Each missionary and missionary family has their own unique story of how they came to the mission field.  I am sure every story is great, but our story is my favorite.  I don’t want to sound arrogant in picking our story to be my favorite, but I didn’t write our story.  God is the author of this story.  We are merely the characters He chose to include, and I am so thankful that we are in this story He is writing.

I would consider myself a homebody and would have been delighted to never live farther than five minutes from my parents for my entire life.  But in our young marriage, we chose to move across the country.  Delaware is a completely different world from California.  We were two California kids figuring out how to be homeowners, how to be grown ups, and how to salt a driveway (FYI: table salt and driveway salt are not the same thing, and table salt is not effective as driveway salt).

That move was hard.  There was no cross-cultural training, but there was culture shock.  That move was also good for our young marriage.  It forced us to be independent from our parents and dependent on each other.  We grew closer together in Delaware.  We became a team in Delaware.  We also had our first daughter in Delaware.  And true to the “small wonder” state, our oldest is kind-hearted, reserved, and gentle.

After four years of growing (and the growing pains that go with the growing), four years of homesickness, four years of balancing work and family, we moved to Las Vegas.  Las Vegas was within driving distance to home.  Las Vegas was sunny.  Las Vegas was a transplant culture of families that were looking for close friends.  Most people hear Las Vegas and think “casinos and nightlife.” Most people don’t know the natural beauty of the Red Rock Mountains, the walking trails, and the family friendly suburbs.  We found a church in Las Vegas.  We found a family of friends in Las Vegas.  We found a home in Las Vegas.   Las Vegas was also where we had our second daughter.  And true to the glitz and glam of Vegas, she is a free-spirited, fun-loving, dance-in-the-grocery-aisle kind of girl.

Our church in Las Vegas quickly became our home.   We became involved.  We became invested.  I taught at the preschool, and we went to Bible studies and parenting classes.  Blake went on a mission trip.  He wanted to go to Liberia but that trip conflicted with the due date of our second daughter so he went to the Dominican Republic instead.  The trip was great.  He loved it.

Two years later the opportunity arose for both of us to go back together.  Our pastor asked me to help lead early childhood classes for teachers down there.  It was amazing.  It was great.  I loved it.  I never thought (NOT ONCE) that it would be our lives.  I thought serving God from the comfort of the suburbs was wonderful.  It was ideal.  I was serving Him by teaching preschool at a church; I was serving Him by leading parenting classes, and I was serving Him by supporting missions in the Dominican Republic.  But the emphasis on my life (which I didn’t realize at the time) was on the “I was…”   It was what I wanted, and what I decided my serving should look like.  I never asked God how I should serve Him, and I really didn’t turn over my life to Him.  

Three months later our church asked Blake and me to go down to the Dominican Republic  and be the representatives at the FORO.  So basically they said they would pay the expenses for my husband and me to go away together for a long weekend to the Caribbean, and we would be staying on the beach.  My sister could come watch my two girls.  Who would say no to that????

That’s when it happened.  That’s when God used the missionaries down there to stir our hearts.  That is when God gave us a desire and longing to REALLY serve Him, to put our lives in His hands, to give Him control, and to trust that He could use us to make a difference.  It took several missionaries saying, “You should be missionaries” for my response to go from a “No way” to a “Well…maybe.”  We prepared to head back to Las Vegas.  You won’t believe what happened.  My husband, who is organized and efficient, got the time of our flight wrong.  We were stuck in the DR for another day.  We went back to that resort and most of the missionaries were still there.  We had a whole day sitting in the Caribbean Sea, just the two of us.  We took our fruity drinks out there and talked about “what ifs” and “well…maybes.”

The “well…maybe” was enough when I left the next day to have a heart to heart with God after I got home.  My prayer went something like this:

Well God, you know I don’t do well outside of my comfort zone.  You know I am not social.  You know I don’t like to do new things.  Change scares me.  I am terrible at Spanish or any language.  I really enjoy serving you in here in Las Vegas…but… (sigh)… if you want to use me somewhere else, like, say overseas in a different country, for example, if you want me to follow You, if you want me to get out of the boat… call me like You called Peter.  I will go.  I will follow you.  I will trust You with my WHOLE life and YOU can use me and my family however You want.

That prayer gave me peace.  Peace I had not felt since returning from my weekend away.

I texted Blake.   It went something like this:

me:  I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.

Blake:  maybe that is a good thing

me:  I think that maybe we should think about this missionary thing

Blake:  I think so too.

me:  I think we should pursue this sooner rather than later

Blake:  I just printed out the application this morning

I have heard from several other families that one spouse had the desire and then presented the idea to the other spouse.  It was always a question others had asked us.  “Whose idea was this?”  “Who had to talk the other into it?”

That isn’t how it happened for us.  God gave us this longing at the same time.  I am so glad He did.  Because there wasn’t ever a doubt in my mind that this was God’s idea.  Two hearts changing at the same time… that isn’t coincidence, and that isn’t by accident.

So there we were ready to give it all up.  We were living the American dream.  You see, what I didn’t mention was Blake was climbing the corporate ladder – and quite quickly.  It was what moved us across the country and back.  We had everything you grow up saying you want: a house, kids, cars, friends, a church, a beautiful neighborhood, vacations – we had it all.

Blake worked for a casino.  And this is what makes our story my favorite.  It was a job he fell into after college.  He is just so brilliant (and modest, so he will hate that I said that), he would have worked his way up any corporate ladder.  He could have worked for a paper company, and we would have been living the American dream.

But God is the author of this story, and it only goes to show the power of God that He would take a guy working in a casino and a girl who is scared of everything and have them “throw down their nets” and follow HIM to serve in the mission field.

We did.

It hasn’t been easy, but it has been wonderful and rewarding.  I am still learning to trust Him for everything.  I am still scared of everything, but I have learned that HIS life for me is better.  It is better than I could have imagined.  It is better than the life I planned.  It is better than the ways I decided I should be serving. So, He can keep writing.  He is the author of my life, and I will continue to trust Him through the scary parts, lean on Him through the sad parts, and rest on the promise that our story will take me to a beautiful reunion in His Heavenly Kingdom. I anxiously await that reunion with my Savior and the reunion with my daughter. And I will know in that moment our story will have only just begun.