Why Am I Going?
by Katelyn Pauls
The one question prospective student missionaries get asked the most is "why?" In my experience, people want to know why I'm eager to give up all of the creature comforts I have here to spend a year in a foreign country. Here are the reasons that I want to pack up and go to a place that might possibly have no electricity or running water; a place where the climate is hot and muggy and bugs run rampant; a place where God can strengthen my faith and challenge me beyond any thing I could ever imagine.
Number 1: There's a verse, Matthew 24:14, that I think is at the heart of the matter. I heard it summarized this way at vespers one night: "Until everyone goes somewhere, no one's going anywhere." I don't want to be the reason that Jesus hasn't come back yet. I'm not saying that everyone needs to go to a foreign country; but, I'm also not saying that everyone can stay at home either. That's between you and God. I feel like God has called me to go to Thailand and I want to respond with all of the energy I possess.
Number 2: For most of my life I've been crazy about missions. At the age of 11, I went on my first mission trip and I've been hooked ever since! In about the 6th or 7th grade, I had made up my mind that I wanted to be a missionary. As soon as I knew that I was going to attend Southern Adventist University my first year in college, I began looking into their Student Missions program. I didn't care how I would spend my time at Southern, I just knew that for one whole year I would be going to a foreign country to share God's love with others. The more I think about my character, I can't help but feel that this is my purpose in life. I love to travel, I adapt to situations easily, and I'm always ready to try something new. I can't help but praise God that He created me with this desire to serve people because He knew one day, I would have an opportunity to be a student missionary.
So here I am, preparing for the best (and definitely the most challenging) year of my life! I can't focus on much else but my future adventure and find that most of my conversations with my friends revolve around Thailand. My paperwork is in, vaccinationsover and done with, and there's a spring in my step that even the worst homework assignment can't get rid of. Thailand, here I come!
Ketelyn,
As a former student missionary (Korea '75), I am thoroughly excited to hear of your plans and dreams! Adventure truly awaits with lessons to serve you the rest of your life. Looking back, I see that year as pivotal in my life because of the things I learned (far more than I taught), how my faith grew and how much I matured toward adulthood. May your experience be at least as rich!
Aren't these very similar reasons for the Peace Corp?
As a former student missionary in Costa Rica and scion of a medical missionary family in Bolivia, I recognize that every personality will supply a combination and in fact varying ratios of reasoning for making the break from their homeland to serve elsewhere. My mother, a first-generation Adventist, earnestly imagined herself in mission service when Jesus appeared in the clouds of heaven, and such an encounter appealed mightily to her mystical, spiritual, and yes dramatic temperament. When a few years later I dropped out of college after my freshman year for two quarters and traveled on my own to Costa Rica to reorganize a college bakery's wholesale program, I went primarily out of a need to focus. I'd been ardently studying without adjusting my spectacles on the really larger picture of my life. The five months abroad were wonderfully helpful—and the project with the bakery met with appreciable success, too, and transferred well back to local hands.
In my father's case, the attraction was to heal people in an environment where so often the one-and-only physician in a huge geographical region was central to the survival of scores, if not hundreds, of individuals with dread diseases such as tuberculosis. He passed away three years ago, but in his final moments he reflected on his 13 years of his mission experience as the highlight of his life, bar none.
Today I look back on the effects of our family's mission work as "broadening" and "creating internal wisdom" (including learning several new languages, some only conversationally, at least one in-depth). We have personally seen many baptized whose lives and family members' were affected by the life-giving skills of Dad's hands in surgery and internal medicine. I have also found that some of our most productive writers and bonded readers and contributors to Adventist Today tend to be people of international perspective with a strong instinct to broaden their lives and share their blessings as Christians. How good to read the thoughts of a younger writer of conviction in our pages!
Katelyn, you are excited, and you should be. This will be a great adventure for you. I can put you in touch with friends at a local university if you like. Also, hopefully you will have opportunities to travel in the region, perhaps to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and maybe even China. This can be a wonderfully broadening experience. I hope you work on learning Thai language, and I hope you have a chance to meet ordinary rural people in remote areas. Be sure to listen and learn from all you meet. Have a wonderful time!
