Hey friends!
As some of you may know, I recently graduated Lee University. Yay! Many people have been asking me, “What’s your next move?” Well, if you read my last blog post, you’ll know that I applied to a Discipleship Training School with YWAM in Salem, Oregon. I am so excited about this opportunity, and I wanted to share my heart behind my decision to pursue YWAM.
To be perfectly honest, I was a little skeptical about YWAM at first. I knew very little about the organization, other than many of my friends had participated in one of their gap year programs in the past. YWAM stands for Youth with a Mission; the organization offers Discipleship Training Schools (DTS) for youths aged 18-25, and they also have secondary schools for DTS graduates that choose to continue their education with YWAM. It is decentralized, meaning YWAM does not have a home base; there are more than 600 YWAM bases across the world.
The purpose of DTS is to provide an opportunity for young adults to get their feet wet with international missions. The first half of DTS (12 weeks) is on-base in the location of your choice; I chose the base in Oregon, but I know people who have participated in DTS in Canada, France, Switzerland, Hawaii, and New Zealand. The remaining 10 weeks of the program are spent on an outreach missions trip abroad. DTS students from the Salem base have gone to places in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, but I won’t know where I‘m headed for outreach until after I’ve arrived in Oregon.
At the beginning of last summer—2021–I started researching graduate schools with the intention of pursuing my Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing the fall after I graduated (i.e., this upcoming fall). All my plans began to change when I spent that summer working as a summer missionary for a local home repair nonprofit in Cleveland called Ocoee Outreach. That job quite literally fell in my lap. I was at a small group meeting and just happened to mention to my leader that I was looking for a summer job in Cleveland, and she referred me to her old boss, who was looking for college students to work for Ocoee Outreach for the summer. I was a liaison between homeowners, all of which were low-income and often disabled, and church groups who volunteered each week to repaint, roof, or construct wheelchair ramps for the homeowners. The job was extremely out of my comfort zone—I didn’t know the first thing about construction—but it ended up being exactly where I needed to be.
At the beginning of the summer, before Ocoee Outreach started, I visited my old roommate and good friend, Victoria, at her home in Yakima, Washington. We toured Seattle, Portland, and the redwoods in Northern California, and then we spent several days driving back up to Washington via Highway 101, which runs along the Oregon coastline. Oregon was never at the top of my list when I thought about all the places in the world I wanted to visit, aside from Portland. But after I was met by Oregon’s rugged beauty, where mountains meet ocean and craggy rocks dot the coastline, I was enraptured by the state.
Here’s a photo of one of Oregon’s fractured coastlines taken last summer:
I am convinced there is no place in the world quite like Oregon. And I am thrilled to be back! The number of churches in Portland is quickly growing, which is so encouraging to see; Oregon is one of the least religious states in the country. But I‘m getting ahead of myself! Let me share more of how my job with Ocoee Outreach intersects with my passion for the Pacific Northwest.
I met quite a few people during my time with Ocoee Outreach who had connections in Portland. Odd, right? Tennessee isn’t exactly on the same side of the country as Oregon. I worked with a Cleveland volunteer one week who lived in Portland for six years, and I met another volunteer whose pastor’s daughter and son-in-law were church planters in Portland. Around that same time, I was hanging out in a coffee shop in Cleveland and ran into an old friend whose best friend from back home was visiting and about to leave for her DTS in Paris. I began asking questions about YWAM, having toyed with the idea during college but never feeling strongly that I should pursue it any further. The wheels started turning, though.
Near the end of the summer, I worked with a church group from Florida who I grew very close to. They asked me a lot of questions about what I wanted to do with my life after graduation, and I shared that I had been feeling led to go back to Oregon, but that I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. I never shared any concrete plans, because I didn’t have any at the time; YWAM was just a thought in the back of my mind.
A few weeks later, after Ocoee Outreach ended, I received a call from the pastor of that church; he requested my address, saying they wanted to send me something. I had no idea what they were going to send me, and I honestly didn’t think much of it until one day the following week I checked my mailbox on the way back from class and found an envelope addressed to me from his church. I opened it when I got inside my apartment, and my mouth dropped wide open.
It was a check, made out to me, for $3500.
I was too stunned to do anything for a solid five minutes. There was a sticky note attached to the check which said, Use this for your future. I called my mom.
“What was the first thing that came to your mind when you saw that check?” she asked.
“I think it’s a sign that I should do YWAM,” I replied, awestruck. She agreed—the very same thought had crossed her mind.
In the weeks leading up to receiving that check in the mail, I had been praying about whether I should do YWAM or not. The biggest concern on my mind was how I was going to raise $7500, which was the total cost of doing a DTS. And suddenly, in the most blatantly obvious way possible, God was answering my prayer: Go.
I called the pastor of Crosspoint and thanked him and their church profusely. I asked what prompted them to display such generosity, and he told me they took up a love offering at their church and that was the amount of money that was given. I had barely had more than four days’ interaction with these people, and the rest of their church didn’t know me at all. I have thought back to that moment many times this year when I’ve felt distant from God or uncertain of my plans, and it has anchored me back to Him.
I’ve wrestled many times with guilt this year, feeling like I should be getting a job like most of my fellow graduates or furthering my education in graduate school. There have been no shortage of people who don’t understand why I chose to pursue a six-month gap year program that I have to fundraise myself through when I have the skill set to apply for jobs and begin my professional career. However, God has reminded me that there is a great lesson to learn in relying on Him to meet all my needs—physical, emotional, and financial. I have never been in need while I am living my life with Jesus. Last summer, I needed to work, and He provided a job. Last year, I suffered a great heartache in the severing of an old friendship, and He provided community. This year, I need more money than I can raise all on my own, and I know He will provide.
If there is anything this past semester abroad has taught me about American culture, it is that we are obsessed with success. Everyone wants to be financially secure, but even more than that, everyone secretly wants to be wealthy. This is the country of capitalism, of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps and climbing the ladder to the very top. But the truth is, we cannot achieve true success in this life by ourselves. We need each other. Jesus modeled this lifestyle so well for us in his friendship with the twelve disciples. He could’ve done life alone, but he chose not to because he knew we couldn’t survive all on our own. A truly successful life is one spent in community with other people, accepting kindnesses when needed and offering them in return when possible. It is loving the body of Christ with whatever you can offer.
If you feel prompted to support me financially, thank you so much! However, if you would like to be support me spiritually, you can pray specifically for the following:
The students in my DTS program—I don’t know any of these people yet, but please pray that everyone who needs to be in Salem this fall arrives safely!
Safety—on outreach, in Oregon, and in everything else we do for the glory of God
An open mind and open heart—for myself, my peers, and all the people we will interact with
God’s providence and provision—that He would place the right people in my path and continually lead me in the direction closest to His heart
Here are a few helpful links for you if you’d like to learn more about YWAM:
If you’d like to join my mailing list, click here! If you fill out the form, you can expect to receive a fundraising letter from me, as well as monthly newsletter updates via email!
If you feel prompted to donate in support of my DTS, click here! Make sure to designate that you are donating in my name! The website will ask you to write in the student’s name you are donating toward.
I am so thrilled to be on this journey with Jesus; life with Him is never dull. My perception of mihistory and global missions has evolved the more I’ve traveled and experienced new cultures, and I cannot wait to see what this adventure with YWAM holds. Thank you for joining me!
”We have become his poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny he has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works we would do to fulfill it!”
—Ephesians 2:10 TPT
”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
—Matthew 28:19-20a ESV
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