I was asked to write a blog about how I was called to this mission trip.  Here is my story:

My mom always tried to raise me right, and did the best she could.  But as many teenagers do, I slipped around age 12.  I fell away from Christ, and became someone I never thought I would be.  Around age 14 my mom began to fear for my life, and had me escorted to a therapuetic treatment school in Whitefish, MT.  I lived there for ten and a half months.  I was put in isolation with 37 other teenage girls.  That is when I went back to Him.  That is when I begged for Him to take me back.  I left a month before I turned 15, and have never been the same.  He has kept me sober and on the right track.  I struggled back and forth for years wondering:  Was it the right program?  Should I be mad at my mom for not putting much thought into it?  Will what I learned there keep me strong forever?  It wasn't until I began talking to my friend that went to Swaziland that I could finally answer these questions.  From the moment she said Mission Trip, it was both physically and mentally heavy on me.  I could not stop thinking about it, and when I would think about it my heart would literally pound.  I knew He wanted me to go, and He wanted me to go now.  When I began my over the phone interview, I knew why He chose for me to go to the school I did.  Isolation, hardship, change, unfamilarity, new people, and so many other things; He was prepping me.  A month after AIM had closed the Kenya trip I contacted them with urgency.  Through non-stop prayer, they squeezed me in.  God squeezed me in. 

 

Love,

Steph