God Provided $70,000 so I Could Serve Him Overseas
The Lord is faithful.
I have attended Covina Assembly of God for the past couple of years, and for the past year of my life, I have been looking into going overseas to do missions work in Thailand. I have felt the Lord stir up these things in my heart and have been sensitive in responding to HIS call. In January of this year I got accepted into an APU program that sends recent graduates overseas for two years with a small amount of financial help. This enables the graduates who accumulated loans, to begin paying them off while serving the Lord overseas. Student loans have been the largest stress in my life during the past four years of school. Thus my acceptance into this program was naturally one of the first confirmations from the Lord. After prayer and discussion I took a step of faith (through which ONLY the Lord provided strength) and I accepted the invitation to a training weekend for a missions organization called Servants To Asia's Poor. This organization has teams throughout many countries in Asia and is in the process of developing a team for Bangkok, Thailand within the next year! The training is in late May and if I feel the Lord leading me to go with them, there will be another confirmation to begin this process of missions! This team will be sent to the urban slums of Bangkok, to live life with people that have nothing, at least nothing according to the standards of the world. Since Thailand has such a low number of Christ followers this could be both an amazing and difficult opportunity! And I am up for this challenge—to sacrifice my entire life of comfort to the Lord's will.
Throughout this year, my prayers have been concerned about a number of different things, but mainly about my student loans. I have had faith that the Lord could provide (and I have already seen HIS provision) but I did not want to be irresponsible with the Lord's provision nor did I want to leave close to $70,000 of loans behind! I decided that since the Lord had provided a small amount of money to begin paying off my loans (through the program at school) that I would assume His ultimate confirmation would be providing me with support money every month during the two years that I would be committing to Thailand. Once again, the Lord has provided confirmation! But this time it was far beyond what I could have imagined! On graduation day, just minutes before the 2010 commencement, two graduating seniors and I were asked to pray with APU staff and faculty in a room next to the stadium. We walked in and were asked to explain where we wanted to serve the Lord overseas and what our tentative plans were in missions. Shortly after, the president announced that there had been an anonymous donor who was able to forgive each of our loan debt! In other words, ALL of my student loans have been paid and I am free of debt! The donor gave over a quarter of a million dollars to all three of us graduates and close to $70,000 of it was mine! Honestly, what more of a confirmation do I need in serving Him overseas!? My prayers have been answered and He has provided me a way to serve HIM! I will continue to give my entire life to HIM no matter what the cost. I have been humbled by this blessing and have been reminded of HIS DEEP abounding love for me that is completely unexplainable! I have learned that faith is surely believing in the SOMEONE that we cannot see! THE LORD IS FAITHFUL.