Itsara

Throughout childhood, I never knew what I wanted to do when I “grew up”. All the jobs that I had heard of didn’t really appeal to me. Then one day at my high school youth group, my pastor spoke of a woman he knew who ran an orphanage in Mexico. My immediate thought was Wow! That’s the coolest job ever! That’s what I want to do when I grow up! For some reason, that thought didn’t really stick much after that day, probably because I never told anyone about it. Although I had never forgotten about that thought, I didn’t try to pursue it until much later.

During college, I had times of remembering that “call” from high school, usually followed by thoughts like That was a cool idea, but… no. That would be too hard. During college, God did have me go on numerous trips to an orphanage in Mexico with my old church, and though I enjoyed helping out, I still thought it was a bigger idea than I could ever realistically handle. I just couldn’t imagine giving up the expectation of living like a normal American. During my last year at UCSD, I decided I wanted to go on a short-term mission trip abroad after I graduated. I knew God had placed some kind of desire in my heart to be a missionary abroad, so I thought I should try a short one out and see. My campus fellowship (InterVarsity) had a trip planned to China that summer. I considered going on that for about 2 seconds until I thought… What? If I’m going to go all the way to Asia, I should just go to Thailand and check out my roots! So I applied with a missions organization called YWAM to work at a Thai orphanage. Why not check it out?

So, in the summer of 1999, I went to Thailand and stayed at Im Jai House, an orphanage for kids whose parents had died from AIDS. It was such a strangely awesome experience that was completely different than any other orphanage experience I’ve had. The way Im Jai House ran was amazing. They worshipped God in singing twice a day, the kids were well-behaved, they did their homework and chores without complaining, and they were just plain happy! The staff and the kids had close relationships with each other. And the building! It was extremely clean and organized. It was like a huge, warm home with several parents and lots of kids, instead of a run-down building that housed complaining orphans (which is what I assumed many orphanages were like).

The more I think about it now, I realize it was God giving me peace about His call for me. I felt at home being with kids who were from my own culture, and I had never before felt this in my past orphanage experiences. Most of you know that I feel very American in many ways, but being with those Thai orphans reminded me so much of the Thai part in me that I sometimes forgot about or even wanted to ignore. In that visit, freedom broke loose - freedom to be the Thai girl my parents wanted me to be, and at the same time freedom to be the lover of orphans that God wanted me to be. These used to be completely separate entities, but God molded them together into one to show me that He had a plan all along.

Those realizations hit me rather gradually, so I didn’t pursue this path right away. After I got back, I sort of pushed these feelings aside and started down the teaching path, mainly because I had already planned on it before the trip. Little did I know, God would later use teaching to push me back into the call. I taught in elementary schools for five years and to sum up: I loved hanging out with kids and I loved caring for them, but the bureaucracy and tough parents really took away a lot of the joy that came with working with those kids. All I really wanted to do was love kids and not have the demands of the administration and parents on my back.

During the summer of 2003, the summer before my last year of teaching (though I didn’t know it was going to be my last year), I attended a conference with Adam, which he mentions in “The Call: Part iii”. This resulted in the summer 2004 trip to Thailand, which Adam discusses in “The Call: Part iv” . You can read those since Adam did a great job in describing those parts of the call. All I want to add is that the decision to move to Thailand was completely God. I don’t recall ever asking Adam: So, you wanna move? Or what do you think about this? I don’t remember him asking me either! It was just an understood thing between us during our summer trip. It was like God told us to, so there wasn’t any reason to discuss anything else.

So… we’re going.

Read Sean’s take.