Divine Irony: My Unlikely "Conversion" to Global Outreach

aka: How the stubbornness of one college drop-out changed the course of my life

Whenever I doubt the impact my words have on others, I think of Jesse Miner.

Jesse is basically a stranger to me, save from a brief conversation with him while on a college camping trip in Arkansas. Your average Joe in both appearance and personality, there was nothing about him that would have drawn me to remember him in the way I do. Nothing, that is, except his strong opinions on missions.

When he first introduced himself as having come to college straight from Teen Mania, a well-known sprawling missions campus four hours south of our school, I instantly felt a connection, having myself graduated from a very similar mission training program (Youth With a Mission) just 8 months earlier. When I shared this, Jesse seemed quite unimpressed--clearly not sensing the same connection as I so pre-emptively assumed we had.

Familiar with the program I had just done, Jesse asked: “Where did you go for your outreach?”

Eager to share about the year that had radically changed my life, I responded with enthusiasm, “Actually….our outreach was here in America--we went to 22 different states on a performing arts tour!”

Without missing a beat, Jesse inquired if I had ever been on a “real” missions trip.

I knew the implication immediately: Have you ever been to a foreign country?

I could feel the offence rising up within me. That WAS a missions trip! Missions doesn’t have to be in another country! America needs missionaries just as much as anywhere else!

“I’ve never been overseas,” I responded flatly. 

“Well, you haven’t experienced missions until you’ve been to a foreign country,” he retorted. From there, he launched into a story about his own recent missionary journey abroad. Where it was (or any of the details for that matter) I couldn’t tell you, mostly because I wasn’t listening. In my mind, an internal war was raging.

How DARE he de-value my experience? My 19 year old brain, fraught with insecurity (especially after being so harshly confronted by a perfect stranger), struggled to grasp on to any and every defense I could think of. He clearly doesn’t understand what God can do in our own country! And what’s so great about going to another country anyway?

At this point in my life, I had absolutely zero desire to travel abroad. (I know that must be shocking to any of you who know me and have seen my well-worn passport). Nope--I was quite content with my pretty little plan of going to college, getting my MRS degree and making babies (the sooner, the better). My sister Linda had always been the adventurous one--cultivating an exotic style, risking life and limb in pursuit of excitement, and honing an interest in all things cross-cultural. Linda was clearly the traveler; I was clearly the American. The American dream had soaked into my bloodstream and I wanted nothing to do with mud huts, mosquitoes and moving away from comfort (everything I so stereotypically associated with the word Missionary).

Sensing my thoughts perhaps, Jesse launched into a diatribe about just how different things are in other countries, insisting that I needed to go on a foreign mission trip--at least to experience another culture. Meanwhile, while my bitter mind was still crafting a rebuttal against this ridiculous argument of his, I paused long enough to notice that my heart was slowly softening to the idea (in complete defiance to my stubborn, highly offended will, mind you).

Jesse told me that every year our university hosted a few dozen or so short-term, overseas missions trips. "Missions Rush”--where a dozen or so enthusiastic, cross-culturally experienced college students would be wooing college newbies into joining a summer outreach team--just so happened to be the following week.

Still furious over his implication of the non- “real” nature of my DTS outreach, my defensive strategy shifted from “I don’t need to go overseas!” to “Maybe I should go overseas…just to prove to myself and others how much I really am called to stay in America.”

The next week, still quite bitter and determined to prove that overseas missions was NOT for me, I signed up to go to Africa.

Backwards, I know...

Normally, my defiance doesn’t serve me that well, but that’s the beauty of irony, isn’t it? Strictly out to prove myself, I ran with open arms into a strange life that I had once convinced myself I didn’t want. Through an interesting turn of events, my Africa trip morphed into a trip to Eastern Europe a mere two weeks before we were set to go. Christ-likeness was probably not my strength in that moment (I was more than a little pissed that as a broke college student, I had, just the day before the switch, shelled out $80 for a Yellow Fever vaccination that I no longer needed). Thankfully, my frustration and confusion over my new circumstances did not, however, deter me from my mission. I would go to Romania! I would get out of America! But just this once…

Hahahaha...says the same girl now on her second passport (first one filled), having traveled to 18 countries on 5 continents.

The Lord really does have a great sense of humor--and much more wisdom than I do! The story is far from over, as I'll be traveling to India in 3 weeks (more stories to come!)...and WHO KNOWS after that?

John 3:8 has become my motto:

"The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

So, it is. His ways are mysterious. I am submitted. Here's to the adventure of walking by faith... :)