When I started reading I thought you were going to somewhere 'primitive'. Then I read 'Thailand'. My first thought was 'that must make her parents happy'. I guess that's natural for a parent 🙂 We spent three years in Papua New Guinea. If you learn as much about life and God as we did, then I know you will think that going without running water and electricity was worth it. I assume you are not going to Bangkok or you wouldn't have those concerns. Make the most of your opportunity to learn how others live. As others have said, living in another culture can teach you a lot. Even if it is only that life doesn't always go as we expect it to. I hope you will give us a report on how it went when you get back.
Kevin,
"Primitive" was the predominant descriptive for places missionaries went to when I was a child. At first it looked like my student mission year would be in an lesser-developed part of Africa. Then things changed around and I found myself flying into Seoul. The descriptions I had been given were that it was a modern city. Then, as the plane neared touchdown, I looked out the window and began seeing straw roofs. For a moment I nearly panicked because my first sight of the country was so different from what I had been led to expect. I was comforted to discover the majority of places were more modern than that first glimpse of the countryside. Still, there were many contrasts and surprises waiting to be discovered. Of such is the spice of being in another country and culture!
I can't think of a better idea for a mission than Romney's choice: Paris, France!
That must have been tough! But, with much sacrifice, he made it through… even though he had to live in an apartment and not in a house…
He first had to convince the French to give up their wine: what a task. No word on its success. Of course, this was a draft deferment given to all Mormon missionaries by the Selective Service title of "minister."
And I am sure you know that he got FOUR deferments, right? Not bad for a person so committed to his Country…
To compare the Mormon youth missionary to an Adventist student missionary is somewhat akin to pointing out the similarities between pomegranates and hand grenades. IF a Mormon youngster refuses to perform the required service as prescribed, there are serious ecclesiastical consequences and de facto reproach. By contrast I have yet to interview a single Adventist student missionary who was "impressed into service" as a requirement for continuing church membership, and most student missionaries in the Adventist vanguard emphasize that this is a personal experience no one but they themselves make (perhaps urged by peers, but never required by parents, pedagogues, or prelates), and that anything they experience in the line of service is more or less a consequence of their personal decision to go—hence, a worthy question, "Why go?" Some suggest that Adventism too should impose this service on its youth, but I do not believe it would work at this stage in our culture. Adventism may have some similarities to Mormonism in terms of time and place of gestation and claims of its respective prophetic leaders, but ultimately Mormonism is a "desert phenomenon" where hierarchy and top-down leadership is accepted and often applauded as efficient and orderly, while Adventism (say what you will) does not possess anything analogous to Salt Lake City, where history and tradition cohere in a mighty alloy of compelling power no good Mormon can effectively challenge. Some Adventists of a certain stripe have complained to me that unless and until a central authority at the head of the church "straightens things out," we will never have the perfected church that must precede the coming of Christ. But that's moving a bit afield from the points of this blog.
Adventism does have its missionaries, but only the paid ministry is "required" to go where sent by the church. The Mormon missionary has fewer choices, though in some conversations with Mormon leadership, I have learned that at least in practice the young missionary is now given more of a say as to WHERE they wish to go, patterned somewhat on the way the U.S. State Department allows its diplomats to express preferences for their assignments abroad.
Katelyn, it does my heart good (at 64 years of age after 42 years as a minister for the Adventist Church) to see a young adult embrace the mission of Christ as enthusiastically as you do! My prayers and admiration are with you. I look forward to your blog during the coming year. Take time to listen and observe and learn. You will only be as effective for Jesus as your skill at understanding the new cultural context around you, the needs of the people, etc. May you embody the grace of Christ in all that you do.
Thank you to everyone for your advice! Things are looking good here. I'm beginning to adjust and get used to things. The language is a bit challenging but.. I'll manage! Thank you again for your support.