For those of you who are new to my blog, welcome! This is the first time I’ve ever shared my writing on social media, so bear with me. All of my previous posts on this blog were for a philosophy class, so they probably won’t be very interesting to most people, but feel free to read them if you’re interested in philosophy or extremely bored (or both).
I’ve always enjoyed writing for class, but I’ve never really just sat down and written something because I wanted to. I’m writing this reflection on my time in Taiwan because I need to put into words something that scares me, intrigues me, and most of all excites me. I need to write about something that happened to me while it is still fresh because I know that when the fall comes and real life starts again, I’ll brush it off and ignore what was one of the most important and life-changing things that has ever happened to me if I don’t have anyone holding me accountable.
I grew up in a Christian home. I was in church every Sunday, I did all the camps, Vacation Bible Schools, mission trips, choir tours, and other extra curricular stuff I could do, I prayed every night, and I knew a lot about the Bible and about Christian doctrine. I was doing all the right things as far as I knew, so I didn’t really question my faith much. My senior year of high school was pretty awful for a variety of reasons, so I was ready to get as far away as possible for college. I applied to Northwestern University in Chicago, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and Baylor University in Waco as a safety school. I really didn’t want to go to Baylor because I wanted to get out of Texas and start over. I have a lot of family and church connections at Baylor, and my brother was a Baylor student at the time, so it was not an appealing option for a fresh start, but it was the only school I got into, so my decision was made for me.
I spent my first few weeks at Baylor mad at the world. My roommate was not interested in being friends with me, my classes were weird, and I shouldn’t even have had to be at Baylor because I had all the test scores, grades, and extras to get into the schools I wanted. I joined the Baylor Religious Hour choir (BRH) because I knew a few people in it and I knew that I would miss singing if I didn’t. I also joined the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC) because my dad told me to and the classes seemed interesting. My original plan was to keep my head down and study so I could bring my grades up and transfer in the spring. The friends, professors, knowledge, and music BIC and BRH brought into my life changed my attitude in a mighty way. I decided to stay and invest in the people around me, and I became much happier and more engaged.
Another result of my change of heart was a new curiosity about faith. I was very against talking about my faith in any detail when I first got to Baylor because I felt attacked and put off by random people asking me to go to their small group the first time I ever met them and advising me to just pray until I felt better whenever anything bad happened. Through BRH, I was able to find people I could trust and ask questions about faith. I never really took advantage of this until summer 2015 when BRH went on a mission trip to Mexico. That trip was the biggest challenge to my faith I had ever undergone. I was one of our group’s translators, which meant I had to be alert and ready to help at all times. It was a lot of fun, but I grew weary of explaining heaven and eternal life and love and the absence of suffering to people living in awful conditions. I was weary not just because I had to explain abstract concepts in a foreign language, but because I felt like I was making promises I couldn’t keep. I felt like I was lying to people because I kept telling them God loved them and wanted relationship with them, but I had never felt that in my life.
I spent a lot of time in prayer over the next year, asking God to make good on His promise. I felt like a lot of my prayer was a monologue delivered to an empty theater, but I kept asking for Him to hold up His end of this so-called “relationship.” I began talking to trusted friends about my spiritual frustrations and allowing them to help me bear my burden through prayer. My prayer changed to something more along the lines of, “God, ask me to do something, anything, and I’ll do it. Just talk to me. Please, just say something.”
When I went to Taiwan last month, my prayer was finally answered.
I didn’t think I would particularly enjoy Asia, but I was very wrong. We spent most of our time there getting to know students around our age and making friends with them. We talked to them about our faith when the opportunity presented itself, but we mostly just hung out with them and promoted the work our missionary, Todd Blackhurst, does in the community. I felt like our time there was kind of pointless at first. All we were doing was talking to people. However, about five days into the trip, I found myself falling in love with the people and their culture. When I had to use a squatty potty rather than a Western toilet, I found myself thinking, “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” When I walked outside with my new friends on humid days (every day) and literally dripped with sweat, I realized that my heart was as full as my pores. One night while we were there, we sang at Todd’s church. As I looked around the room, I suddenly had this overwhelming urge to fall to my knees because I just knew in my heart of hearts that God was not finished with me in Taiwan and I had to go back. This was it! God had finally answered my prayer!
Since this whole experience happened during a concert, I could not drop to my knees. After the initial shock of God calling me to Taiwan, I tuned back into the song I was supposed to be singing, and the lyrics we sang were, “I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy ear.” Music is my preferred method of worship, so this felt like further communication from God. I wouldn’t have guessed that the first time I would feel direct communication from God I would be called to go to the other side of the world, but His timing is perfect and I promised to obey the call in trust. God is faithful, and I am ready and excited and more than a little scared to answer His call and see what happens.
Friends, I don’t know what exactly this call entails for me, but I know I have to see it through. I ask for your support as I continue to pursue God’s plan for me. Right now, I am looking at returning to Taiwan for the summer of 2017. Obviously international travel costs money and I am a poor college student, so any financial support you can offer me is greatly appreciated. More importantly, however, I ask for your prayers. I can attest firsthand that God answers prayers, so I ask that you join with me in praying for peace, financial provision, safety, health, and above all courage to see this call through and to do whatever it takes to follow it. Please keep me accountable; ask me questions as I get further in this process and encourage me to see it to completion. I know it must be important, because the devil has been trying his hardest to keep me from following through. It took a lot of encouragement for me to even talk to Todd in the first place, and even though I’ve only been back in the US for a little over a week, I catch myself trying to downplay my experience. It took me several tries to make myself sit down and write this blog, and I know that it will be easy to put Taiwan on the back burner once school starts again. I have already been so loved and supported by my BRH friends who I’ve talked to about this, and I thank them for that. I hope you will partner with me in prayer as I seek to serve Christ in the global community.
Thank you so much for reading my blog and for supporting me. God bless you!
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