The back story…
Since sharing with you about the exciting new adventure I will be taking to work on staff with AIM, many of you have asked me how I became connected to AIM and what has been going on in my life in the last year, and so I thought I would try to summarize those things here for you. I will warn you, the story is a little long…but I have a feeling that if you commit to read it in it's entirety you won't be disappointed.
For some time now, God has been directing my heart and my path towards missions and discipleship. Over the course of the last few years, I have had the privilege of working in the field of higher education and being able to have some very rewarding opportunities to disciple college students and to lead students on the mission field through the means of short term mission trips. Like I mentioned, I found this work to be rewarding and I firmly believed that I was doing was the work of the Kingdom, but I also always sensed that I should be doing something different, that maybe there was something that God had for me, and maybe there was “something more” out there.
Something more? What did that mean? I had a difficult time wrestling with those words. I started to reflect on my life and see that the times that I felt most “alive” came when I was deeply investing in college students through discipleship, and whenever I was taking students out onto the mission field. While, I wrestled with what the implications in my life would be for having these specific passions and wondering if this were even true, many of my colleagues were also telling me that they could clearly see that my heart was for missions and discipleship. Therefore, I decided that if I were going to continue to work in the realm of higher education, I really needed to be in a role in which I would continue to disciple college students, but that would also provide a greater opportunity to lead short term mission trips and pursue the things that made me come alive. And so, a year ago, I decided to leave my position as a full time resident director at Taylor University and pursue an open position at Montreat College, where I would serve as resident director (part time), and where I would also have the opportunity to pursue my passion for missions in my role as the Director of Service (part time). The Director of Service position would allow me to connect students to local service and to be the director of their spring break missions program. So, after being offered this position, I moved my life south to North Carolina, and started working in what I believed would be the perfect hybrid for me of discipleship and missions. I thought I had found my “something more."
So, having settled into my new position for about a month, I started to begin making plans for our spring break mission trips here at Montreat. I had a strong sense that I should set up a trip to Haiti, and so I started to seek out the connections that my family already had made with missionaries in Haiti over the years (my parents had been on many mission trips to Haiti when I was growing up and had built many meaningful relationships with the missionaries they worked with.) However, to my discouragement, none of the missionaries that we knew were going to able to take on a group of our size. So, I knew that if I still wanted to go to Haiti, I was going to need to find a mission organization to partner with, and I needed to find a reliable missions organization that I could trust. I tried to brainstorm a list of all the mission organizations that I knew and trusted, when a specific memory from years past came back to my mind.
Five years prior, when I was working at Taylor University, I was serving as the resident director of small co-ed residence hall and being fresh out of grad school and only few years older than the upperclassmen students who lived in my residence hall, I became good friends with a handful of students were seniors. One of these students happened to be a guy named Seth Barnes Jr. During the course of that year I got to know Seth because he worked the front desk of my residence hall, and I learned that his father, Seth Barnes Sr., was the founder and president of a mission’s organization named Adventures in Missions. Later in that year, I decided to plan a backpacking trip for a small group of students in which we would hike the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. As we were starting to plans together for the trip, Seth realize that where we would be hiking was not going to be too far from where his family lived, and so he suggested that we stay with his family the night before in Gainesville, and after spending the night there he thought they might be willing to drive us to the trailhead so we wouldn’t have to leave our cars there. Seth shared with me his family would be glad to do so, and thus I was introduced to the Barnes family. After arriving in Gainesville that night, my small group shared a meal together with Seth’s family and we simply spent time getting to know each other. In getting to know each other, I began to learn more about the organization of Adventures in Missions (AIM), and I began to learn more about the warmth of this incredible family. All of this to say, when looking for a mission organization this fall, this memory came to my mind. I was looking for an organization that I thought I would want to partner with that I would trust, and my ever so small connection to the Barnes family came to my mind. I knew that Seth’s dad (Seth Barne’s Sr.) was the president and founder of this well established organization, and I knew, based on my experience from many years prior, that they were someone I would trust.
