life, what would it hurt to give up one. The BSM works side by side with GONOW missions ( which I will explain more about in another post). I began to look into what Gonow offered and the process of trying to get on a mission team.
So way back in November I began the entirely way to long and detailed application process. This, honestly, took me about two months to finish. After I had completed the application I then had to have local interviews which led to other interviews. All students who had applied to go on a mission trip then went to "discovery weekend" for our final round of interviews, these being a little more nerveracking. THEN FINALLY, I knew I was a GONOW missionary, but still clueless about where I would be serving. After my application and interviews were reviewed once more and prayed about by the GONOW committee, I was then placed on the team for Thailand.
So as you can see, this process was long to say the least. However, it really allowed me to have time to learn to trust the Lord on where he would send me. When I got the news that I had been place on the Thailand team I was thrilled, excited, nervous, and terrified. Although its been a couple of months now I am still thrilled, excited, nervous, and terrified.
I cant believe after months of planning, praying, and waiting that this time next week Ill be in Thailand.
Ill post again real soon! Have LOTS to tell!