As I share with friends and acquaintances about leaving my job and country to become a missionary to the Deaf in Honduras, I often receive a pitied look, "you're giving up your nursing career?" Absolutely not, and here's what I mean...
As a young teenager, I shared my interest in becoming a missionary to a friend of our family. She responded, "how will you go? What skill will you bring to the mission field?" That thought had never crossed my mind, but it started me thinking... and praying. What should I go as? The possibilities were endless; but where to start? Several unrelated events started me thinking in the medical direction, and God confirmed nursing thro
ugh the well-timed advice of another family acquaintance. In nursing school, not a day went by that I didn't imagine myself doing whatever the lecture entailed in some foreign country. Whether it was dressing a wound, teaching health classes, delivering a baby, or taking a blood pressure, it seemed always related to telling those people about Jesus.
After graduation, I looked into strictly medical missions for a while, but didn't have peace about doing this long-term. Then God pointed me in the direction of Deaf missions, and I gladly jumped on board with no reservations about "giving up nursing." I knew it was right for me to focus on Deaf missions, and trusted God would use my nursing skills, somehow, wherever He led me.
When I met Team Honduras, I learned they hosted medical missions trips 1-3 times a year, and will be building a surgical suite in the near future. What a perfect fit; Deaf ministry and medical missions in the same place!
God knew what He was doing! ...And I'm surprised?