Her Eyes. I'll Never Forget...

Her eyes. I'll never forget her eyes. Dark, lonely and helpless. This is the image I remember from the day my church showed a video of children in Africa who were dying because they couldn't get vaccines. That day I was sure that I was meant to GO. I didn't know where, when or how but I was going to go. I was 13. When I was 19 I got married, 23 when I became a nurse and 25 when I had a daughter. With each big change in my life I found a little more clarity of my mission. I knew that I wanted to be a nurse somewhere. With children somewhere. However at the end of nursing school in 2006 I lost my twin boys to prematurity at birth. With this pain and grief process my career focus changed from wanting to care for children to caring for adults. Slowly I healed from my loss and once again thought of serving in an orphanage somewhere someday. God had given me dreams of Thialand and I thought maybe that was my path. As the years of our marriage passed Doug didn't know where he fit in my mission. I now had a nursing license and could go anywhere yet he was working for a software company, in an office, with a degree in buisness administration. It was a great job with great people but where was that leading him as far as serving on a bigger scale. He used to say, 'what significant things can I do for people in developing countries with my degree, teach them to build buisness etc..?" That just wasn't a passion. He needed something with passion. Then he was given this amazing opportunity to go to law school. I was reluctant to move across the country but could see it in his excitement that he was finding something with purpose. With his amazing heart, wit and determination he got through law school with bounds of respect and support of many teachers and the Dean of the law school. He was given an opportunity to do research in Bolivia his first year in law school, and I think it was then that he found his mission. Youth in detention. His passion stemmed from his previous work with youth in Argentina nearly 10 years before. See how God works? So precise, so perfectly fit into His design. When we were in D.C. we had planned to move into apartments in one city but it fell through and they said they had another apartment in Silver Spring. I didn't have a job as a nurse there. But I found a hospital on the internet, applied and got the job the next day. Less than one mile from the apartment. AND that first summer we went to Bolivia. When we arrived home to our apartment complex we started communicating with our neighbors more and found relationships with many who were FROM Bolivia. We think this world is small and we live by chance, but Oh how God knows all of it's workings. We lived in an 80% hispanic complex and didn't know. I spoke spanish at work with my patients. I was being refined. For what? For this. I'm now writing from a desk in a hotel in Mexico City. Embarking on an adventure with my husband, a Fulbright Scholar and research grant recipient. We will live here for 9 months, learning the culture, researching juviniles in detentions. And what will I do? Work in an orphanage Lord willing. I don't have anything lined up yet. But I'm here. Lord, I am here. Friends, your prayers can help. I just need a place. How exciting it is!! My life actually makes sense. Crazy right?! If you had asked me 6 years ago what I thought of my life, I would have told you...
I don't want my life, God has forgotten me. Tragedy happened to me and I no longer could see anything good possibly coming from my life. I was asked to quit nursing school because of my losses. I was depressed and didn't see how God could use me. But today, today I am ready. Today I am redeemed. Sitting in a city I know nothing about...with my husband a unified mission. To serve God with our hearts. Share it with you. And be who we were always meant to be, missionaries.

ISAIAH 1:17

 "Learn to do good. Seek justice. Arrest oppressors. Defend orphans. Plead the case of widows." 

ISAIAH 6:8

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"

And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"