INDIA 2014: HEATHER

On November 2nd, our sister in Christ Heather will be heading off to India for a year to serve God through a ministry that is committed to seeing children equipped and empowered to achieve physical, emotional, social & spiritual wholeness through the gospel. We sat down with Heather a week before her departure to learn more about what she will be doing and how she is feeling as she gets ready to go.

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What will be you doing in India?

I will be providing individual therapy services for children who are currently residing in residential care. Many of them have been rescued from environments of poverty, or have been abandoned by their parents due to reasons of poverty, or have been rescued from child labor environments or trafficking environments. Specifically, I will be providing individual psychotherapy in addressing their issues of trauma and abuse, along with doing some group work with some of the kids dealing with clinical issues, such as grief, loss, and anger management. The exciting part of this work will be that the Gospel and biblical principles will inform my clinical treatment for these kids. I will also be training staff on how to deal with traumatized kids, as a lot of them have little to no understanding of trauma or abuse and how to respond to the needs of these kids.

What led you to your decision to serve God for a year?

About 3 years ago, I was on one of my routine runs, which have always been a good time to pray and have a time of solitude, and I started to feel very panicked about my life. I started to think about the question, "If I were to die right now and came face to face with God, what kind of account would I give of my life?" And I felt panicked because I didn't know what kind of account I would give, and I couldn't confidently say that I gave up everything for the Lord and the cause of the Kingdom. At that moment, God definitely rebuked me in my understanding of what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and He started to convict my heart about living with a sense of reckless abandon for the Gospel. For much of my life, I've battled against selfish ambitions and what I desire out of life and how I want to control the outcome of my life. So I think the Holy Spirit led me to start praying about how I can recklessly live for the gospel. That led me to my first trip to India 2 years ago. I went for 4 months, and when I came back, I continued to pray that prayer, and God led me to consider going overseas longer term and to consider being overseas indefinitely. 

I've also been practicing as a clinical social worker for the past 8 years, and I came to a wall in providing therapy for kids divorced from the gospel. I was encountering people in very broken and hurt places in their lives, and I walked away from a lot of times from these kids and families and feeling like ultimate peace, and this sense of shalom and holistic healing wasn't really achieved because I couldn't engage them in the Gospel. So the last time I went to India for 4 months, I was able to do that and really see this ministry of reconciliation actually happening in people's lives, in a way that I believe God intends wholeness in people's hearts to be brought back to a redeeming place to Him.

“At that moment, God definitely rebuked me in my understanding of what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and He started to convict my heart about living with a sense of reckless abandon for the Gospel.”

What are your feelings as you get ready to leave?

As of today, I think it still hasn't settled in with me; I'm a very task oriented person, so I'm far more focused on things i still need to do. I would be lying, though, if I said i wasn't scared, and if I didn't feel some sense of panic or fear about the unknown. A year is the longest time I've been away from anything. I'm mostly scared about how I'm going to respond to being away for so long, to being away from everything I've known my life to be about thus far, and to completely being in a place where Jesus is my only plan right now and even thereafter,  because i have no idea what will happen after the year. 

But it's definitely exciting at the same time, because I think I'm pushed into places of my faith that I've never experienced before, and having this sense of, "Wow, Christ is literally the only thing I have in my life." I've never pushed my self to that degree before, because living in America, there's always this sense of always having some sort of safety net. I’m not saying I'm going to the most dangerous place in the world, or will have nothing on my back or no money in my pocket, but this is definitely uncharted territory for me. I'm excited to see how God desires to develop my faith in ways I've never experienced before, because it will really bring me to a place of understanding that the work has nothing to do with me, but everything as to what God can do. 

How can we pray for you?

Please pray for my heart. I think I will be facing a lot of my fears, a lot of which I've either avoided or ignored for many years of my life. Like i said earlier, when everything that you know to be familiar to you has been taken from you, you're left to confront everything that is genuine and incredibly raw in you. I'm scared to confront myself, so i ask that you pray that the Holy Spirit will deliver courage within me to fight that with the truth of the Gospel, and to ultimately know that Christ himself is the greatest joy in my life, and not necessarily church, career success, or reputation.

Second, I recently watched this documentary of Mother Teresa. This woman had such a way of injecting herself into peoples lives and connecting with their pain and brokenness. The very darkness of poverty became that real for her and distraught her daily, to the point where she would cry out "God, where are you?" I personally believe it is because she let herself identify with these people that she was ministering to, and she loved them exactly to the place where they were at that she experienced that sense of depravity in poverty. That is the love that i want to mirror because that's the kind of love Christ showed to people. Christ became flesh himself, so that he could understand us and love us and become death and sacrifice on our behalf. So i wanna be able to love the people and kids of India in that way, not in this very distant and segregated way, but but to really love them in a very self-denying and personally identified way.

