On a trip to Israel, I was sitting around a meal table in a kibbutz with a team of people I had come to greatly enjoy over the past six days, when someone asked the often-asked question when on a missions-focused trip: “Where do you feel called to?”

I came into a personal relationship with Jesus on a mission trip to Frakes, KY. I didn’t understand missions at the time, but as my life grew with Jesus at the helm, I learned more and more that I wanted to go to different parts of the world. 16 trips later, I was at this table in Israel answering the same question I’ve answered on every other trip. I was called to the United States.

This answer garnered questions, always, but it was true. I love my people and my country. I selfishly saw Jesus as an American God rather than a global God until I expanded my world view and sat in a church service in Vladimir, Russia, listening to a translator whisper what the pastor was praying from the front. It was just like we pray, same asking, same praise, same words and sentiment as my American church prayed in a corporate setting. It was in that moment I connected to my bias and understood that God was a global God and the hearts of men were the same who seek Him regardless of language or culture.

The year following Israel, an opportunity to return to Russia with a team to work with ministry center we had partnered with for decades presented itself, marking my 16th mission trip. The following year, I had decided to earn a master's degree and was in my second semester of school when I looked through a list of trips my employer’s foundation was offering through its missions program. I looked at a coworker and asked, “Want to go to Guatemala?” I had never visited, out of the list, it was the only place I felt “willing” to go to. I hear the arrogance in that sentence as I share it, but it was who I was then, and it shaped how I made my choices. So in April of that year, I embarked on my 17th mission trip, but first to a country where it wasn’t illegal to speak about the gospel of Jesus.

During my five-day visit with the host missionaries, I was often moved by their spiritual depth. There were some days, they would gather and pray, asking the Lord to guide them where they went that day and who needed to experience the Lord. There’s a story in the New Testament where the disciple Philip was led to go stand near a cart where he was met with the opportunity to answer a eunich’s questions about Jesus because he was sensitive to the spirit enough to be led there. This is what I imagined the work in Guatemala looked like on those days. I was intrigued.

I come back and I am in my normal everyday life. It’s been a year and a half since my trip to Guatemala. I had no mission trips on the horizon, and I was facing some big life changes. I knew the Lord was shifting me; graduation was pending, and I could tell I was going to move from Virginia Beach. The Lord had spoken to me during that first summer after Guatemala, calling me into full-time vocational ministry. Now, it’s the Thanksgiving holiday and on an impromptu trip to Texas to visit my brother, social media showed that some of the missionaries I’d worked with in Guatemala were in town close to me. We met for a coffee where during the conversation I simply asked, “What would it look like to come work in Guatemala full time?”

That’s it. That’s how it happened. I was simply presented with an opportunity, and when I prayed about it, I felt like the choice was mine, so I took it. I didn’t make the choice for many more months, but I wanted to live like those missionaries were, for a season. I wanted to see what it was like to push yourself in more ways than one and learn to walk in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

If I’m painfully honest, I wanted to walk in the fullness of God all day every day, like I did on short-term trips. On week three I started to realize there is a difference in life on the field and two weeks on the field…there’s a point when life becomes life after that two weeks, and daily life will start to march in. I think that’s one of the lessons I learned in Guatemala: long-term vocational ministry is not a missions trip. It’s a gritty dedication to something you know is where you’re supposed to be when everything else feels like it’s in the wrong place. It’s holding on to your why when you can’t remember it, and dedicating yourself to slowing down, sitting in the seeking, and changing everything you thought you knew about life before.

Guatemala unfolded a lot of whys…too many to answer in one post, but enough of them to keep an open conversation. So, this one is “the why I went to Guatemala itself” in a summation.

Charlotte is a soft-spoken 9-year-old who comes to our women’s bible study that meets on Tuesdays at 10 am. She’s homeschooled, so she has the opportunity to attend the study with her mom, and it’s such a wonderful group of women who seek the Lord so deeply that these kids are just drawn to hanging out with us as we talk about the Bible. At some point each week, the older children will sit down and join in to listen to the discussion. They don’t interject; they just listen and observe us. One week, we were discussing hearing from God, and as we wrapped up the meeting, I asked Charlotte if she hears from God. She quickly and quietly answered, “Yes.” I asked her what she hears from him, because I am so curious what a child hears from God. Unfortunately, that day, I’d put sweet Charlotte on the spot and she couldn’t answer me.

A few weeks later, after I’d returned from a trip, missing a study, her mom asked her if she had shared with me what she’d heard from God about the tree…Charlotte comes over and begins to tell me about a tree that was near her house. She explained God had told her where to go in her neighborhood to find a particular tree and gave her a map of where it was. So, she drew a map of where it was according to what God had shared with her. She took the map to her mom, explaining that the tree was shown to her by God, and asked if they could go find the tree.

And they did.

Off a walking path through their neighborhood, Charlotte’s map led them to a tree that was perfect for a swing and to play in. I loved the story. When she finished, I asked her, “Why did God want you to know where the tree was?”

“Because he loves me. I’m special, and he wants me to enjoy it,” replied Charlotte.

WHAT?! I nearly cried at her response. Goodness, if we all knew that about our relationship with God. He wants to give us good things because he loves us, we are each individually and simultaneously His favorite, and he wants us to enjoy this life. Charlotte left the room, and her mom filled in that she had been praying and asking for a tree to play in, and one day she came out with a map. She said they followed the map on a walk and found the tree.

I’m His favorite. Not His best employee, but His favorite child. I have spent so much of my walk with Jesus relating to God as my boss, not my father. I bring all my works to Him and present them seeking His approval, and His approval MUST be His love, right? I feel unworthy and unlovable until I’ve done something that makes me feel like I’ve been a good employee, and I can approach him again, because surely he’s pleased with me right now. Approval and love are different. Love isn’t contingent upon me. When I’m cranky, high maintenance, selfish and self-absorbed, not wanting to “perform” for God - it doesn’t matter, love is still there. Regardless of how hard I work, approval won’t make me feel loved.

When I stepped into this missionary calling a few years ago, I wanted all my works to be what showed His favor and blessing in my life. What’s happened is a long journey of reworking and rewiring my dogma and lies that put God in a box. It was so hard, but what I have learned is that all these things, all these challenges, all these blessings are because He loves me, I’m His favorite, and He wants me to enjoy this life.

Charlotte’s hope for her tree, her open ears to hear God when He guides her to her blessing, and her simple but deep understanding that God loves her have impacted me. A 9-year-old who openly and sweetly loves God without the rules we strap on to who and how God is, is inspiring and a simple truth we all can tie over us as a banner over our lives.

Things are never going to be perfect; current times and challenges prove that life will continue to do what it does in the good and the bad, but there is a truth for all hearts created by God: He loves us, we are His favorite, and He wants us to enjoy it. I challenge myself to hold fast to this truth. The more I do it, the more I understand God’s love for me. Paul writes more than once in his letters a prayer that we would have the power to understand how much God loves us. He continues to show me and guide me into that love. For all the “works” I can do, the better goal He’s got for me is to know and receive how much He loves me. This is the same goal He has for everyone, that we would know Him and that we would understand His great love for us.

Exactly, Why Guatemala? : The Summation

The Climbing Tree