Part one:
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After deciding to follow Jesus and God this past April, I went on a missions trip in July through Chi Alpha at the Ohio State University. After coming back from the trip, I have felt called to missions work. I have been thinking about joining a program called Give a Year after graduation from college.(Doing a year of missionary work) I have prayed for guidance on this subject, and this past Sunday at church, I received guidance from God on just that. When I prayed for guidance on my own, I would see something like a spinning globe. The prayer at Church wasn't for missions but just for answers to my questions, I asked somebody to pray for me and well this time the spinning globe showed up again and stopped. It stopped over the Mediterranean area and so I feel that this was God's way of guiding me to look at missionary work in that area.
I sent that to a couple of missionaries to eastern Europe. I got responses back from the two people I sent it to. I graduate college, DeVry University for Computer Engineering. in late June early July of this coming year 2008.
I copy below part of the second response.
Before I address your questions, let me put in a little plug. We are in the States right now, and we’re recruiting people to come work with us. Lord willing we’ll be returning to the field for our next four year term in June 2008. We’re trying to put together a team to help us plant a church among the Albanians in Skopje, Macedonia. We have had Chi Alpha students as temporary team members in the past, and we’d love for you to pray about joining us in Skopje anytime during the next four years. The Republic of Macedonia is part of the former Yugoslavia. The majority ethnic Macedonians speak a language closely related to Bulgarian and are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians, but the Albanians with whom we’ll be working make up about a third of the population and are Muslim. Skopje is less than 3 hours north of Thessaloniki, Greece and just a few minutes south of the border with Kosovo where we spent the last 8 years.
.
.
.
What’s your major? If you were going to work with us, we would try to find a way to put you to work in an area that’s interesting to you. I definitely need help with administrative stuff. Almost all the young people are eager to learn English or improve their English, so we can always use English teachers or tutors. We can also use people who can organize youth and children’s activities, campouts, etc. We need someone to help coordinate community aid/development projects, which will be an important part of our church-planting strategy. There are many other opportunities; these are just a few examples. If nothing else, we need people who are willing just to hang out with young Albanians, visit them in the their homes, and gossip the Gospel. (Like I said, there are quite a few young people, who know at least a little English.)
I don't have an answer to that right now. Is this God's way of saying 'Hey dummy, here you go!' as he smacks that in my face? Is this God's calling me to go to work with them?
Right now that is my question and I ask for prayer to get the final guidance so that I may start my preparation to go there.
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Here is the new update, this is about one month after the previous part:
-----------------------
I just got back from SALT, the regional conference for Chi Alpha. I took that information about going to Macedonia with me to SALT to ask and pray to God to give me a confirmation that this is where he wants me to go or to close that door and tell me where He wants me to go. The first night that we were there, John Palmer talked about Faith, and that Faith is acting upon God and His word. It truly takes faith to say to God, "I will follow You, I will go where You tell me, I will do what You want me to do, no matter what and where that takes me. The second day, I skipped the first of 3 'element blocks', these are small sessions that focus on a topic like world missions, blacks in the bible, tools for evangelism, and many more. Instead of going to one of those, I went down to the exhibitor's hall to talk with people there to get some info on missions and to talk to people like Katrina Frazee to find out more of how to handle some of the things like debt while I give time to the ministry. For the second block, I went to one titled, Why XA?, this was for people that feel like the are being called to missions, ministry, campus ministry interns, and so forth. The forum here was that the four people there to talk would introduce themselves, talk for five or ten minutes about a general topic that relates to what people might want to know, and then it was questions and answers for the rest to get answers to specific things that people are needing to know. There was about 15min between this and the next element I went to, World Missions. During these 15minutes, God acted in my life as I was talking with Him, and He closed the Door that led me to be a missionary in Macedonia.
This leaves me kinda staring up to Him, He has it in my heart to go to missions and he closes the door in my face. I go into the World Missions element wondering if that wasn't it, where am I going and what does He want me to do. I sit there listening to each person that talks about what they are doing and where. As I hear these, the three that I talked to in the exhibit hall catch my attention again. I feel my heart kinda reach for them as they talk about the work they have done. After hearing from them, I went off on my own and prayed about what God wanted me to do, where He wanted me to go, and which one of these, if it is one of these three groups that God has opened the door for me to work with them. Through this and some deep thought and looking through things in my heart, He helps me to have it narrowed down to just one door, and God has taken that and put it onto my hear just as strong as or stronger than when He put missions there.
