It's Official

It is time for changing leaves, pumpkins, and sweaters. At the Spicer household it's cool enough to turn off the AC and open the windows until we need the heater again. But having the windows open means fruit flies get through the screens, and we have them like the plague! I ate my lunch at work today and my dinner tonight at home swatting them away from my food. I am sure I've eaten several without knowing it, but as Mom would say, "They are extra protein!" Eating bugs it fairly normal in many other cultures, right? Pretty soon the cooler weather will chase them into hibernation or wherever they go during the winter.

Here is a bit of news: on Friday the Global Partners leadership board discussed the new missionary candidates, and the director signed me in on Monday morning.

I am now officially a missionary to Albania!

Since this whole process has brought more and more confirmation about my call there, it wasn't necessarily a surprise. Ever since I returned from the English camp there in July I have been in a transition period, knowing that Albania is in my near future, but the reality that it will be my home certainly has not hit me yet. Monday brought it just a little closer though, because my appointment means I will definitely go to missionary orientation at the end of this month and then begin full-time support raising.

During multiple other short-term mission trips I can remember consciously thinking that I never wanted to be a typical support-raising missionary. I hate asking people for anything, especially money. I didn't want to move overseas so soon after college. I get terribly nervous speaking to groups of people. I have student loans. I wanted work experience to be more effective as a developer. All of these seemed like great reasons not to go until I seriously began asking God if He wanted me to move overseas now, but now I see they were only excuses.

Once I read somewhere about how we often ask God things like, "Show me if I should do such-and-such," whether or not we should do some good deed or make a positive change, when really what we are supposed to do is act, and if it's not to be God will close the door.

Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. - James 4:17, NIV

How that scripture cuts deep in me! Oh how many times I have ignored that still, small voice telling me to act. God initiated my call to missions when I was a little girl and has been shaping that call for many years. It wasn't until last summer that I was finally open to making a life in another country, and it wasn't until three months ago that I finally surrendered my desires and fears about missions to Him. I kept busy doing good things, but I kept putting off the question God wanted to ask me. He finally popped the question:

If I ask you, are you willing to go right now?

What a patient, gentle, and merciful God He is. He waited until I was ready to say yes.

I keep re-reading that last statement because it truly makes me fall more in love with Him. He has been preparing me my whole life for what lies ahead and never pushes me to do something I really, really don't want to do. The thing about the tasks I mentioned that make me uncomfortable is that my understanding of God now assures me that He will help me through each task and that even though it will be difficult, it ultimately doesn't matter because this is about His glory and not about my success or failure.

Now it makes a lot of sense that God is bringing me to do something requiring tasks that make me nervous. Things I am unexperienced and uncomfortable with. The last five years have been a lesson in how to trust God when I am out of my comfort zone, and such it will be both in the coming year of support-raising and in a future of overseas missions.

I may be uncomfortable, but I am not alone in it.

He will never leave you, nor forsake you. - Deuteronomy 31:8, NIV

You didn't choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. - John 16:16, NLT