I'm really terrible at writing down my thoughts.  I loooove to buy journals.  I rarely write in them.  That's probably because as soon as I write something, I overanalyze it and regret writing it in the first place. 

With that said, I'm going to try my best to document this journey as I go and to be as honest as possible.  If you don't know by now, I'm leaving January 15th to go live and volunteer in Peru and Chile next year. 

I suppose I should start with how I came to make this decision to leave everything that is comfortable and familiar to go on a journey next year of faith, service, and self discovery.  Bear with me.  I've never been good at writing a story that follows a straight path from start to finish.

To start I'm going to have to go back a couple of years.  I went to a Christian women's conference called Women of Faith like I do every year with my mom, sis, aunt, cousin, and a bunch of ladies from church.  Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision came and spoke about how he left his job as CEO of Lennox (crazy expensive china/tablewear) along with his huge salary, dream house, and home, to go take a job heading up WV.  I listened to how he struggled with his decision and basically begged and pleaded with God not to ask him do it, but eventually he relented and took the job with WV.  I don't remember the details that followed, but I'm pretty sure he was happy with that decision. 

At the time, I thought about his story and wondered if I could ever do something like that.  It sounded like an intriguing idea, but pretty much the answer was even though my job is no where near as prestigeous and high ranking as his, there's no way I'd give it up to go work non-profit or serve.  I've been involved with WV for several years.  I have some kids I sponsor and I love to serve in that capacity.  I love being able to provide for kids around the world and hear from them occasionally through letters, but I wasn't ready to give up what I'd been working toward for basically my whole life so far.

Going even further back to high school, the youth minister at Westside Christian Church used to pack a bunch of us kids into cars driven by a dedicated group of people and take us to Tijuana Christian Mission, an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico.  We'd always do some random project that never seemed quite organized, but always ended up being fun and worthwhile.  One time we cleaned up poorly mudded drywall and painted.  Another time we took water bottles to people picking through trash at the dump and just talked to people.  We played with the kids while we were there and they were definitely the highlight of each trip.

Also during high school I was able to work with a great group of girls in getting a group to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.  We spent Saturdays for a couple of months building a house alongside a family who needed it, only a few blocks away from my house.

Fast-forward to a few months ago.  I took a trip to Peru with my awesome sister and my best bud from college to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.  I wanted to try something new and it seemed like a cool thing to tell your kids about.  It turned out to be one of the most difficult things I've ever done, but absolutely one of the most rewarding things I've ever experienced.  Check out that picture at the top of the page, taken on the trail.  We walked with three amazing guys, who quickly turned from strangers to friends.  The three of them are so full of life, kindness, humor, compassion.  I came away from the experience wanting to be a kinder, stronger, wholer (probably not a word) person, but I had no plans of going back to Peru any time soon.

One more thing about our trip to Peru... there was this boy who asked us to buy him some food.  We were kind of wary, but of course you're not going to tell a kid you won't buy him food.  It wasn't much of an encounter, but his memory has stayed with me ever since.  I've since found myself thinking at times, why didn't I do more for him?  What could I have done for him?  Who is going to take care of him?

It wasn't until the week after I got back and was walking down the empty hallway at work that I started to feel a tug... telling me something isn't quite right.  It was a persistent tug, annoying at first, frustrating at times, scary at others.  This urge that I need to go and do something, care for kids, actually live what I claim to believe as a Christian.  I first bounced the idea off my sister, of taking a break from work and school to go and volunteer somewhere probably out of the country.  She's was one hundred percent behind it and has been my cheerleader/motivator/strongest supporter ever since.  My parents took some convincing, but are amazingly supportive.  So I prayed, I cried, I ran, I fasted, I prayed and cried some more.  I talked to close friends, family, prayed some more, and went to church... and had one of those bizarre experiences I only ever hear about.  I was sitting between my parents, feeling the weight of this decision, trying to figure out if it was just something I wanted to do, or something I was actually being called to do.  My friend/pastor was giving a sermon and said, if God asks you to go, will you do it?  I'd never felt like God was talking to me so directly in my life.  So I'll cut short the rest of my deliberating  and say that I eventually came to the decision to go... and after a period of waiting, everything started to fall into place.

It's time to stop doing only what is safe, what is comfortable.  It's time to fully throw myself into a relationship with God where I have to depend on him instead of myself and find out who it is he wants me to be.  Until now my life has been a long succession of steps toward a goal that I can't even see anymore.  I'm hoping next year God will teach me through the people I'm going down to serve and give me clarity for the future.  If aerospace is where he wants me, I hope he'll renew that passion that I used to have for it.  If he has plans in another field, I hope he will show me where to go.  For now, I just want to take this chance to learn and grow and live.