I Have a Start Date!

Friends, great news! I have a date to be in Springfield Missouri to start my appointment. It’s August 20, 2010! I’ll be in Springfield for a few weeks to get settled in and prepare for the fall line up of trips. In early September the Global AIDS Partnership (GAP) team will head to Zambia to work with a Christian group that (among other things) makes home visits to those affected by AIDS. While still in Africa, a couple members of the team will swing over to Batswana for some training with an established AIDS outreach there. I’m extremely excited about this trip because not only will it be my first trip as a member of the Global AIDS Partnership team, but it will be my first time in Africa.

After that, I’ll be back in Springfield for a very short time before the team leaves for a joint mission with Sustain Hope (the Assemblies of God’s development team) in Papa New Guinea. The entire team is looking forward to this mission because it is the first time GAP has been part of a project in Papa New Guinea. It also looks like it will be a large nation-wide response to AIDS.

While I am extremely excited about having a date on the schedule for when I’ll be starting with Global AIDS Partnership, that date also acts as a deadline for when I need to have my financial support raised. I need one thousand dollars more a month in pledges in the next six weeks. If you would planning to give or pledge money, host a missionary chat, or get involved some other way, now would be a great time to do that! Thus far God has been faithful and his people generous, and I am trusting God and the generosity of his people for the rest of the funds.

My First Encounter With AIDS

I was raised in a fairly protected middle-class, Christian, home-schooled home. While I’m grateful for that foundation, it meant that things like “AIDS” were not something I grew up knowing much about. By the time I entered nursing school in Fort Wayne, I knew about AIDS as a disease process and social issue, but had yet to encounter it personally.

That all changed during my pediatric clinical. During my time on the pediatric unit, I came across a seventeen year old girl, who had been HIV positive from birth (she had inherited it from her mother). All the nursing staff knew her because she had been in and out of their unit since she was a baby. During this most recent hospitalization, she was diagnosed with a form of pneumonia which meant she had advanced from being merely HIV positive to having full-blown AIDS. She turned eighteen, signed a do not resuscitate order, and by the time I came back the next week to finish my clinical, she had died.

It was jarring for me. This issue that had been a problem somewhere over there or with that lifestyle that I don’t associate with had suddenly become very present and real. I saw firsthand how devastating AIDS was and more importantly how hopeless those dying of it without Christ really are. In my profession, a “sin-sick and dying world” is not just a cliché; it’s a reality.

That was the encounter that started me down this path that has lead me to Global AIDS Partnership. I knew after that, that at some point in my life, I wanted to help reach those affected by AIDS around the world. Now, I’m so close. I have my training, an appointment with a great ministry, and the hope of Christ to empower me. All I need is the rest of my financial support, and I’ll be able to start!

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.