The Decision to go...

Many of you may be asking how I have arrived at this decision in my life. The following is an attempt at explaining just that…

To start off with I’ve always thought that a service term abroad might be interesting. As a result of this type of thinking I decided to go to Botswana last summer for my cross-cultural experience at Bluffton University. My intent in going was partially to see how I would react and hold up in a third-world environment. I absolutely loved my time there.

When I came back I set my adventurous thoughts aside because I had a girlfriend at the time. Pretty soon though the girl dumped me hard and who showed up in the worst of times but God who I had only half-heartedly followed to this point. This lead me to be baptized into my home church. I had always put this off because in my opinion baptism is a serious act that shouldn’t be followed with the half-hearted Christianity that I had. It was about the time of my baptism that I really started questioning myself what my new found serious faith meant for my life.

One of the first things I did was to get in contact with MCC because while I was at Bluffton I had become familiar with their style of doing things and really appreciated how they approached helping people. I was looking for an opportunity to go back to Africa but they didn’t have any openings for my skillset there. Then I noticed an opening in Bangladesh that seemed like it would be awesome for someone like me. I talked to MCC and received an application. I half-filled it out and then left it sit for 4 months.

It was about this time God started showing up and pushing buttons. One day I was contemplating the fact that I should be filling out that application when I received a phone call out of the blue from an MCC employee who was going to be on campus the next day. She had heard I was considering applying and wanted to meet with me. I thought that timing was impecable (I also feel like God’s always is).

Well the previous event pushed me to get everything but the 5 or so open questions done on the application. I got to those and was stuck as to how to answer them, so I gave up. Well, later on in more corrispondence with MCC I found out that they had several people interested in the Bangladesh position I had thought was interesting and that I had better get my application in if I was going to be even interested. I then got serious about getting those questions answered. You want to know what happened next? That was on a Friday and I spent my entire weekend sick enough to be stuck in bed. That was followed by my Uncle dieing suddenly. On the way up to his funeral in Michigan we were encountering some really nasty roads (it was winter afterall). As we were driving up those roads a thought came over me to just trust God and suddenly the scary part melted away into an odd sense of joy. In this whole situation I see proof that Satan will try to distract you when you get serious about living out faith but the joy of the Lord is strong indeed.

So I got my application in. Then time rolled around for an interview with MCC. It was about this time that I really started doubting whether God was really calling me to do this or if I was just making up this fantasy because I didn’t know what else to do after graduation. Well it turned out that the interview was on the same day as two exams in my two hardest classes. So I was up at 2 a.m. studying for these exams and worried that about the interview when I heard my next door neighbor (who happened to be one of my better friends) sobbing loudly in his room. I went over to see what was up of course and found out that he and his fiance had broken up. We ended up talking for the next 4 hours. The odd thing about this whole situation was that over the past year before this night I had prayed that I would get an opportunity to talk to him about God in my better moments. I had actually been very mad at myself because I had missed a good opportunity about a month before this. On this particular night he was the one to bring it up. It was a good talk. When our conversation was over he went to bed and went back to studying with a sense of excitement like I’d never had before. I no longer had any fears of the interview. I just trusted that if God was leading me to go then things would just work regardless of my intentions. On a side note I got a 52% on my Calculus test at 8 that morning which is pretty bad. I knew I failed it, I was so tired I couldn’t think straight, and I couldn’t have cared less. My interview on the other hand went amazingly well.

After this interview two more interviews followed. These two were with people actually in the country of Bangladesh. In my first interview it turns out that the couple that will be my bosses started out their MCC careers in the small village of Pitseng which just happens to be the exact same village I went to the summer before in Botswana. These interviews went well too.

After all this I received a phone call offering me the position. I accepted on the spot and have never looked back yet.