Article- Wall Decision

Here's an article I wrote for a friend of mine about when and why I made my decision to go to Benin:
The people milled past me, talking excitedly, the end had come and everyone was beginning to say goodbye to friends new old. Groups of those assembling to go home began to collect, truly the end had come. I sat on the floor my back against the wall, a piece of paper in my hand. My mind was in earnest prayer, oh what should I do? The burden weighed heavy upon me. I had gotten through preliminaries, the ducks were all in a row, it seemed so much like God had made a way thus far, but was this really exactly where God wanted me? There are so many other options for missions, other places that call with the same earnest plea, “We need you.” I had this one simple thought: I could sit for days and look at all the other wonderful ministries, decide where God might want me best, but in the end, I may never find the perfect match. I asked God was this the place, the place the paper in my hand talked about? I heard yes. It was not a booming yes, or someone random coming to me and saying they’d been praying for me and I should go there, yet I felt assured somehow. I signed the paper and found the Adventist Frontier Mission representative as he left and handed him the paper; he hugged me joyously. He told me to just send the forty dollars confirmation and it’d be great. Forty? It was fifty dollars I thought. He told me he’d give me ten dollars: my first donation!
Thus here I am waiting in breathless anticipation, preparing to go to Benin, West Africa to be teen and child ministry director for a church there with Adventist Frontier Missions. I do not question God’s call in the matter. I made the final decision against that wall the last day of Generation of Youth for Christ 2007: a conference that messed up my thinking for the better! It made me see the big picture, the missions picture. Not that I did not already know that people need to hear Jesus out there in world, but GYC was full of people who knew this, that’s exciting. They not only knew it, they lived it. I have come to realize that life is so precious and short, that lived without Christ it is useless. Even now God is preparing my heart for Africa, and the Devil is discouraging my spirit, making me think I am not worth that which God has already prepared for. Now I must trust God- that’s perhaps the biggest challenge!