“I’m excited to see how God desires to develop my faith in ways I’ve never experienced before, because it will really bring me to a place of understanding that the work has nothing to do with me, but everything as to what God can do. ”

HAITI 2014: VICTOR

People ask me if I feel lucky to live in the United States after having come back from my trip to Haiti.  Though I am grateful and do feel lucky that God has chosen me to live in the comfort of the states, I often ask myself why.  Does he want me to enjoy His grace and be glad that I wasn’t raised in a third world country?  I choose to believe that that is not what I was meant for.  It is clear that nothing is random and every individual serves a purpose.  For some, when God calls them to serve, they pick up and go, but for others, it becomes more apparent later in life.

In Haiti, I saw things that weighed heavily on my heart and mind.  I felt sorrow and helplessness for the citizens of Haiti because the need is so great, and the organizations set up to help appear to be doing very little to address the real needs of the people, such as providing food and shelter.  I noticed very quickly how poor the poor are and how wealthy the rich are.  Extreme poverty is right in the backyard of the wealthy.   Haiti is a very mountainous country, and the poor live on the bottom of the hills; as you climb up the roads, the properties become more lavish and prominent.  The roads are congested with no traffic regulation.  Everybody drives on instinct and very often drive on the opposite side of the road.  In addition, foot traffic is unexpected and sudden since street vendors line all of the streets selling whatever they make, find and/or steal.  I realized very quickly that in order to survive in this environment, everyone must truly “hustle” and make money in any way they can.

“I admit there were moments where I felt fear and wanted to distance myself, but if I did that, how could I be a good witness?”

Although there was a language barrier, the universal language for “hello” really helped me interact with the children and other Haitian natives.  From there, the Holy Spirit filled my heart with compassion and hope.  I felt defeated earlier due to the massive odds that the nation was against, but that was irrelevant to the work I was there to do.  I felt the uplifting energy and spirit lead me to engage and interact.  Everyday, many Haitian citizens experience struggle and strife.  I wanted to show the love of Christ to them and let them know that I cared about them.  I could see very quickly that these people lived in poor conditions but their spirit was not poor.  They had so much energy and will to live.   God sent me to Haiti to open my eyes and see how much his people were struggling.  Now as a response what must I do?

God has called me to love every individual with unconditional love.  It is still unclear if I will continue to serve in other countries, but until then, my mission fields are in the communities I live and work in.  I have definitely developed a greater understanding of God’s grace and how He reveals Himself in ways I could not have imagined.  I will continue to challenge myself and others to serve even when it may be difficult in order to bring others to Christ.

“I have definitely developed a greater understanding of God’s grace and how He reveals Himself in ways I could not have imagined.”

UGANDA 2013: MINHOH

As I entered UCI this year, I did not expect to be a part of KCM let alone go on STSM (Short Term Summer Missions). Being involved with KCM allowed me to see how God was working in college campuses and to see how God was using college students to make an impact for His kingdom. Being able to witness this and also be a part of this myself helped me to believe in KCM’s vision and the work it has been doing over the years. I have always had a passion for missions and this summer seemed like the perfect opportunity to go. However, my church did not have a missions trip this summer and because of my experience with KCM the past school year, I started to consider KCM STSM as an option. After talking to previous mission trainees, members of my church, my pastor, and my family, I was convinced that maybe this was an opportunity God wanted me to take. After this consideration, I decided to apply not entirely knowing what I would be getting myself into.

“I realized that God has blessed me in so many ways this year, but would I be able to say the same if God took those things away from me?”

 Going to Uganda was not the most ideal situation for me. As the day of departure slowly arrived I started to question why God wanted me to go. I struggled with the fact that even though God called me to do ministry here in America through church, my friends, and my family, he still wanted me to give all those things up and go to a foreign country with people I did not really know too well and do ministry which in the grand scheme of things would not really make a difference to a country where the majority of its citizens are already Christian. However, during intensive retreat I remember Pastor Richard saying in his sermon that one of the reasons God calls us on short term mission trips is because God wants us to fast the things back home and to really be able to say that God is good even when those things are taken away from us. I realized that God has blessed me in so many ways this year, but would I be able to say the same if God took those things away from me? As I arrived at Uganda, God continued to pull me away from my comforts. The type of ministry we did, the people we ministered to, forced me to step out of what I was used to and challenged me to love in ways that I did not think I was able.

Being on this trip helped me to realize one main thing: that in order to be obedient to God we must depend on Him. Here in our world, obedience revolves on the things we can do or the things we desire to do. Our world tells us that obedience can be obtained through sacrifice, hard work, and loyalty. While it is true that Christ desires sacrifice and hard work in our obedience, I was able to see more deeply that true obedience in Christ comes through dependence on Him alone and having faith in Christ as He work in our lives. In times where it became hard to love or when I became anxious because the comforts in my life seemed so far away I was reminded that because of who Christ is and His faithfulness that I am able to be obedient. On this trip there were many times where I was not obedient as Christ called me to be, but through everything I was able to see a glimpse of the kind of obedience that Christ calls his disciples to. I’m not entirely sure of what Christ has called me to back at home, but my prayer is that I would not forget what God has shown me in the past month and through it I would be able to serve Him faithfully and to constantly be in devotion to Him.

-Minhoh Han

“While it is true that Christ desires sacrifice and hard work in our obedience, I was able to see more deeply that true obedience in Christ comes through dependence on Him alone and having faith in Christ as He work in our lives.”