How the heck I got involved in missions

It all went so fast, I quite often ask myself how I even got to where I’m at. Praise God, I did.

If you read my personal testimony you know how I started following Jesus.
Through highly being involved in the community, I ended up at a local community college. There was this event hosted by the Christian club. This event was called “Carry the Love”. Carry the Love is a state-wide tour where a group of radical Jesus lovers travel to different college campuses to literally carry the love of Jesus. These radical Jesus lovers are a part of an organization called Circuit Riders.

At some point I had to have given them my contact information.

A couple months later I got a random call from a CR representative. They were reaching out to me to talk to me about a program they were running over the summer. I automatically felt opposed, I already had enough going on in my life. What they were talking about seemed so far away from possible anyways. It was a lot of money and in a short period of time until it began.

I was so drawn to what this person over the phone had. They were so excited about God and even made it a priority to pray over me before we hung up.

I kept thinking about this phone call. I kept questioning if this could be possible. I couldn’t sleep because this program wouldn’t leave my mind. I sat up and went to the website they gave me. I read more about what they were telling me about earlier on. The program was called 21 Project. 21 days to dig in and be transformed by God. There were different tracks; Media, Messengers, Missions, Music, and Mavericks. The two that stood out to me were Media and Music since I am passionate about both. I didn’t have any interest in the other options.

I thought to myself “what the heck will it hurt”, and I decided to apply.

When I got to the part where I had to choose a track, I prayed into it. I asked God which track I should do; Media or Music.

Missions.

But, what? No God, I asked for either Media or Music.

Missions.

When I heard this I was so confused. Then God brought up the fact that He’s been speaking to me about missions through the book Radical by David Platt. Great book.
I thought that He was talking to me about missions because I was gonna end up supporting a missionary. I never thought I would ever be involved with missions farther then that. Being a missionary was so intense in my mind. A choice to die basically, hahaha.
I chose to trust God in this moment even though it really went against my flesh completely. I applied for the missions track. Less then 24 hours later I got a call to confirm my acceptance to do 21 Project in Costa Mesa California.

I had fundraising to do. With the combination of my own funds put towards, friends, family, and speaking at churches, I was able to not only pay for the program but also the application. I was going to Nepal for 2 week after the program was completed.

I have never even been on a short term missions trip before. Not to another country or out of state. This was going to be my first taste of missions…ever. Not to mention I was riding the struggle bus living out Christianity in the first place. I was still stuck in a place of trying to get out of bad habits.

21 Project shook me. It was the first step of many to come. I was placed in this environment where everyone was so for Jesus. Every person there had no problem going absolutely nuts for Jesus during worship. We would get together and get into these in-depth conversations about God and our journeys. This was my first taste of close community. 21 days were definitely not enough for me.

Going to Nepal was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. I was not prepared at all. My emotions were all over the place and I had no idea how to handle the spiritual. I didn’t leave not having any idea though. We trekked through the Himalayas. We ventured to present the Gospel to remote villages. These people we a part of an unreached people group. I don’t even think I had a full understanding of what that meant while I was there. It all seems a little hazy now looking back.

What marked me the most while I spent time in Nepal was one interaction.

We were on our way back to our Hostile coming from a small village about an hour away. There was this mute man who was begging for money. Our contact stopped, prayed for him, and gave this man some money. I felt stirred to pray for him. I asked the translator to come with me to pray for him. As the translator was trying to talk to him, he wasn’t really responding. He just kept pacing around. I started asking Jesus to come and give this man a voice. I just kept declaring over this man that he is so loved. As I did so I felt the presence of God DROP. God instantly gave me eyes for this man. He spoke to me what it looks like to stop for one person. What it looks like to truly love the person in front of you. My heart was captured.

It was this moment that sparked my heart for missions.

Here’s a picture of a woman in the first village on our trek that we got to talk to. We played her an audio version of the gospel. The joy on her face as she hears this in her mother tongue is priceless. She had never even heard the name of Jesus.

One of the leaders that I was in Nepal with suggested and prayed over me that I would do a DTS in January of 2017 in Kona, Hawaii. This in itself seemed crazy to me. I didn’t have any desire to do a Discipleship Training School. Everyone would always talking about it, but all I was worried about was getting home and continuing to work. That’s exactly what I did.

Before I know it, I was working for a few months, but this DTS thing came up again. I have no idea from where. Something sparked within me to pray about it some more. I ended up applying to do this DTS in January in Kona Hawaii. Guess who shortly got accepted?

After getting accepted there was a lot of things that needed to get done. I had worked my butt off to save up as much money as I could to get to this school. I spoke at churches, had one-on-ones with people, and even sold my car. I was on my flight to Kona and it wasn’t actually until I landed that I got the rest of the money that I needed to be able to be fully funded for the first half of this program.

DTS changed my whole entire outlook on Christianity. It became so much more real. I didn’t really understand how to have a relationship with Jesus. I “knew” a lot about it but was not really living out the truth. Everyone always talked about knowing Jesus and speaking to Him and hearing Him speak to them. This was something I had no idea about. But going through this program I got the opportunity to grow in much more. I finally formed a firm foundation to build off from, but that meant that there had to be a lot of false things uprooted first. I learned the simple gospel. I had an opportunity to get to know the different aspects of who God is. I learned what it looked like to walk out faith. I learned who God says that I am. Started functioning out of a place of truth and not rejection. I started seeing God speak to me through reading the bible and sitting in His presence. I found out that He was more eager to pursue me then I was to pursue Him. I didn’t have to be in a perfect place where my life is all put together in order to have a relationship with Him.

I went on an outreach to the Middle East for a little over two months. This was very difficult but so sweet. I was excited to be in a tough place for my outreach. I had no idea what it was going to look like. Outreach taught me a lot about being humble and being able to champion on your homies. Unity is a valuable thing, it’s one of the main things the stupid devil loves to go after. The enemy is trying to bring division at all times. Trying to isolate us and put us in a place where we push God away. Stupid Devil. Yuck. Outreach was a place I really understood that I’m worth fighting for. He’s been fighting for me. I saw miraculous things happen in front of my eyes. I saw peoples lives change for all of eternity.

How could I not want to do this for the rest of my life. I’ve seen the love that God is so wanting to pour onto those that do and do not know who He is. He is pursuing His children. He cares about us way more then we could ever understand.

HIS LOVES IS WHAT TRANSFORMS.

I am a first hand testimony of exactly this. Two years ago I would have laughed in your face if you would have told me I would be a crazy lover of Jesus traveling around the globe to tell other people about His love.

Now I’m doing exactly that. I’m stoked to share with you more in depth about my experiences thus far and the ones to come.