In case you’re wondering how I happened upon this opportunity, or why I not only applied but accepted the position, this should help clear the air.

My family has been in Pullman for a long time. My dad, Nils, has been the pastor of the same church (Cornerstone Community) in Pullman for around 26 years. We moved into the house they’re in now when I was three, going on four, and haven’t moved since. If nothing else my family has been my one source of stability outside of the Lord my entire life.

There’s a sense of comfort when going home means going to a familiar place, one that’s saturated in memories. But Pullman takes its toll, and getting out of there is something one might find a desirable option at some point. In fact I found it tantalizing and I left for college in 2003. My sister has had her fair share of adventures outside of the rolling wheat fields herself. Our parents, on the other hand, hadn’t even left the country (excluding Canada) until a few years ago.

But they were getting the bug to leave Pullman a while ago. My dad grew up there, they both went to college there, and while it’s been a blessing in so many ways for our family they’ve felt the need to change their surroundings for quite a while. This brings us to a few months ago, when my dad informed me he’d applied for Mercy Ships. This wasn’t completely out of left field, he’d been applying for a number of pastoral positions for a while and he has a heart for Africa. I still didn’t see it coming though as I thought Mercy Ships was purely for people in the medical profession.

As he told me the various jobs he might be able to do he mentioned videography, and my heart leaped. I thought, what better to spend my time than following Jesus into serving the poor on such a practical mission as Mercy Ships while doing something I love like video? I asked my dad if I could join him, and at first he wasn’t so sure. This was something he hadn’t even considered for me. But as we talked about it more it seemed like a good idea until we were both excited.

I applied that night and was told it would take around 1.5 weeks hear back. Five weeks later I received an Email, it was a ‘no.’ They’d selected somebody else to fill the position. However, I was asked to apply for another spot that they felt I would be well suited for: the AV Tech position. I thought about it for a couple of days, disappointment causing me to rethink it all, but in the end I decided to go for it.

While waiting to hear for that a job at EWU opened up that I had been waiting for since this last winter. I jumped at it and applied, excited to finally have a shot at a decent paying job! Of course, as that processed Mercy Ships got back to me and said that I was accepted and that they wanted me there ASAP. I didn’t know what to do, I was waiting to hear back on a job that I supposedly had a great shot at. In fact, it was the best chance I’d had to get a job in a long time and to work my way out of debt.

But Mercy Ships was so tempting in all the ways that weren’t money; I quickly found myself lost underneath the weight of my internal dialogue. What on earth do I do?! For a while I was leaning towards EWU, the idea of getting debt paid off sounded like the truly responsible thing to do, and Mercy Ships would always be there. Or would it? Was I looking at things backwards? Would I just get sucked into the comfortable life of working, playing, eating and sleeping while forgetting my heart for the French-speaking world? Was I not trusting the Lord to provide regardless of circumstance? I wandered around in a theological and practical fog for a couple of weeks but wound up leaning more towards EWU.

Finally, last week, I wound up having heartburn so bad that I couldn’t sleep all night and wound up puking blood in the morning. After a trip to the ER I found myself unable to work, and lying in bed I started questioning the certainty I’d found in working at EWU. For one, it wasn’t certain at all. In fact I found out that day that they hadn’t received enough “qualified applicants” to close the posting so they were re-posting it to a greater population of potentials. This didn’t bode well for me because A) it’s possible I didn’t make it past HR’s screening and B) even if I had I wouldn’t be able to compete with a real selection of candidates. No matter how handsome I may be, I know this one from the experience of applying for dozens of jobs over the last two years.

And as I lay there thinking about going back to work I realized how much I really do hate sitting in front of a computer all day every day. I love having creative freedom, and computers allow for a lot of fun things, but working on other people’s projects from 8-5 isn’t really how I want to spend my days.

I went home over the weekend to help the parents with a yard sale as they prep to sell their house. It was a long weekend, full of nostalgic moments and re-discovered treasures. My mom made me go through boxes of memorabilia stuff from my birth to present day and thin it out to two bins. It was hard, both because of the high levels of asbestos I was inhaling off the boxes and because of the memories so many random things triggered.

Finally my parents challenged me to prayerfully figure out what I wanted to do, and @Dabe posited it in terms of regrets. I went to bed and thought about all of the people who had told me “do it” as soon as they heard I was debating it. One person even went so far as to say “you need to get on that boat.” To which my mother, had she been there, would have corrected: “ship.”

I ran through some mental exercises as my gut wouldn’t let me sleep, finally asking “what if all my support was raised, and I had no financial concerns? What then?” And I knew; I needed to go. I needed to sell everything I had and put it towards a plane ticket and some bug spray and go serve the poor.

And so despite how unreal it felt, the next morning I told my mom I was gonna go just  before pretty much announcing it to their whole church. My dad asked later if my mom knew that I was going to do so, seeing as it had caught him by surprise. Sorry dad, sometimes you just have to blurt things out like a bore.

And that’s just about it. It’s been hard telling people because I realize this is going to be more of a “goodbye” for a lot of people this time around than a “see ya later.” It’s heavy, but I’m really, really excited.

I’ll tell you more about what I’m doing soon.

Filed under: Personal Stories by Jay