Almost two years ago I was unsure what to do with my summer, I knew that I would either nanny or work at the Y but everything was still very up in the air. In early April, Leslie Martin sent me a Facebook message saying that she had the opportunity to go on this mission/spiritual growth trip to the Bahamas for two weeks in May and would I like to go with her? My answer was yes! I raised support with a ton of help from most of you and was set to go like 10 days later. I then got a call from Emily Bagwell, who was on staff at the time, saying the program that we would be going down with was going to be cancelled but she could still use my help down there if I could come, and would I be willing to stay for four weeks? Looking back, I didn’t know anyone, I had never been to this place before and I didn’t know what I would be doing, but it was one of those points where the Lord is pulling you to something so strongly that even though it doesn’t make sense you have to answer it. I said yes.
Every moment since that first nudging God has been working and planning and preparing for this in ways that I could never have imagined. No matter how hard I tried I could not mess up the Lord’s plans. For example: Four days before I was supposed to fly down there I came home from studying all night and taking an 8am exam to find out that my passport had expired a couple weeks earlier. Again God was faithful, I called Sandy Roberts as I was jumping in the car on my way to DC (hoping there was some way I could get it there) and he met me there in my near panic stage and helped me figure out what to do. The next morning as I was trying to find a cab at 6am outside Georgetown to get downtown (there were none) a huge 60 passenger city bus pulled up beside me and an older gentlemen got off (the bus driver) and said “honey you looks so lost! Can I help you?” and the story just poured out. He listened intently and at the end said, “Well my route can wait for a bit, hop in” and drove me half an hour through the city and dropped me right outside the federal passport office. Can you see God’s work? After giving them a letter from the senator’s office (thanks Dad and Richard Burr!) they took my information and a couple hours later I was on my way back to NC to take one more exam and fly out, new passport in hand!
On the first plane I can still remember sitting there thinking, “what in the heck am I doing?! I don’t know why I am doing this, I don’t know anything about this place and I really want to spend this last month with my friends before everyone leaves for the summer!” God had bigger plans. A lady came and sat next to me on the plane ride to Charlotte and immediately struck up a conversation. I don’t know her name but I swear the Lord sent her to me. She was a member of the Summit, where I had been going to church while at school that year, and her daughter had left earlier that year to be a foreign missionary in the Middle East. That mom loved her daughter and knew she was sending her to a place where she may never see her again and at best case not often, and yet what I remember most was the absolute peace and joy radiating from her face when she talked about it. This lady had such a heart for God’s work everywhere in the world that my doubts were forgotten and an excitement for what the Lord was preparing for me started to build!
A couple long flights later, I landed at Governor’s Harbor Airport and walked up to a little yellow building and had one more moment of “why am I here, I stick out like a sore thumb”. Then this beautiful woman in a long flowery dress came up to me and gave me the biggest hug and said “You must be Sarah, we have been praying for you”. Those words by Mrs. Bethel, she later introduced herself as, have been imprinted on my heart. This was the moment that I realized that the Lord had extraordinary plans for me here!
I spent four weeks falling in love with the people and the spirit of the Island. I loved the community I saw, I loved working hard together as a community, I loved learning the hard facts of life there-the struggles and needs-at the same time that I learned that life for my friends on Eleuthera was so much more than that. Abe, Emily, the Weinburgers and the rest of the community spent the next four weeks teaching me was it looked like to truly love people simply because they were a child of God…and to love them well. I left that summer knowing that I wouldn’t be the same, that the Lord had big plans for that island and for whatever reason, I was blessed enough to be called to be a part of them.
The transition back was hard, my family and friends were amazing to put up with me: Mom, Dad, Emily, John Michael, Anna, Connie and Brant (as well as a ton of my wonderful friends) sat with me for hours each week looking at pictures and dreaming with me and loving me intensely with a healing and calming love that could only come from the Lord. I remember Bill and Angeline Mills taking me to dinner to hear about everything and three hours later us still looking through pictures and telling stories. I would not be writing you with this amazing story if it was not for the Lord blessing me with such an amazing family and devoted friends that cared enough to share this passion with me! Slowly over the next two years I would learn to more deeply love the good and bad parts of life on Eleuthera as well as a lot about myself and how I related to these. I was blessed enough to get to spend a lot more time down there with BMH and my faith and love for my friends there grew, as did my understanding of where the Lord was pointing my life.
