But God.

So I never really blogged about the reasons behind me taking this trip to Guatemala. There are actually a few. First being that I’ve always wanted to study abroad. Ever since my first trip out of the country, I’ve just had this love of traveling. I love experiencing other cultures, seeing different places, and just being somewhere new, doing something exciting. Well, I quickly found out that studying abroad as a nursing major was next to impossible. There are just so many classes you have to cram into your schedule and most of them aren’t offered in study abroad programs or they can’t be taken in another country because they have a clinical component. So I decided I would do the next best thing, study abroad for a shorter amount of time in the summer. I searched programs all over the world. Greece. Thailand. Russia. South America. None of them were affordable and you can’t get financial aid for a summer semester like you can for a regular one. So after some time went by, I finally just gave up. I decided I was going to stay home all summer and just work and pay off my stupid college loans. 

But God. He had a plan for me all along. I was already planning on going on the two week Guatemala trip with the adult team from church in November. When I signed up for the trip I was so excited for it. But as I was getting into the Fall semester and the dates for the trip got closer, I was getting less and less excited and more and more overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine how I was just going to take two weeks off of school and come back and have everything be okay. I doubted God’s plan. I went on the trip as planned, although I did consider backing out once or twice. I remember telling someone before I left that this would probably be my last chance to go back to Guatemala and see the kids at the home and that I probably wouldn’t be going back again. Oh, how little did I know. The trip was amazing. I realized how little I had been living and how much I had just been going through day by day doing the things I “had to do”. It renewed my passion for Christ and made me feel more alive. Before I left for the trip I was talking to my friend Mark, who also loves Guatemala. I was telling him how I couldn’t even feel excited about returning to Guatemala because I had so much school stuff to do before I left. He told me, “You’re going to love it and then you’re going to want to go back again in the summer to language school with me.” I was thinking, yeah right, I already decided I wasn’t going to study abroad so that’s definitely not going to happen. But, God used that short conversation to spark an interest in my heart.

While I was in Guatemala, I mentioned the whole language school thing to my friend Steve, who has been to Miguel Angel Asturias before. We ended up getting into a pretty long conversation about it and by the end, I was pretty convinced that I was going to do it, but I wasn’t sure how or when. Then, a few days later I had to leave Guatemala. It was a pretty hard goodbye. What was even harder was going back to school afterwards. God was beyond amazing, and I ended up getting straight A’s despite missing so much school and going through the whole reverse culture shock thing while trying to finish up the semester. I went to talk to one of my teachers about making up work and she said “Oh, don’t worry about what you missed. You don’t have to do anything.” Seriously?! Then I had to make up a few tests. One of them I was pretty sure I failed. I had to guess the answers to half of the questions. I was pretty shocked to find out I got over a 100% on it. I’m not saying this all to brag, but to show how awesome God was. He did so much more then all I could’ve ever asked or imagined. 

After we got back, there was a sermon at church about the fish and the loaves of bread and how God takes what little we have to offer and turns it into so much more, if we only have faith and trust in Him. After this message, I knew God was calling me to go back to Guatemala. I wasn’t sure how the details would work out or what would happen with my job or if I could afford it, but I knew God was telling me that He was going to make this dream come true for me, if only I trusted in Him. I won’t get into how all the details of planning my trip came together, but I’ll just say that God is so good and it was clear that he wanted me to be able to go on this trip.

Now getting to my second reason behind wanting to come back to Guatemala. This one is a little bit scarier for me to put into words. I’ve been feeling for some time now that God is calling me to go into missions. It’s why I decided to study nursing at Roberts and it’s been the force behind a bunch of other life decisions as well. I remember when I was in high school, telling my Mom about how I didn’t want the boring American life of having a house and getting married and having kids. I wanted an adventure. I wanted to live and work and serve God in another country. When I think about just being a regular nurse, I think there are so many nurses out there. If I don’t take a certain job, someone else will. But when I think about being a missionary nurse, it’s different. If I don’t go out and serve where God calls me to, maybe no one else will. I want to be where I’m needed. I want to make a difference.

Looking back at that dream, I think I was a little naïve. It all sounded so fun and easy to me. I never once was scared by that calling that I felt. But then when I got back from Guatemala this past winter and I heard that message in church, I didn’t just feel that God was calling me to return to Guatemala this summer to study Spanish but also that He was calling me to something greater in the future. Like I said I had dreamed of doing missions work before, but I had never really heard God say to me “You are going to be a missionary.” But after Steve’s message, I felt very strongly that that is what God was calling me to. And it terrified me. There was an opportunity for those who felt God had laid something on their heart that day to go to the front of the church and to be prayed for. I couldn’t move my feet to do it. I was so scared. I’m still getting passed that fear I think. But, I know God is in control and He has something amazing planned for me. So my other reason for coming back to Guatemala was to further prepare myself for whatever God has for me in the future. Whether it’s using my Spanish at some inner city clinic in Rochester or using it as a missionary in a foreign country. I’ll just have to see where God takes me next.