A Short Termer in England

When I arrived home from a year of Bible School at Capernwray Hall in England, followed by a month in Kenya and a month in the Philippines, I didn’t know what the next step was, but I knew that God had placed cross cultural mission on my heart. After testing the waters in several places, I talked to WEC about an oppportunity they were advertising to mobilize, equip, encourage, and inspire young people and students for cross cultural mission in the UK. I could hear God speaking to me, saying “If you go to somewhere unreached, that’s excellent, one you serving Me where the need is great – but – what if you could inspire and encourage fifty more young people to do exactly the same thing?” From that moment on I caught a passion to do just that.

Fast forward ten months and here I am in England, doing it. I arrived in June and have been meeting young people through camps and conferences all summer, and I feel so encouraged! There are many young people and students who I’ve met who have a burning desire to serve the Lord with all that they are, and as the year progresses I will be going into their Christian Unions at universities and schools to inspire and encourage them to get involved in cross cultural ministry, both on campus and abroad. God is continually revealing His heart for the nations to me and as I prepare to speak, I pray that He can use what I say to impassion the hearts of my generation so that many will answer the call to go and tell these precious people who have never heard, that there is a God who loves them and sent His only Son to die for them so that they can have eternal life with Him. Every day, all over this beautiful and diverse world people suffer and die without knowing their Saviour and I pray that this reality will break the hearts of my generation and that we can rise up and go, bold and unafraid, Christ in us and with us as we fulfill his call upon our lives. God doesn’t need us to do this for Him, but He wants us to be a part of His story and He invites us to step out of ourselves and our ordinary, comfortable lives so that He may use us to do extraordinary things for Him.

I have found that the more I step out for God, the more I begin to hear what He is saying to me, through His word and through prayer. I am beginning to see changes in myself that can only be Him in me, and it’s wonderful. In the world’s eyes, I am just a strange, 24-yr-old, Kiwi girl with not much to qualify her for success and a pretty unimpressive academic history, but none of that matters, because God is taking what little I can offer and giving me this opportunity to be part of His story. I want to encourage all of you to do the same. You won’t regret it. I certainly don’t!

Mark 10:29-30 “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother and father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields – and with them persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.”