So, having lost touch over the years with Seth, I started to see if there was a way to reconnect. I began to look online to see how I might contact AIM, and also to see if they were even sending trips to Haiti. I found them online, and found that indeed, they were sending trips to Haiti. I sent in an inquiry to the main website, and to my surprise the response to my query was a phone call from Seth Jr. The last I knew Seth was living in Nicaragua so I was surprised to learn that he not only was living back in the States, but that he was living back in Georgia, working on staff for AIM. In our initial conversation, we just spend time catching up with each others’ lives, talking about the potential of partnering together to plan a trip to Haiti, and sharing with each other what God was doing in our lives these days. While sharing about what I was learning spiritually, I shared with him that I had been learning more about the topic of prophesy, and he quickly followed up by asking me, “What are you doing this weekend?” I was a bit surprised by this question, but I told him that I had no plans for the weekend at that point. He quickly followed up by telling me that Adventures in Missions was going to be hosting a conference on that very topic, and that it was being held that coming weekend, which was two days later. I got very excited, but in all honestly. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the money together that quickly in order to go. I asked him how much the conference was, and he told me “free.” I told him about the fact that I would need to find a place to stay, and he told me “I will find one.” And so, all I had to do was find a way to get out there to Gainesville. Well, to my surprise a friend of mine who learned about this opportunity offered to pay for my gas money if I would go. And so, I drove out to Gainesville, GA, reconnected to an old friend, and started to form a relationship with the organization of AIM.
So, after that conference I continued to stay connected to the people I had met at AIM, and I continued to share with them my heart for discipleship. Simultaneously, my passion for missions was growing, and just seemed to be stirred up more and more. Full time missions had always been something I thought I would eventually want to go into, but in the past it was something that I sort of just put on the backburner of my life because I felt that the timing wasn’t right. And if I am being honest, I put it on the backburner because I had fear of raising support. However, this January, as I was invited to gather with a group of people from AIM again, this time to spend a weekend engaging with the topic of discipleship, God laid it on my heart: “If you desire to live radically, how radical are you willing to be? What in your life do you need to surrender? Where do you need to trust me more? What if you could have this life of adventure that you have always desired? Do you realize that following me in this way might cost you something? What is keeping you from stepping into the fullness of what I have for you? Are you willing to surrender everything?” I realized very quickly the answer to this question. I realized that I wanted to experience the fullness of all that God had for me, but I had always held onto one area: I did not want to trust God with my finances. I recognized it, and I knew what I needed to do. And so I turned to the Lord and responded by saying, “I will surrender it all. I want the very best you have to offer me. I want all that you might have for me. And, AND, if this means that you want me to trust you with my finance, and that you would call me to raise my own support in order to do what you want me to do, well…I am in. I want the FULLNESS of all that you have for me.” Again, I didn’t know where this prayer would lead me, but I sensed “something more” was coming.
So, I stared to dream about what this “something more” might look like. I started to ask the question “If I could do whatever I wanted to do, what would that be?” My answer: “Well, I don’t know if this is even possible, but I would like to work for AIM in some capacity. I would like to utilize my administrative gifts to help with the set up and logistics of short term mission trips. I would like to have the opportunity to go out on the field and lead trips whenever possible. I also would like to offer support to those who are leading these trips. I simply want to have the opportunity to go out on the field and disciple the participants that go on these trips, and I want to have the opportunity to be a part of helping other people go.” I dreamed up this ideal of my “perfect job” in early February and shared with God my dream. About two months later, as I was attending a project leader training weekend in order to be a volunteer for AIM, I discovered that my little dream of a job was actually a real job at AIM. There was someone who does this, and this job was called “field support.” In addition to finding out that there was a job at the organization that does this very thing; I also discovered that the position was open! Over the course of the weekend, I connected with the folks from the field support department, and by the end of the week I was being interviewed by them. I was offered the position shortly thereafter, and to my delight, gladly accepted!
Now, I realized that I am sharing with you what seems like an incredibly lengthy story, but I share all of this because I really want you to understand how God has been working in the intricate details of my life and how he has been weaving this story together for some time now. I really am in awe of the how God has orchestrated this plan for my life and at this moment my dream has aligned with the opportunities that I have been given. I believe that this just may be the “something more” I have always been waiting for.
As I take steps towards the "something more" that I believe God has called me into, I would like to invite you to join me in this journey. I would invite you to walk with me as I try to press into the "something more" that God has called me into. If you are interested in walking with me in the journey, in pressing into the "something more" with me, and you have a desire to support me in the work that God is doing in my life, then I believe there are 2 major ways that you might be able to partner with me:
1) Pray! Pray that the Lord would work through me in ministering to others. Pray that the Lord would provide for me. Pray that I trust God fully in this journey. Pray in the way that you are being lead to pray. 2) Prayerfully consider whether or not you might be able to financially support me in this ministry. If you would like to partner with me in this way you can simply go to the link on the left "Support Me!"
Please know that I am soooooo thankful for the prayers and support that has already been given! They mean so much to me, and without them, I would not be able to do the ministry that I believe that God is calling me to. Thank you so much for this!
Blessings to you,
Julie
