Our Calling

From The Heart of Amy:

We never thought of ourselves as being in ministry. Ken and I enrolled at California State University, Long Beach in our second year of marriage to work towards better being able to provide for ourselves. But, in the years that we were at CSULB we became involved with a group on campus called Campus Crusade for Christ. During these years as students, we were constantly challenged towards ministry by the missionary staff of the CSULB Campus Crusade ministry. In retrospect, every time we were challenged, we would sense that ministry was where God wanted us to be. But, Ken was in school to be a mechanical engineer and I was in school to be a registered nurse and we were focused on our own plans for our future.

In our senior year of college, we found out that the missionary staff team for our campus would be leaving the campus. We were suddenly faced with the very real possibility that Campus Crusade was going to cease to exist at our university. We knew that through Campus Crusade we had matured greatly in the Lord during our college years, so we agreed to hang around after we graduated to oversee the transition of this ministry as it went from a ministry run by campus missionaries to a student run movement.

However, our plan was to move back to San Diego after the transition. At that point we had been married six years and we were still focused on our own plans. We had a heart for missions. But, we really felt that because of our educations and ability to provide for ourselves that we were called to help send others to the mission field. Still, that was not Gods plan that was our own.

God was working on my heart. After the full time missionaries left CSULB, we began to minister to students for the first time. I began to read a book on discipleship. The author of the book I was reading made a comment in the first chapter that there are three things in this life that are eternal: God, the word of God, and the souls of men. He continued to add that the extent to which you are involved with any of these three things in life is the extent to which you are involved with eternity. This statement really stuck with me and I pondered on it often.

I was at work one day in my new job as a trauma nurse for Harbor UCLA Medical Center. That day we had a gun shot wound victim come in and we were trying to save his life. He was a young guy probably college age, but he looked as if he had had a rough life. He was dirty and had a lot of tatoos. He was most likely involved with a gang. After I had drawn his blood, I went to transfer it from a syringe to a vial to send to the lab for analysis. But, the strangest thing happened, the needle on the syringe went through the top of the vial, but then it came out the side of the vial and it went straight through my thumb. I'd just mixed my blood with this stranger's. I had no idea where hed been, what hed been doing, what diseases he had. This really scared me.

I realized for the first time that I was risking my life saving people. Im not saying that that is not an honorable thing but, God used that realization to speak to my heart. I was not saving what was eternal about this man. I was risking my life saving his body, his shell. I was not saving what was most important to God about this man... his soul.

Its amazing to me as I think back on this event in my life for two reasons. First, God used this situation in my life to speak to my heart. He didnt want me saving physical bodies, He wanted me saving souls. I sometimes joke that God had to stick me with a needle to get me to listen to Him. As I mentioned earlier, I think God had been calling us for awhile. But, we werent listening. Which brings me to the second thing that amazes me. God changed my heart through this situation but, at the very same time... He was speaking to Ken separately.

From The Heart of Ken:

I was reading the same book and the very same statement spoke to me. God, the word of God, and the souls of men. I kept thinking is there anything else in this life that is eternal? I couldnt think of anything else. I thought about this a lot because it troubled me and I didn't know why. Then one day as I pondered on this subject at work... God spoke to me. I was thinking about the length of time the control valve I was designing was going to stay in use before it was replaced... I thought ten, fifteen, twenty-five years at most. Then a thought occurred to me that I knew was from the Lord. What in my life is eternal? Just then, I realized that the work I was doing with the students volunteering at Long Beach State was eternal. At that moment I realized why my heart had been troubled... God wanted me to concentrate my eight hour days in His work. God was speaking to my heart. Being an engineer was not His will for my life, but my own. He wanted me to be focused on His eternal work. It was then that I knew I needed to go into ministry full time.

There was one problem however... Amy. You see we had discussed our plans and goals for our life before, and we had always felt that we were not called to full time ministry. For me to come home and announce that we need to go into ministry, would be to make a one hundred and eighty degree turn on our plans. And we were already half way through our plan to move back to San Diego, so I was expecting an argument. But when I came home that night the most amazing thing happened. I told Amy that I thought that God was speaking to me and that we needed to go into full time ministry. Instead of an argument she said I know God has been speaking to me too. That was when we knew that this was not just some whim... God truly had spoken

What was only to be one semester of helping out at CSULB turned into three and a half years of volunteer ministry. We had our plan, but God had His plan. It didnt take long for us to realize that full time ministry as missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ was where God had wanted us all along.