This past summer I attended the Youth camp that my church hosts each
year. The second night there, I found out my grandmother had died. We
weren't close but it pained me to know that she wouldn't be in Heaven
because she never knew the Lord. The realization of that made me more
passionate for the Lord. My quiet time was more intense, I was praying
with people which is something I had never done and during Worship, I
was really singing to God.
A few nights later my pastor was talking
about callings. I was totally clueless there. He was asking people to
stand if they knew theirs. I was surprised by how many people stood.
Then he asked people who didn't know their calling, to come to the
front. I went up along with ten other people. Jamie Paton, my pastor
prayed over me for a while. Then I got a vision of myself in a deserted
place teaching the word to a very poor child. Later I asked what that
could have meant and my youth pastor said it could have meant
missionary work.
Was I ever shocked! I had only given myself to
the Lord a few weeks before and here I was having visions of missions!
I thought maybe I had been imagining it. But for a few weeks later the
subject of missionary work kept coming back into my life. One day
during my quiet time, I asked God if He wanted me to pursue this. The
next day I was reading my Bible and though I was reading James I just
had an urge to read to read a different book. So, I stumbled across 1st
Chronicles 16:24.