For those of you that have watched me grow up, you know I have always wanted to do youth ministry, even when I was a youth. I wanted to be Becki McLamb when I grew up, my youth minister and also one of the most fun, caring, wonderful, godly women I have ever known. When I got to my senior year of high school I also got involved with Young Life, a ministry that I would have overlooked if it hadn’t been for the constant pursuit and love of my leader Ashley Hovis who never, even after 3 longs years, gave up on getting me there. I loved the way this ministry was bold about going after kids who would not otherwise get the chance to really hear about the love and Grace of Jesus Christ.
l was hooked and in November of my freshman year in college I started leading young life at Chapel Hill High School. These last four years with young life have been an adventure, both a struggle and a joy, and ultimately the greatest privilege of my college career. There is nothing like watching the Lord come in and work through all your weaknesses to bring high school kids, who everyone else has forgotten about, to Himself. Glory to God that he chooses to use us to bring Him glory!!
Back to Eleuthera: Abraham McIntyre (director of BMH) and I started talking at the end of this past summer about what next year would look like for me, the struggle being based mostly on the fact that while I desperately love the ministry of BMH, what I feel called to do down there is relational ministry with teenagers and that is simply not (and should not be) the primary calling of BMH. So after eight months of prayer and back and forth struggles the conclusion that was reached was that I still wanted to help with anything I could with BMH and I still felt called to the youth of the Island but that it would be wrong for me to go with BMH when I know I wasn't being called to that ministry, even though that broke my heart because for the past couple of years that is all I have imagined doing when I graduated! This was an incredible low, all day I walked around just in tears, ya'll, it was just the worst!
But lucky for us the God we serve is bigger than all we could ever hope for or imagine. God is always faithful and his plans are always better and I should never doubt that! The very next day I got an email from Lee Corder, the Senior Vice President of Young Life in charge of the International Northern Hemisphere. An interest email I had sent to the Caribbean regional director a while back, when I thought I would be with BMH but could maybe volunteer with YL while I was there, had been sent to him. It just so happened that it came right at the time when leadership was transitioning and he was directly overseeing the Caribbean region. His response blew me away! Basically just saying, "Sarah- I am so excited about your passion for the youth of Eleuthera and the Bahamas as a whole and I want to talk to as soon as we can about this!" He then went on to say that he and the entire Caribbean team were coming up for a weekend conference in Virginia in 10 days (which was this last weekend) and could I come with them? Obviously I said yes and that next weekend was incredible. There were a little over a thousand leaders, committee and staff from the Virginia area there and Bill Page was our wonderful speaker. However more than any of that, it was incredible to meet the Caribbean teams and see the same vision and passion that I have been given for the youth of the Island reflected in them! It was exactly what I had been searching for the past couple years, that I had found wonderful bits and pieces in all of my experiences with BMH, St. Michael's youth, JCWUMC, etc etc etc, all combined!
So Lee and I went and got lunch on Saturday and for a couple hours talked though everything-the story, fears, struggle and vision- and started dreaming about the possibilities of bringing Young Life to Eleuthera. Without going into all of it, I could definitely see how much prayer was surrounding that conversation because it was just one of the most clarifying, best things that has happened in a while!! He and the rest of the Caribbean team welcomed me with open arms and for once, everything felt right. It was one of those "aha" moments, like oh Lord, this is why everything had to be so confusing and hard for so long, so that you could drop this incredible opportunity at my feet and there is no way I can say that I had anything to do with it! The Caribbean team “voted” and last month I started the three stage-application, training and fundraising-process!!
Ya'll, God is so good, He is so faithful and He really has plans for each of us that are better than anything we could possibly imagine! I know that it is going to be a long road and I know there is alot of work to do, both stateside and on Eleuthera, but I have never felt so perfectly at peace and in line with the Lord's will for me than I do right now! Where ever this Adventure leads...I'm ready, and I'm excited to share it with each of ya'll!!
