You Want me to do What?

I wasn’t really interested in missions—at least not for the trajectory of my own life. I had expressly told God I wasn’t going anywhere near an opportunity that required me to fundraise long-term. In fact, I was so serious about this refusal to fundraise, that I went around to booth after booth at one of the largest missions conferences in the USA and led with the question, “Do you require your missionaries to fundraise?” Of all of them I asked, only one had a partial stipend, the rest were fully funded based on donations. So, I decided that missions was definitely not for me. There was no way I was going to rely on others (or God) for my complete well-being.

God had other plans.

Shortly after graduating from college, I spent three months in Hungary as an intern with OMS. I thought it would just be three months and then I would move onto whatever I decided to do for my career. But during my internship, the Lord began to show me how I could fit into ministry on the field here and to challenge the places in my heart where I still refused to trust in and rely on him.

I realized as I got close to the end of my internship and looked for other jobs, that I was looking for a role which would allow me to do what I would do in Hungary, but would not require me to raise my own support. I felt the invitation from the Lord to step toward what he had prepared me and given me the desire for, trusting that HE would be the one to provide the resources to do that.

So, I started to pursue a return to Hungary as a full-time missionary. It was a shock to me, but somehow less of a shock to everyone else. They saw the way that the Lord had moved my heart and he had already been moving in them to support me.

The process of funding and coming to Hungary remains one of the deepest times in my life of reliance on the Lord. It was such a profound season of seeing him work that when my faith gets shaky, his faithfulness in that season still helps to ground me.

If I had not interned with OMS, I don’t think I ever would have gone into missions. My internship gave me the opportunity to picture myself on the field, even though I wasn’t looking for that. It gave space for the Lord to speak to me in a way I did not expect.

My internship, and the interns I have helped manage since my time here, have also had a huge impact on our team and ministry. I love seeing them connect with team members, students, and the others they encounter. We learn from them as much as they learn from us.

Many of them have also come to be a part of our long-term team (like me). Around half of our team members who joined in the last six years started out as volunteers or interns and felt the Lord move in and through them in their time here, prompting them to return.

When you say yes to an opportunity, you never know what the Lord is going to do with that. Sometimes his plans are different from yours, but he knows what he is doing. I promise.