My name is Lindsey. I was born and raised in the Greater Pittsburgh area. I had a very Christian based life in my early years. My family always went to church and our close family friends were from church. We always listened to Christian music in the car and in the house. My brother and I went to a small Christian school kindergarten through eighth grade. I have never really known a life without Jesus. I officially prayed to accept Jesus into my heart when I was five or six years old. My family has been attending Christian and Missionary Alliance churches since I was about six or seven. Since the main focus of my church was missions and supporting missionaries, I had exposure to overseas ministry at a very young age. At my young age, I was easily inspired by all of the missionaries that would come to speak at church. I felt the call to be a missionary as early as second grade; however I have not always wanted to be a missionary.
Although I felt called to be a missionary in my childhood, I eventually convinced myself into other careers like teaching or counseling. It wasn’t until my eighth grade year that I started to feel called into missions again. I remember it started one night when I was watching an episode of “American Idol Gives Back.” They were showing scenes of starving children over in Africa that were starving and affected by malaria. It wasn’t that I had never seen images likes these before, it was just that for the first time my heart ached for those children. I think I remember thinking that someone needed to help them, but I felt God telling me that I could be the one to help them. So I started to think about missions again, wondering if it was possibly what God had in store for me. I remember having a conversation with one of my friends when I was pondering all of this and saying, “But Hannah… I don’t want to be a missionary. I’m too scared!” I remember she said something along the lines of, “If God is calling you to be a missionary then you have to do it, Lindsey!” This all had me very seriously considering missions as a full time career, but it wasn’t until a year later that God truly gave me a heart for ministry. My pastor, who has become like a second father to me and is a very influential man in my life, convinced me to get involved with a ministry organization called Child Evangelism Fellowship. CEF impacted me greatly because it showed me how thrilling it is to be doing the work of God. I went into CEF completely ready to be soul winner! But I didn’t want to win souls for the people’s sake, or even for Christ. I wanted to win souls for my own personal gain. That summer, God humbled me greatly and it wasn’t until I learned to be humble and work in ministry for Christ’s gain, not my own gain, that He allowed me to lead children to Him. Since then He has brought many children and teenagers to me so that He could use me to bring them to Him. To me, learning to make ministry not about myself, but about God, and being able to be used to bring others to Him is probably one of the biggest accomplishments in my life so far. There is nothing more rewarding than being used by God to bring more people into His kingdom. The first summer I worked with CEF was the summer of 2008. In my sophomore year of high school, which immediately followed that summer, I went through a period of rebellion against God and questioning my faith. God faithfully brought me out of that time and eventually my relationship with God was just dandy again… or so I thought.
After my new revival of faith in God, I was more than excited to spend another summer working with CEF. I also had big plans to play with my school’s marching band again and I would most likely be the marching band pit captain. I couldn’t wait to see how God was going to use me in the summer of 2009! And God did use me, but it wasn’t in the way I had planned. In the summer of 2009 I faced one of the biggest challenges in my life so far. On May 31, 2009, I had a seizure on the bathroom floor at my church. I had been experiencing a severe headache the entire day before and earlier that morning, but I hadn’t thought much of it. My parents found me with a brush mark on my cheek and some blood on my sleeve, thinking I had passed out and possibly had a concussion; they made the decision to take me to the emergency room. The doctors had just told my parents that they were pretty sure I had had a seizure and were planning on sending me to Children’s Hospital when I had a second seizure in the emergency room. I was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, or herpes simplex virus one. This is a form of herpes that, instead of forming a cold sore, travels up through the roof of the mouth and attacks the brain, causing it to swell, and in this case cause seizures. I spent eighteen days in the hospital and I was on bed rest at home until about July. Needless to say, my plans for that summer went out the window. My biggest struggle with the brain infection was not pain or the feeling sick, it was figuring out why God had done this to me! I was going to spend my summer serving Him! Why would He take that away from me? At one point in the hospital, I felt that God was asking me, “Do you trust me, Lindsey?” I didn’t have an honest answer for Him. It was easy to trust God when life was going the way I had planned, but when He threw a brain infection my path, it was a lot harder to trust Him. God eventually showed me through times of prayer and frustration, that He had not taken anything away from me. In the words of a very wise friend of mine, “God doesn’t need us to be involved in ministry. He could do it all by Himself. But God chooses to let us have a part in it.” That summer adjusted my view on ministry. Ministry was not a hobby of mine or “my thing,” it was a privilege that God was allowing me to take part in. An even bigger lesson that I learned from the brain infection is that sometimes the biggest trials in life come out as the biggest blessings. The brain infection was the biggest trial of my life thus far, but it is also the biggest blessing because it caused me to mature in many ways and it deepened my faith and relationship with God. It is also a huge testimony because victims of viral encephalitis do not normally turn out like I did. I was able to go on a short camping trip by the fourth of July and I was pretty much back to normal by the beginning of the school year. Other than some minor struggles with keeping a train of thought or being able to focus on something for a long period of time, I don’t notice any side effects. It wasn’t until this year that I realized how much of a miracle God’s healing is in me. I discovered that the man who is considered to have the worst memory loss in the world, suffered from the very same infection that I did. Even others that have suffered from viral encephalitis are unable to walk or have a severe mental disability, if they even survived the infection. I consider myself a living testimony to the way that God heals.
