I walk with grace as my feet and faith as my eyes
The other reason I decided to use this picture is because thirteen was the age God first started leading me toward mission work, although I did not know it at the time. I had just become a Christian and being young and excited, I highlighted verse after verse in my Bible in yellow crayon. It didn’t matter that I often didn’t understand the meaning of the passage. Knowing that it was God’s word was enough to keep my yellow crayon going to fill the pages up. One verse, however, I highlighted in blue. Luke 14:23, “And the master said to the servant, Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.” At the age of thirteen, this verse had no real meaning to me, and there is no logical reason I would have taken note of it. I knew very little about the world and had never really interacted with anyone that didn’t look like me, think like me, or act like me. For me, this inexperience lead to apathy. When I got a new study Bible, that crayon-stained Bible went on my shelf along with the verse God was saving for me.
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Interest in the world did come, however, and for me it came through reading. While Roanoke, Illinois is a great place to grow up, it is rather limited in the excitement it can offer a teenager, and books became my key to the world. The words of others could whisk me away to places I could never reach with my rusted out Dodge Neon and part-time job earnings. I was sixteen, but I still remember the book that really shook up my perspective and planted the seed for me to love the world, especially the Muslim populated regions. It was a memoir of a woman from Saudi Arabia, and I was thoroughly captivated by her life story. Although I didn’t fully comprehend this at the time, I was drawn in by how our lives were both incredibly similar and vastly different. On one hand, we were both monotheistic and highly valued family and modesty. On the other hand, I could legally work and drive a car, and most importantly, I had assurance of my salvation through the shed blood of Jesus, whereas the woman in the story had to simply hope that her good works and the approval of her husband would maybe get her into heaven. Being sixteen, I mostly focused on the former differences (She’s not allowed to drive a car!! What?!?), but that gradually changed as God placed a burden on my heart for Muslim men and women to know Jesus as their savior and be freed from a legalistic system that gave them no hope of reconciliation with God.
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A big part of that change happened when I moved to Bloomington-Normal to go to Illinois State University. As an eighteen-year-old, I was pumped to be a city girl! I mean this place had a bus system and a Wal-Mart! Clearly I was living the dream. Ok, now I know better that B-N is no booming metropolis, but living there still provided a lot of opportunities to stretch my thinking and broaden my perspective. Most influential was a class I took in the spring of 2008 called Perspective on the World Christian Movement. The class uses the Bible to clearly point out God’s missionary heart for the world (see: Gen 12:3, I Kings 8:41-43, Isaiah 56:6-7, Matt 28:19). I felt God calling me to be more directly involved in mission work and received confirmation when He reintroduced me to my blue-crayon highlighted theme verse (Luke 14:23, “And the master said to the servant, Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”)
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Clearly seeing God’s faithfulness over a decade of time, I stepped out in faith and became involved with International Talk Time (The ministry I am full-time with now). If I’m completely honest, I have to admit that it was a little hard at first. I wasn’t sure what to say, I couldn’t remember people’s names, and I was turning down a lot of other social events to make time for the ministry. But I was committed and eager to serve. So I took the easiest route and befriended the people most like me. Germans. We had each other over for dinner. We played games. I invited them home for holidays. The more time I spent with them, the more natural it became and the more I saw them as my friends and not as “my ministry.” Also, the more time I spent with my German friends the easier it became to start new friendships with people from other parts of the world.
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My years of volunteering and working with ITT has had its ups and downs, but God has given me two confirming moments where I knew I was following His will and serving Him by showing international students His love. The first moment was when I realized I truly loved this ministry. Often for holidays, we present an overview of the history and practice of that particular celebration, and Easter is always a great opportunity to present the Gospel. That year for Easter we showed the students a film of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and after the movie my Saudi Arabian friend approached me with some questions. Many of them were vocabulary related, like what does ‘humble’ mean, but one of his comments cut me to the heart. He shook his head and quietly murmured, “I’ve never heard that story before. I’ve just never heard it before.” I can still remember how my heart flipped over in my chest at that admission, and I thought, “This is what it’s all about!”
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The second confirmation moment came a few years later. I was having lunch on ISU’s quad with a student, and we were really connecting for the first time. She was sharing her feelings about her home country’s government and how she felt about going home. I was really enjoying listening to her until I saw this guy walk across the quad behind her. Let’s just say he was a guy I really respected and would not have minded getting some attention from. (Don’t judge me! All you single ladies can throw your hands up, cuz you know what I’m talkin’ bout!) Anyways, it really only took a few seconds but in the moment it was as if time slowed down. I saw two paths out in front of me. One was a more traditional lifestyle, a lifestyle I was more familiar with and one I knew the people around me often wished for me. The other path was the one I was currently on, focusing my time and energy into this specific service, which often left little time for other things. I heard God ask me, “What is more important to you, Amy? Getting his attention for you or giving your attention to her?” Honestly, I believe God would have blessed either of my decisions. It came down to me asking myself what my desires were and what I believe God created me for. In the end, I let the guy pass by without seeing me. Initially I felt a sense of loss, but as I was thinking about it more fully on my walk home, I felt like I could fly! Even though I was decisively closing doors and opening others in my life, God was blessing me with joy and equipping me for the work He had for me. That was the moment I knew I was committed to this ministry.
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Those confirmations of love and commitment have made it easier to step out in faith and take this next step of going into full-time ministry with international students. Yes, there are definitely times I still feel like my 13-year-old self and wonder if I know what I’m doing, but my testimony of God’s faithfulness in my life empowers me. Where I am weak, He is strong!
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