Missions has been my life for the last 14 years and I love that no two days are alike, so when God allows the entire world to slow down... it may be time to pay attention.
I serve more behind-the-scenes on the field. It can become easy to allow “serving others” and “doing ministry” to overtake your life. Finding and keeping balance in your life is essential. Through Quarantine God gave me the opportunity to RE-EVALUATE - to seriously take a look at what I was doing and determine if I was still in line with what God had called me to do in the big picture as well as in the small daily activities... was what I doing really necessary?
When serving, it is easy to say “yes” and can be difficult (for me) to say “no” to helping others in need. Through Quarantine God has given me permission to RE-SET my priorities - both personally and in the ministry - to clean up my to-do-list and commit to what He wants me to do, just because I can do it doesn’t mean I should do it.
Being a single Missionary can be challenging and lonely at times. Through Quarantine God has encouraged me to RE-CONNECT. I had time to connect and pray with family/friends/supporters back in the States and was reminded of the importance of those relationships (they are my prayer warriors!).
When most of my responsibilities stopped during quarantine, I was suddenly faced with the question of my importance on the team and if I wasn’t “doing" this or that... then who was I? It is often easy to define oneself by what we do. Through Quarantine God has given me time to RE- DISCOVER my identity. Not that I lost who I was, but I was able to remove the labels/titles/roles that had been placed on me and were competing with who I was in Christ - as those titles are not who I am. It was a time I asked myself questions such as, was my need to be needed or labeled this or that by others greater than my need to be a Child of God?
I love missions - the different cultures, serving people, seeing lives changed - but missions to me is so much more than what we are doing with God to serve others. It includes my own journey and He faithfully invests in me through my serving.