My plans are to leave for Paraguay in mid-July. I will periodically post a blog after that point to keep you all posted.

Challenges

No, I haven't left for mission service yet but I have already been faced with challenges which eventually changed my plans for this coming year. As many of you know, I had been planning since August of last year to work in Peru with AMOR missions. In the months of the fall semester I worked through the application process and myriads of forms and was accepted as a member of the mission team at AMOR for the '08-'09 school year. I was ecstatic! Working with this mission I would be able to combine two of my passions: medical work and the outdoors. The position I obtained was one in which I would work on an agribusiness site that AMOR is starting about 3/4 of the time and would work on week-long medical campaigns in the remainder of my time. By the end of fall semester I had almost everything worked out: paperwork, academic deferment, and even drafting the fund raising letters that many of you have received. It seemed that Peru was exactly where God wanted me. Everything had worked out and I had been accepted. My plans were set. But looking back I remember one night talking to God and realizing that I really did have my life planned out. I thought I was going in the way that God wanted but I wanted to be sure. I asked God to "totally mess up my plans if they weren't what He wanted." Believe me, be careful what you ask for. I went on with school work and life in general, also continuing to solidify my plans to work in Peru. There was no reason to believe that God was leading elsewhere. Things remained like this until the beginning of March. It was then that the three of us who were planning on working in Peru began to hear rumblings of problems between the local Peruvian Conference and AMOR. The next month was a roller coaster ride for the student missionaries destined for Peru. We were first told that it absolutely wouldn't work, then that it might work, then that they were very hopeful that it would work. The final verdict was arrived at the beginning of April when the North American Division volunteer coordinator decided that no students would be sent to AMOR. I won't go into all the details of the dispute between AMOR (an independent ministry) and the local Peruvian Conference but suffice it to say that cultural problems play a principle role. In Peru, women still do not hold many positions of power and when they do they are often perceived as "uppity." AMOR is a student led and run (with the exception of the clinic doctor) mission and the project coordinator is not only comparatively young, being in her mid twenties, but also a woman. Evidently, these cultural barriers were significant enough for the local conference to attempt to cut off AMOR's access to volunteers.
As you would expect I was extremely disappointed and disheartened. I still believe whole-heartedly in AMOR's mission and fully support them, but the circumstances have made it impossible for me to go. God seems to have had other plans. I immediately began working with our missions director here at Andrews to find another place that needed someone with my talents and interests. We looked at several possibilities including Prague, Nicaragua, Egypt, and Paraguay. Paraguay was the least likely of these options because there was no existing call for student missionaries. However, one of my friends knew someone who knew someone at in Asuncion, Paraguay. Before I knew it a call had been built for me and another student to work at a small hospital in Asuncion. I was blown away. It had taken over a month for the decision on Peru to be made and here I was signed up for a call that hadn't existed a few weeks ago. And that brings me to the present. As of now, I am leaving for Paraguay as a student missionary this summer and will return the following summer. It's amazing to look back and see the leading of God and I'm sure I will understand it better "by and by." I guess God took me up on my offer to mess up my plans. He had better plans and I will understand why at some point. I'm beginning to see some of the reasons now. As far as I know, Paraguay has never received student missionaries but it is not because they don't need them. Paraguay is the second poorest country in South America (right behind Bolivia) and has all the problems of any third world country. Perhaps God can use me more effectively in Paraguay than He could in Peru. God continues to amaze me!

--God Bless all of you!