"My thoughts are not your thoughts"

I was always enthralled by the missionaries that visited our church when I was a kid. I thought maybe someday, I could do that. One of my favorite stories was always Amy Carmichael and how she prayed for God to change her brown eyes to blue eyes. He never did and years later she realized the blessing to have brown eyes that fit in as she rescued girls in India. After a summer mission trip to Romania when I was 16, I knew that I wanted to be a missionary and I wanted to be a missionary with a skill, like nursing, that I could use to serve the physical needs in the world around me.

Flash forward 15 years or so, I am finally going to be a “traditional” missionary. Yet now I cringe at that title; I don’t want to call myself a missionary and I don’t like hearing others call me a missionary! There are two main reasons I don’t like the term 1) it narrows a missionary to someone who raises support and works in a foreign land and 2) not all missionaries and missions have really done good to the cultures and peoples they were meant to serve; there are so many stories of good intentions gone wrong. However, I am actually really excited about the circle God has brought me and I am learning a few things along the way, particularly as I work through those two points.

Like Amy Carmichael – sometimes I look back on events and realize later that maybe God knew what he was doing…just maybe! Isaiah 55:8 says “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord”. Coming to Malawi was not my first choice, I didn’t understand why things weren’t moving faster to join CMFI/MOHI earlier; but I am realizing now that this time of reflection is just what I needed to truly be excited about my next steps. While I could see that CMFI/MOHI was a good fit, there was a part of me that was going kicking and screaming, as a last resort.

Yet through my time here, I am spending some time reflecting on my passions and dreams; I realize that they line up quite well with what MOHI is doing in Mathare. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the work here in Malawi too and hope to share more about it soon. But it definitely doesn’t have the same spark of passion it could have! As I ask for your financial and prayer support, I want to share this journey with you. Not just while I am serving, but even now as I am preparing. I intend to rekindle this blog as a way to do that and to share the things that God is teaching me and placing on my heart.