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I saw my life differently from what
it has turned out to be. If you had asked me ten years ago where I would be
now, I never would have thought this would be my life. I graduated from college
expecting to have a husband and a job teaching kindergarten and eventually
start a family and give up teaching to stay home with my kids. However, my
“MRS.” degree did not arrive when I graduated in 2004 and the job I anticipated
getting has been harder to acquire than anyone would have thought. I have
fought for five years to get a teaching job in Birmingham, only to be turned down most of
the time. I taught third grade my second year out of school; unfortunately I
was not offered a position at that school for the next year, so the search
continued. That was the summer of 2006 and the first summer I went to Africa. I would have stayed then, but to be honest I
would have been running away, and the missionaries I worked with that summer
knew that and encouraged me to come home and seek God’s will, not mine. So my heart remained in Africa, and I
returned to the United
States, spending the next year working at
Cheesecake Factory and at a daycare. I loved working at the daycare, but had
some significant disagreements in how things were being run and decided to
return full time to Cheesecake Factory while I again looked for a teaching job
for the next year. In 2007, I ended up with my dream job, or so I thought. I
was teaching kindergarten at a school 40 miles from my house, and though I had
many ups and downs throughout the year, I liked what I was doing.
Unfortunately, at the end of the school year, I was informed that I would not
be returning the next year. It was then that I revisited the thought of
returning to Africa.
So in the summer of 2008, I spent
two weeks in Africa and everything started to
fall into place. We arrived on Friday and were able to meet the kids. On
Saturday we had a fun day for the kids, with a bounce house, face painting, and
sack races. I was sitting on a rug in the dirt with one of the little ones in
my lap watching everything when Savannah,
the 16-year-old in our group, made the comment, “Can it get any better than
this?”
For me, it could not, and it was
then that I felt God breaking my heart and calling me back to Africa.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Kriek, one of the missionaries, had mentioned that
they had a vision to have a school with American teachers teaching the Swazis.
My mind was spinning as I lay in bed. How could we help them to get supplies?
What could we do? Could they use the stuff that the schools in America
use? The next morning I asked Kriek about their plans for the school. She asked
me, “What are you doing for the next year?” I answered, “I don’t know.”
Shortly thereafter, I returned home
again, but this time the struggle was overwhelming. I wanted to return to Africa, to work with the Discipleship Team (a group of
Swazi’s in their mid-20s who work in ministry with AIM teaching the kids about
Jesus). I continued to pray about Swaziland and asked God to
clarify. I returned to Cheesecake
Factory after my summer travels, as I once again did not have a teaching job
for the school year. I decided to start volunteering with youth, so I helped
with the Desperation Conference that my church hosted for the youth in the
area. On the last night, the speaker told stories about missions, and the final
story was about a missionary in Africa who
worked there for many years and ended up dying there. His native country wanted
his body back and they got it, but his heart was left and buried in Africa with the people he loved. God used that story to
seal the deal, and I began to pursue long-term missions in Africa.