That night, John Palmer, the speaker during the main session, talked about How are we living our lives? And how we should live by a motto of what is mine is your and I'm going to give it to you. This shows how me must live our lives to love thy neighbor as well as love God and give to God all that is mine because it is His too. Tuesday was a day of confirmation. The OSU Chi Alpha group ate supper together and some shared what was happening to them during SALT. I shared a short version of this and how I feel Him calling me. After that, E. Scott Martin, the Chi Alpha global student missions director, spoke about the World Missions Summit 2 for the evening session. He started off by saying that he was going to scare most of us with what he said that night. He went on to call us up to the front to pray about missions and pray that we can Give a Year and Pray about a Lifetime of missions work. The Lord confirmed to me during this who I would be working with and led me to go to them after the session to discuss it with them and tell them my about it to start on my way to work with them. That call down to the front, didn't scare me, it invigorated me because of the confirmation. The next morning I talked with a couple people and after breakfast, we departed for home.
After all of this at SALT, I stopped at work on my way home as my manager is Christian and wanted to know how things went. She was in a meeting when I got there so I started talking with another person that I work with. I didn't know that had ever followed God or been to church but she asked what I have been up to. When i was in there talking to her about SALT and the world missions summit this coming New Year, I was getting to the point where I cared so much about it, God had put it so deep in my heart, that I was one edge of tears, like holding one leg over a cliff and threatening to jump. If I went over I would have been balling because of how great that conversation went, God had spoken to me and through me to her about what He did with me, and about the World Missions Summit.
I realized that when I prayed to get direction about where to go and I got the spinning globe visualizations, God was answering me then. The globe wasn't supposed to stop. The reason he finally stopped it for me wasn't to tell me where to go, but to push me to some of the bigger questions about this and to make sure I wasn't going to turn away from it and that my FAITH was strong in the Lord. It made me see what I would have to go through when dealing with family, support raising, and dealing with debt from school. That spinning globe was there to tell me that I wasn't going to work in an area, or a specific country even, I was going to work wonders around the globe for God.
God has call me to work for the Book of Hope. The book of hope takes the first three gospels and puts them into an easier to read format to give to the youth. This is what they do, their mission is "to affect destiny by providing God’s eternal Word to all the children and youth of the world." I had been praying with God previously about maybe doing more than a year, possibly a year and a half, maybe even 2 if that is what He wanted me to do. They have 3 time spans for people to work with them, the first is 8-10 days like a missions trip would be, the next was what they call a semester one, more or less from one month to one year, and the final one is for two years. When I talked to them and gave them my info, the two years fell upon my and that is what I marked as an interest to me. They will get in contact with me. They are will be sending me more information and an application to for the two year program. The Lord has put this so deep within my heart that it is amazing and a bit scary too.
--------------------------------------------------------
After deciding to follow Jesus and God this past April, I went on a missions trip in July through Chi Alpha at the Ohio State University. After coming back from the trip, I have felt called to missions work. I have been thinking about joining a program called Give a Year after graduation from college.(Doing a year of missionary work) I have prayed for guidance on this subject, and this past Sunday at church, I received guidance from God on just that. When I prayed for guidance on my own, I would see something like a spinning globe. The prayer at Church wasn't for missions but just for answers to my questions, I asked somebody to pray for me and well this time the spinning globe showed up again and stopped. It stopped over the Mediterranean area and so I feel that this was God's way of guiding me to look at missionary work in that area.
I sent that to a couple of missionaries to eastern Europe. I got responses back from the two people I sent it to. I graduate college, DeVry University for Computer Engineering. in late June early July of this coming year 2008.
I copy below part of the second response.
Before I address your questions, let me put in a little plug. We are in the States right now, and we’re recruiting people to come work with us. Lord willing we’ll be returning to the field for our next four year term in June 2008. We’re trying to put together a team to help us plant a church among the Albanians in Skopje, Macedonia. We have had Chi Alpha students as temporary team members in the past, and we’d love for you to pray about joining us in Skopje anytime during the next four years. The Republic of Macedonia is part of the former Yugoslavia. The majority ethnic Macedonians speak a language closely related to Bulgarian and are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians, but the Albanians with whom we’ll be working make up about a third of the population and are Muslim. Skopje is less than 3 hours north of Thessaloniki, Greece and just a few minutes south of the border with Kosovo where we spent the last 8 years.
.
.
.
What’s your major? If you were going to work with us, we would try to find a way to put you to work in an area that’s interesting to you. I definitely need help with administrative stuff. Almost all the young people are eager to learn English or improve their English, so we can always use English teachers or tutors. We can also use people who can organize youth and children’s activities, campouts, etc. We need someone to help coordinate community aid/development projects, which will be an important part of our church-planting strategy. There are many other opportunities; these are just a few examples. If nothing else, we need people who are willing just to hang out with young Albanians, visit them in the their homes, and gossip the Gospel. (Like I said, there are quite a few young people, who know at least a little English.)
I don't have an answer to that right now. Is this God's way of saying 'Hey dummy, here you go!' as he smacks that in my face? Is this God's calling me to go to work with them?
