My Story

2003: Maxim, my doctor in Korosten, Ukraine. (Not too far from Chernobyl.)

My story... or parts of it. :) My first experiences overseas occurred in high school. We took a trip to Ukraine and before I got there I had learned enough Russian (by rote memory) to invite the elderly lady on the plane next to me to come to our concert. She came! I fell in love with the culture and the people... When my pastor later connected me to a wonderful girl from Ukraine who invited me to come live in her home, I jumped at the chance. My one year of college Russian was enough to get me started... that is to say, after a month I could at least start to tell when people were speaking Russian and when they were speaking Ukrainian. But after a few months I was communicating! I returned several times to Ukraine to work with a couple of different missions organizations, but eventually realized I needed more training. Even my B.A. in Intercultural Religious Studies, minor in linguistics, and TESL certificate did not leave me feeling like I knew what I was doing. The next chapter was Bible School in Argentina with Rocky and Sherry Grams, and two years of working alongside the Departamento Nacional de Misiones de las Asambleas de Dios de Argentina. And there I met my husband, Marcos, who has the same sense of being called to affect other countries. We married in Seattle in 2008, to give him a chance to learn English -- and at the time, neither of us could have imagined we'd be in America so long!  But we have our assignments from God for the present and are busy working them out...

On coming home I really struggled with a sense of disillusionment with the church. Argentina has seen a lot of revival, yet there is still so much that needs to happen capacity-wise... Truthfully I felt the same in Ukraine... (Other things bothered me in America!)  My heart was very burdened with a sense of futility about my own work in missions, since I didn't feel I could truly affect the church... or even get clarity on the issues. Then I stumbled into a job at Bakke Graduate University, through Craigslist and God's grace. I will always be grateful to the staff there for putting up with my learning curve about their mission and theology. Against my will they changed my paradigms about how God measures spirituality, His appreciation for the historical church and the varieties of church that we see today, what holistic mission might look like, how He feels about work in general, and consequently, the way the church should work. I began to realize that if the principles I was overhearing at BGU were applied in the churches of Argentina and Ukraine, most of the problems I had observed would dissipate, as people would be free to truly live into their callings and grow the church from the ground up.

Then God moved me to Northwest University and I began to study in the International Care and Community Development program. I'm thrilled to be in a program that is very much in line with the holistic mission "BGU DNA" I'd already absorbed. Yet ICCD is also providing me with additional critical lenses with which to view and understand how transformation can occur, such as a clearer picture of how cultures work, and a deeper understanding of the way globalization (interconnectedness) affects anything that we may want to do to change the world. More than anything, ICCD is a space for me to connect what I've learned through my past experiences with what others have also learned (authors, professors, and students). It's lovely to see my calling take on more form before my eyes - although it's always an open-ended journey with the Lord!

I know that what I've received in higher education has been transformational for me -- even healing.  So what's most on my heart these days is to prepare myself to be useful in that arena: to allow this kind of quality higher education that I have been so affected by at BGU and at NU to have the most possible impact on the world. Why should it only be for rich Americans? I would love to even teach someday, but what I care most about is transformation: personal and global - and especially as it affects the poor, and as it equips the church.

So when Dr. Forrest Inslee, our program director, suggested that I could do my ICCD practicum to work on the overseas expansion of this program, it only took me a few minutes to catch the vision. :) Right now we are working on the idea of an online cohort with a couple of week-long face-to-face sessions in Oxford, England.  My job is to research and write the New Program Proposal. The practicum project and whatever it leads to is the real point of this blog, although I'll be sure to post on everything I'm learning along the way.

If anyone reading this wants to come along on a journey of transformational higher education, don't hesitate to leave a comment and get in touch!

May God bless you in everything you are called to do!