Testimony

I'm 23 and I just graduated from The University of the Cumberland
I majored in Religion and Psychology and graduated with a B.A. thanks to four semester of Biblical Hebrew.
I was a pastoral leader for Baptist Campus Ministries and a youth intern all four years of college.
I have been on several mission trips ranging from Hurricane relief in New Orleans and Pascagoula and student missions in Panama City and South Carolina to working with Native Americans in South Dakota and foreign missions like Puerto Rico and Thailand
I will be teaching English to children a couple days a week and also helping with a Christian club at Yonok Foundation in Lam Pang.

I became a Christian at age 10 and accepted a call to ministry somewhere between my freshman and sophomore year in college. It was a crazy time in my life. My Dad was sick and dying of cancer and I was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I had begun getting involved with campus ministries right from the beginning and there I met some crazy radical Christians who were in love with Jesus and totally sold out.

I began to want what they had and to see others needs besides my own. I truly believe that part of the reason I was allowed to struggle with the death of my Father was to let me honestly experience pain so that I would cling to Christ. You don't really know what joy is until everything that brings you joy is taken from you and all you have is Christ, and you can't truly know peace until the things in your life that make you feel safe are stripped away and the only refuge you can find is Jesus.

I think God allowed my heart to be broken so that it would be even more broken for the people around me; those who were suffering and did not have Christ as their refuge; those who are suffering alone... That is when I began to realize that I wanted to spend the rest of my life offering people hope.

I saw that life is so much bigger than me and yet not so much bigger that I can not make an impact. I saw that eternity is so much more than one life, but that one life can forever affect eternity. I saw Christ standing before me inviting me to step away from everything I was and embrave all that I was meant to be. He was asking me to find myself in losing myself in Him. He was inviting me into His story, His adventure. He was empowering me to be bold and to make a difference, to fight for those I love and to change the world with one word, "Jesus" and I wanted in!!!! I know that is a lot, but I don't know how else to say it. To be quite honest, (I left out a lot too).

So in short I'm going because I have to go. Not because I am obligated by some fear of what would happen to me if I didn't. But because I am in love with a God whose heart breaks for the nations; because my heart is captured by a Savior who gave it all to know these unreached people; who gave it all to know me. It's like Peter said in John 6:68, “where else would I go?” And then like Jeremiah chapter 20:9, “I can't keep it in”!!!
I know it may be hard to understand but I HAVE to do this. My life would be empty and meaningless if I denied this call. So I thank you for your prayers and concerns, but to be honest, I am in the safest place in the world; Right in His hands; Where the Father wants me and doing what He has asked, called, and ordained me to do.