Our Journey into Missions- part 1

Over the next week or so, I will do a series of posts attempting to describe all of the different steps and milestones and events that comprise “our missionary journey.”

I should probably start at the beginning of our marriage, even though at that point in our lives, missions was seriously the furthest thing from either of our minds. But describing that time of our lives will hopefully show clearly the ways God has worked in our hearts to change our perspective dramatically.

Aaron and I got engaged when he was 19 and I was 20,

and then married when Aaron was 20 and I was 21 . It was 6 1/2 years ago.

We both professed to be Christians, but we were lukewarm. We went to church every Sunday, read a couple chapters of the Bible together each night…and that’s about it. We were not passionately seeking God and His will. We were not making decisions on the basis of whether or not they would be glorifying to God. We were not using our time and money and energy for Kingdom purposes.

At the time, we were both in college. Aaron was working part time at Wells Fargo, part time at Pizza Hut, and going to school in the evenings and online. I was a full-time student, and I also worked part time at my school—University of Saint Francis. Our dreams were essentially these:
1) both finish school and get degrees
2) both find good, steady, and hopefully high-paying jobs
3) in a few years, sell the duplex we had bought and buy a large house out in the country
4) have kids
5) live happily, safely, and comfortably in the small town in which we both grew up and both loved.

Looking back now, I can see so clearly that what we wanted was essentially The American Dream...and that also, much of what we wanted is unbiblical. I mean, really, we never consulted God on any of these dreams. Did He want us to stay in our small town for the rest of our lives? Did He want us to make a lot of money so that we could be comfortable and have a nice house (or really, any money at all for that purpose)? Did He want us to buy a house at all? Did He even want us to go to college? Those were questions that we didn’t care to ask, and so we didn’t ask them. We were living for ourselves.

And so, we began pursuing our dreams. We were doing pretty well, too, getting each dream “checked off” the list. We both finished school, Aaron earning a bachelor of accounting degree and I earning a bachelor and then masters degree in education. I began teaching at a high school and I absolutely loved my job, and Aaron got a new, higher-paying job as well. Three years into our marriage, we sold our duplex when we found a house in the country that we both loved.

We were well on our way, it seemed, to having our dream life. All we needed was a few kids, and we really believed we would live in our house in the country for the rest of our lives.

It was about this time, that God began to change our thinking dramatically.