So as many of you know, over the last year God has been revealing to me that His will for my life is to go into medical missions. He started giving me this desire in October '08. It was just a few months after I had been in the hospital. My mom and I had gone down to Arizona to visit our family. One morning I was reading in Isaiah, in Isaiah 6:8 God asks Isaiah "whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" and he replies "here am I, send me". As I read those words I heard God saying that I needed to be willing to go because he wanted to send me. So as I sat there in my grandparents office I told God, "here am I, send me"! I had always thought that I was not cut out for missions. I don't feel like I'm bold enough to go to another country and share the gospel, but I knew God had a specific plan for me and I need to trust Him. So I relinquished control and learned that I'm going to be a missionary the one thing I thought I would never do, well that and be a garbage man. :-) anyways... I had no clue what God was going to do with this. Many questions kept coming up from myself and from those that I talked to about what God had called me to do. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? And when do you think you will go? This last one was a big question of mine because of all my health issues! Will I ever be able to get off all these meds and IgG treatments so I can go?
For about 10 months there was not a lot of direction. At first I was just trusting God and I knew it wasn't time yet. And then around August I started getting really fruserated and a little depressed because I still didn't know exactly God was doing and what He wanted me to do, I tend to like having control over these things. ugh.. that fleshly desire gets in the way all to often!!! :-) My heart was still desiring to go somewhere and serve for His glory, but nothing was happening. All I knew was that I wanted to work with orphans because I LOVE children! God has definitely given me the gift of loving other peoples kids as if they are my own. Sometime in this year process I started getting more interested in the medical field. I've been involved in the medical field for so long I started realizing this could be a good career for me. At first, I thought about just getting my LPN, but as I was sitting in a delivery room with Carrie R, all of her nurses kept encouraging me to get my RN. As I prayed about this, God placed on my heart that He wanted me to go into medical missions with a focus on orphan care and that I need my RN to do this. I'm very excited about it and I can definitely see how God has been preparing me for this my whole life! I recently joined the orphan care ministry at our church and I'm helping with the adoption of an International orphanage. Our church is hoping to adopt an orphange and help support them and send teams to help do whatever they need help with. God has really been doing a big work with this already! I'm very excited to see what all God is going to do!
Since September, I can also so how He has been answering my big questions of "how do I do this with my health". Some of my friends were encouraging me to go see Dr. Bowars, a homeopathic doctor in town. They thought he would probably be able to help me more than some of the doctors I was seeing. I finally decided in August that I was going to go see him because the other doctors next step was to stick a scope down my throat! I thought to myself absolutely not!! I told my mom that I wanted to go see Dr. Bowars. I wasn't sure if she would be willing to pay for it because he is not covered by our insurance since he is a chiropractor. Trust me it's well worth the extra money to go see him! Within the first 10 minutes he knew one of the big problems that had been going on in my body. I have candida! The only way regular doctors can figure this out is to stick a scope down your throat. All he had to do was touch my stomach and have me stick out my toungue. Soooo much better!! He has also figured out that my adrenals don't work and I have small gallstones(or sludge in my gallbladder). The reason my immune system isn't working is because of my adrenals and the candida. So needless to say, I'm really excited. I have already had a vast improvement since September. I definitely see how God is using him to help me get better so I can do missions. With all of this natural treatment we are hoping that I will be able to get off my IgG(The stuff that helps build my immune system and costs thousands of dollars a month) sooner than was expected. They were thinking that it might take 4 or 5 years. Hopefully we will be able to cut that down a little bit.
In August, when I was frustrated and felt like nothing was happening, I started asking God to prepare me spiritually and mentally to do missions. Even though I know that I won't be going for at least 3 and a half years, I know He can use this time in between to prepare me and use me. I have a hard time living my life one day at a time. I always want to look to the future and wait impatiently for whatever to happen. God started convicting me of this and I started realizing He can use me now, not just as a missionary. I need to be living my life for Him now, not just in the future. And since ever since I've changed my mindset to that, I have definitely seen how God is starting to prepare me for missions. He's starting to get a few of my questions answered and He is preparing me spiritually to do His work. I am hoping to use this blog as a way of watching how God answers my questions and gets me ready for what lies ahead. I'm also hoping to use it more than my last blog. ;-) I hope that you are all encouraged as much as I am through watching God work!
Love you all!!!
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