About My Position with Global AIDS Partnership

Hello all! And welcome to my blog! This is just one way more way I am trying to connect with you my friends and supporters. Let me start by introducing myself and what I’ll be doing with Global AIDS Partnership.

I have been appointed to a two year Missionary Associate position to use my training as a registered nurse to reach out to those affected by HIV/AIDS and to train others to do the same as part of the Assemblies of God’s Global AIDS Partnership (GAP), an international ministry that focuses on equipping and training local pastors, missionaries, healthcare providers, and churches to response to the AIDS epidemic as Jesus would. I will be traveling all over the world to partner with local churches, international relief groups, and missionaries. GAP’s ministry touches everywhere from El Salvador to Papa New Guinea to Zambia and beyond. My role will mostly be that of a health educator and trainer, providing the local churches and missionaries with the knowledge and skills they need to respond to AIDS in their country.

I feel like an observer of my own life, just watching God put the pieces together. It has not played out anything like I imagined it would when I first felt called to international missions work when I was twelve. There have been things I thought were roadblocks--- my dyslexia and being a female--- that turned out to be training courses in perseverance and embracing who God made me to be. There were things I thought were detours, done just to pass the time--- speech and debate, co-writing two English curriculums with my mother--- but those became the ideal training tools to sharpen my mind and communication skills. Things I thought were pit stops, temporary callings until I was old enough or trained enough to work internationally--- GRACE newsletters for young girls, tutoring, mentoring, ministering with the Point young adults’ group--- opportunities that were actually both ministry and training for future ministry.

There have been the twists and turns I didn’t expect such as nursing school and entering the nursing profession a few years ago; Chrism, my home church’s ministerial internship program, and the doors God opened through that to bring me to Southwestern Assemblies of God to finish my Bible degree; and working my way through both schools first as a tutor and nurse’s aid and then as a registered nurse at Baylor Hospital at Dallas. I simultaneously feel as if I am just now stepping into God’s plan for my life as He first vaguely revealed it as a preteen, and that I have been living it all along with each step of obedience.