In my walk with so far I have developed values such as following God wholeheartedly, loving God and others more than myself, evangelizing and spreading the gospel, being a role model to others, and teaching others in the ways of the Lord. I feel that God has given me strengths such as strong leadership skills, a love for teaching and evangelizing, and being able to stay organized in order to make these values a reality as well. While God has designed me with certain strengths, He has also designed me with some weaknesses. I struggle with being patient, letting God have total control, and talking about certain issues or situations with some people. I know overcoming these issues involves a lot of prayer. I also need to focus on the opportunities God is putting right in front of me in the now, instead of the ones I am waiting for in the future. I need to remind myself on a daily basis that my life is so much better off with God in control, considering that He is much smarter and wiser than me. And I need to learn not to be so proud and stubborn, and allow myself to pour my heart out and be angry or sad and express myself when it is appropriate. Doing this will make it easier for God to use me in the mission field.
So that’s me, my life and testimony so far. But there’s so much more to come. I know God is leading me into full time ministry. I am not yet sure if that ministry will be in the United States or in another country somewhere. I don’t know if I’ll be working with children, teenagers, or even adults. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am called to be in ministry. I have a passion for the Central and South American cultures and I also love working with children. So I feel God may be leading me to this group of people, but I am not sure yet. I have learned to accept that it’s okay not to have all of the answers right now, because I don’t have all of the answers I am learning to trust God. As of right now, I feel God has called me to come to Davis College and get my degree in ministry with a focus on teaching English as a second language. I feel very at peace with this decision because teaching English can take me anywhere in the world that God may lead. Teaching English can also be used to teach any age group that God may call me to.
God has confirmed that this is His plan for my life for several reasons. One reason is that He led me to many ministry opportunities throughout my life, such as CEF or a Bible club at my high school that I lead. I feel that if He did not want me in ministry full time He would not have brought me to these opportunities that developed a passion for ministry in my heart. God has also provided everything that I have needed along the way. He provided the mentors and friends that I needed to become the girl I am today. He provided the money to be able to come to Davis College and pursue a degree in full time ministry. And He has provided even more than just that. But I feel the biggest confirmation that God’s will for my life is to be in ministry is that He healed me in a miraculous way from the brain infection. If God did not have big plans for me, then He would not have spared me from death or even from a severe disability. I know that God has big intentions for me, because I came closer to death than most people my age have, and God chose to spare me. The summer of my infection, I was in a particularly sulky mood, feeling sorry for myself. I remembered hearing on the radio a song that said, “He’s not finished with me yet.” I remember saying to my mom, “Oh great… He’s not finished with me yet.” I was thinking, “What else is He going to throw my way?” But now I take comfort in that thought, He is not finished with me yet. He has big plans for me even still.
The steps that I am going to take to fulfill God’s plan for my life are to finish getting my degree at Davis College, stay involved and active in ministry, grow spiritually, and be willing to go anywhere He sends me. Getting my degree is important because without a degree, I will not be fully equipped and educated in the word. One of my favorite quotes is, “God does not call the equipped, He equips the called.” Part of feeling called into ministry is being willing to get the proper training to be able to go. I can grow spiritually by spending time in prayer, worship, and daily devotionals which will deepen my relationship with Jesus. And once I have a deeper relationship with Him, it will be much easier to determine where He wants me to go and efficiently while I am there. Until I go out into the world to spread His word, I just keep reminding myself that...
He’s not finished with me yet. =)
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