I never planned on being a student missionary. I just never saw myself going off alone for a year. Sure I would have gone with friends if they had asked, but that just never happened. That was why it was such a surprise to me when I found myself in Jeanne's (the WWU SM Coordinator) office early last school year.
At the beginning of this year I was introduced to a couple girls that would change my life. There were three of them, Chelsea, Rychelle, and Amy and they were all planning on going to Palau as SM's together. I got pretty close to them... and they ended up saying that it would be cool if I went to Palau with them! Going off as an SM with two friends, and one girlfriend :), sounded great! I had been invited, and so the paperwork started.
It got down to the wire, it was the last quarter of the school year and I had finally been accepted to go to Palau. By this time Amy had dropped out of the running, and Rychelle had decided she wanted to be a math teacher on Yapp. Chelsea and I were excited and ready to go, until one day we were called into Jeanne's office. She asked us if we were dating, which we were, and told us that dating couples couldn't really go on a call together. It would be too stressful, and the culture of Palau doesn't really work with our concept of dating, even conservatively. This was a hard blow to me and to Chelsea since that meant that one of us would have to switch calls. Palau had been her idea and her dream so I decided to switch.
I put my name in for a lot of different calls, boys dean, ESL calls, everything. Through bad timing and multiple delays it took a long time for me to here anything about the calls, but one by one they were filling up. I was worried that I was too late, until one night almost ten months after I originally visited Jeanne, I got an email saying I was accepted to teach English at Rigel Elementary School in Zaragoza Spain.
I danced and cheered that I was finally accepted and then started the information battle. Almost as soon as she emailed me to say I was accepted, Ana Lugo, my contact in Spain, went on her summer vacation. I don't blame her for taking vacation, but it was frustrating to not hear anything about the call. I am receiving information now however and all is well.
The cool thing about this story to me is how God took me step by step and led me here. He pushed at my comfort zones and slowly moved me further away from my original ideas. Over the course of the school year He used an amazing girl and a lot of disappointments to get me to here; Where I feel is exactly where he wants me to be.
I'm so excited to go and see what is in store for me in Spain. I'll be sure to let you all know what's going on. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment