I am currently reading a book called The Missionary Call: Finding Your Place in God's Will for the World by M. David Sills. (I'd really recommend it, by the way. P.S. Before you refuse to read it because you are afraid that God will call you to become a missionary, which of course MUST mean moving halfway around the world, remember that missions doesn't always look like packing up and moving to a foreign country - you can be a missionary ANYWHERE you are!)
Ironically, that is exactly what I was going to write about anyway. Sills writes about when he was in seminary and he had several friends who refused to go to chapel on "missions day" because they were so afraid that God might call them into missions. "They already had their life planned out and their plan did not include missions." He writes again about when he worked with the youth in his local church and many of them said that they were nervous to surrender to God 100% because, "I am afraid that if I do, then God will call me to be a missionary in Africa and I don't want to be a missionary."
I have to admit, I laughed when I read this. I really don't understand at all. If God told me to move to Africa and be a missionary, I would be so incredibly excited! I don't understand how some people are so scared to go to foreign countries. When talking to people about going to Uganda, many of them have made comments about how I would survive with no air conditioning, internet (mostly Facebook =]), television, and my cell phone. I finally started to think about it after enough people asked, and I realized that those things don't really matter all that much to me. Yeah, all of those things are wonderful to have (and I have been slightly uncomfortable and irritated with the lack of them lately with all of the storms - our power was out for almost 3 days...), but so what? People survived for a long time without all of those things.
I think my lack of cable TV, internet, and air conditioning throughout
my childhood and most of my adolescence, may have something to do with
this attitude. I used to be annoyed that my parents wouldn't pay to get cable, but now I see just how much that benefited me. Instead of sitting inside and watching TV or spending hours on MySpace (never had one of those either!), I spent every minute of daylight - and many of nighttime as well - outside. My imagination was wildly crazy! And when paired with my good friend, Naomi, well, we came up with some pretty great stories and games of "pretend". We were slaves navigating the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada, we were pioneers on a great adventure as we rode our horses for miles and miles westward, we were Indians fighting off the white men who were stealing our land and moving us to reservations, we were..., we were..., we were... We were anything we wanted to be, and that is a wonderful feeling!
My point of this post is that I truly WANT to go to Uganda, at least for a while. I don't think that God would call us to do something that we hate; He is far to loving. Psalm 37:4 - "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Sills writes about how this verse teaches two things: "One is that the source of the desires in the heart of a person who is delighting himself in the Lord is God Himself. When we are delighting ourselves in Him, He places desires in our hearts that He wants to fulfill. ... The second truth is that God gave us the desire because He wants to fulfill it. So, one can legitimately say that God guides us by our desires when we are delighting ourselves in Him." God may be calling me to Uganda because I have a great desire to go there.
In all honesty, I have no idea what God has in store for me, but I'm learning to trust Him and follow Him wherever and to whatever He calls me. I was watching an interview with Katie Davis (author of Kisses from Katie - read it! It's definitely one of my favorite books ever!) and she was talking about how her plans for her life don't really count for much because (she writes in her book) "Jesus wrecked my life" and how God's plans also tend to be much better than her own. I think that's the most wonderful things I've heard in a long time. It's not that I exactly like the idea of not knowing what is going to happen in my life, but I do like the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful God planning my life for me rather than going along with my plans.
Right now, I am exploring the possibility of going to Uganda to work in Sanyu Babies' Home in Mengo, Kampala, Uganda. I really hope that this is part of God's plan for me because I am already so incredibly excited and we're still just exploring the idea! But, you know, I think God kind of likes keeping us guessing.
http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/
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