Right now that is my question and I ask for prayer to get the final guidance so that I may start my preparation to go there.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the new update, this is about one month after the previous part:
-----------------------
I just got back from SALT, the regional conference for Chi Alpha. I took that information about going to Macedonia with me to SALT to ask and pray to God to give me a confirmation that this is where he wants me to go or to close that door and tell me where He wants me to go. The first night that we were there, John Palmer talked about Faith, and that Faith is acting upon God and His word. It truly takes faith to say to God, "I will follow You, I will go where You tell me, I will do what You want me to do, no matter what and where that takes me. The second day, I skipped the first of 3 'element blocks', these are small sessions that focus on a topic like world missions, blacks in the bible, tools for evangelism, and many more. Instead of going to one of those, I went down to the exhibitor's hall to talk with people there to get some info on missions and to talk to people like Katrina Frazee to find out more of how to handle some of the things like debt while I give time to the ministry. For the second block, I went to one titled, Why XA?, this was for people that feel like the are being called to missions, ministry, campus ministry interns, and so forth. The forum here was that the four people there to talk would introduce themselves, talk for five or ten minutes about a general topic that relates to what people might want to know, and then it was questions and answers for the rest to get answers to specific things that people are needing to know. There was about 15min between this and the next element I went to, World Missions. During these 15minutes, God acted in my life as I was talking with Him, and He closed the Door that led me to be a missionary in Macedonia.
This leaves me kinda staring up to Him, He has it in my heart to go to missions and he closes the door in my face. I go into the World Missions element wondering if that wasn't it, where am I going and what does He want me to do. I sit there listening to each person that talks about what they are doing and where. As I hear these, the three that I talked to in the exhibit hall catch my attention again. I feel my heart kinda reach for them as they talk about the work they have done. After hearing from them, I went off on my own and prayed about what God wanted me to do, where He wanted me to go, and which one of these, if it is one of these three groups that God has opened the door for me to work with them. Through this and some deep thought and looking through things in my heart, He helps me to have it narrowed down to just one door, and God has taken that and put it onto my hear just as strong as or stronger than when He put missions there.
That night, John Palmer, the speaker during the main session, talked about How are we living our lives? And how we should live by a motto of what is mine is your and I'm going to give it to you. This shows how me must live our lives to love thy neighbor as well as love God and give to God all that is mine because it is His too. Tuesday was a day of confirmation. The OSU Chi Alpha group ate supper together and some shared what was happening to them during SALT. I shared a short version of this and how I feel Him calling me. After that, E. Scott Martin, the Chi Alpha global student missions director, spoke about the World Missions Summit 2 for the evening session. He started off by saying that he was going to scare most of us with what he said that night. He went on to call us up to the front to pray about missions and pray that we can Give a Year and Pray about a Lifetime of missions work. The Lord confirmed to me during this who I would be working with and led me to go to them after the session to discuss it with them and tell them my about it to start on my way to work with them. That call down to the front, didn't scare me, it invigorated me because of the confirmation. The next morning I talked with a couple people and after breakfast, we departed for home.
After all of this at SALT, I stopped at work on my way home as my manager is Christian and wanted to know how things went. She was in a meeting when I got there so I started talking with another person that I work with. I didn't know that had ever followed God or been to church but she asked what I have been up to. When i was in there talking to her about SALT and the world missions summit this coming New Year, I was getting to the point where I cared so much about it, God had put it so deep in my heart, that I was one edge of tears, like holding one leg over a cliff and threatening to jump. If I went over I would have been balling because of how great that conversation went, God had spoken to me and through me to her about what He did with me, and about the World Missions Summit.
I realized that when I prayed to get direction about where to go and I got the spinning globe visualizations, God was answering me then. The globe wasn't supposed to stop. The reason he finally stopped it for me wasn't to tell me where to go, but to push me to some of the bigger questions about this and to make sure I wasn't going to turn away from it and that my FAITH was strong in the Lord. It made me see what I would have to go through when dealing with family, support raising, and dealing with debt from school. That spinning globe was there to tell me that I wasn't going to work in an area, or a specific country even, I was going to work wonders around the globe for God.
God has call me to work for the Book of Hope. The book of hope takes the first three gospels and puts them into an easier to read format to give to the youth. This is what they do, their mission is "to affect destiny by providing God’s eternal Word to all the children and youth of the world." I had been praying with God previously about maybe doing more than a year, possibly a year and a half, maybe even 2 if that is what He wanted me to do. They have 3 time spans for people to work with them, the first is 8-10 days like a missions trip would be, the next was what they call a semester one, more or less from one month to one year, and the final one is for two years. When I talked to them and gave them my info, the two years fell upon my and that is what I marked as an interest to me. They will get in contact with me. They are will be sending me more information and an application to for the two year program. The Lord has put this so deep within my heart that it is amazing and a bit scary too.
