Warning: This is going to be very long. Here we go! (after-edit: I don't think I've ever written this much in my life that wasn't required.)
I've talked to a number of people and have given a brief testimony about why I am doing YWAM. It's usually the general story of how God led me to apply and it ended up being because he had stuff going on behind the scenes that I didn't know about. What a lot of people don't know is the whole backstory behind the significance of it.
To start this story, I'm going to go back to my first semester at Jessup. I went away to school having several connections to home. I had a girlfriend back here in San Jose, I was staying involved in several things back here, and I had a ton of friends that hadn't left for school yet so my ties to home were still really strong. This made getting connected up at school really difficult. If I'm being completely honest with myself; I hated it at Jessup my first semester. Absolutely hated it. Not many people knows this, but I struggled with anxiety though my first whole year. It was so bad that it made me not have an appetite. I went through the whole semester barely eating because I didn't have an appetite and when I did make myself eat, I would feel very sick. To add to my not liking it there, I was sick on a regular basis and ended up losing 15 lbs (Yeah, i didn't get the memo...the freshman fifteen means it goes up...not down.). Coming up to finals that December I was set on never setting foot on the campus again. I figured I'd just try to transfer somewhere over Christmas break and be done with it because Jessup was NOT the place for me.
Enter being put in my place for the first time from God:
With about a week in the semester I got a call from the financial aide department asking me to come into the office. They had a scholarship that they usually gave out to upperclassmen that had some left over funds, and they felt like they should give it to me. Keep in mind, I was a freshman, so this seemed significant, but I was still set on going home that I was super biter still. I remember my mom telling me on the phone "Well, there's a sign about coming home, right?" and I just said "yeah" when really in my head I was like "whatever, I'm getting out of here"
The second semester was a little better. I tried to cut some ties to home and get more involved with school, but there were still several ways I was connected and although I put on the face that I loved it...I didn't. Almost any time someone would ask me how Jessup was I'd respond with "It's awesome! I love it. It's a really close knit community and it's really cool!" (That's not too far from the response I give now, except it's genuine now. I do love it.). I remember driving out of the parking lot on move out day and having the mindset that "If I never set foot on this campus again I will be perfectly happy."
The third semester there was where I really started to enjoy it there. I was in an awesome apartment and got pretty close to a lot more people. I started to go to church regularly which was one of the things I had been missing...and it was really obvious in my attitude change. I started to really like being there. Then on thanksgiving that year a good friend of mine (one of the people who I had really connected with over that semester) passed away in a car accident. This rocked my world. I didn't get it. I didn't understand it. I was angry about it. I didn't understand why that could happen to such an awesome guy who really was a reflection of Jesus to everyone he came in contact with. Justin's accident really changed our apartment. Although we did some stuff together before, we really came together and grew really close over that next semester. We all knew and loved him, so we started all hanging out with each other a lot to help deal with the loss of him.
This is where I started to genuinely enjoy being at Jessup. I had a ton of friends there. I got involved playing worship for at least one service each Sunday, usually two (which if you know me you know that is a huge passion of mine) at the church I was going to. I was really connected and loving it.
Then one night I was sitting in the Student Union "working on homework" a.k.a sitting on facebook and hanging out with friends. I remember it like it was yesterday (it really wasn't that long ago...like 5 months or so). I was sitting at a table with my friends Amber, Emily, and Anthony attempting to do our papers and such when I got a sudden nudging to google YWAM. I didn't know why this happened nor did I know the crazy rocking of my world that would ensue. I had several friends go through the program so it wasn't new to me, I just never considered it to be something that I would do. I just started looking at some of the websites when a friend of mine asked if I was thinking about doing a DTS. I said I was just looking and I didn't think so. I was going to give a call to home to talk about other stuff and I mentioned YWAM and wondered if it would be possible and it was just kind of an out of the blue kind of thing that our response was like "maybe, i don't know though."
This idea of YWAM kinda stirred in me for a while. I didn't understand it. There was a mix of excitement for the possibility of it as well as frustration because I didn't want to leave where I was at. I decided that I was going to pray about it quite a bit. My prayers were that if this is what God wanted me to do, he'd make it blatantly obvious. Sure enough, when God wants to get a message across to you, he will. I started getting a stronger feeling about this. I kind of knew it was from him, because it wasn't like I saw the idea and wanted to do it so badly that I made things work or fall in line to make it happen. I didn't want to leave school, yet in praying about YWAM I felt an unrelenting feeling of 'you're going to do this.' Sure enough, I tried to figure out alternatives. Things like "after college" or "not right now" started popping into my head. I didn't get it; I loved Jessup. After the crazy ride of hating it then turning into loving it, why would I have to leave now? I started talking to some friends about the idea of it, and all of them seemed to think I would be great for it.
One night I decided I was going to go for a walk.There's this road that goes through a field behind the campus and I felt like I needed to get out for a while, so I did. On this walk I poured out my heart to God. Anyone who saw me from afar must have thought I was insane because I wasn't holding back. I pretty much told God (silly me) that if this is what he wants then he needs to make it perfectly clear to me. When I said this, I meant perfectly clear. This was just me being stupid and stubborn and wanting to find a way not to leave.
Sure enough, when I got back to my apartment, I got slapped in the face with it. I had been talking with a buddy via skype like a week before hand and he had sent me a link of the University of the Nations Kona campus (One of the big YWAM bases. I checked it out and we went about talking and had numerous conversations after that so that link was way up in the chat. I hopped onto my computer and sure enough I had a new chat message. It was the link to the Kona page...but my buddy wasn't online. There was no reason that link should have been re-sent. He wasn't online, I asked him and he said he didn't send it again, it just appeared out of no where. Instantly I felt like I had just been hit with a brick. I had tried to test God and make him do all the work and he decided to reveal himself to me in a way I had never experienced before. I knew without a doubt that it was what I needed to do. On top of this...I had a buddy from church come up to me and say "I don't know what's going on, but I feel like I need to tell you to just do it. So do it." .....Uh, crazy. I hadn't told him about the idea of YWAM yet he came up to me and said that. It was just more confirmation that it was where I needed to be.
So I sent in my application. I got everything in that day and sent out my reference forms. I figured God would make it happen and I'd be able to tell everyone goodbye and that I would be gone next year. Yup...another mistake of mine. I expected that I knew what God was going to do. Wrong again.
My application took a couple months to go through because one of my references never got in. I didn't know what was wrong that would delay the application for that long because I had been in constant contact with YWAM about everything. It only added to the story later.
In Mid-May, I was really starting doubt God in this whole thing. Looking back on it I have no idea why I did, because he made it blatantly obvious that this is what he wanted me to do, yet I still did. Then one day I decided to give another reference form out to someone else. I let that be for a little while.
A few days later I was just hanging out playing xbox with a buddy of mine when I told him "if I suddenly just peace out it's because I got a call from YWAM. I don't think it'll happen right now but just a warning." Sure enough, ten minutes later I see a call from Hawaii coming in on my phone. I was like "wow, seriously? gotta go!" and got offline. The call was an informal interviewish type thing from the school just wanting to get to know me a little bit. I strait up told him that I felt like God was telling me to do this...I don't know why and I don't understand why now, but I feel like it's what God wanted me to do so I'm rolling with it. I also told him that I'm praying if it's not what God wants that the doors would be shut so. He told me they'd review my application and get back to me.
Not long after that call I got another phone call, this time from my school. It was to tell me that a new state bill had been passed that changed the income line for the Cal Grant and it pushed us over the line, so I lost my Cal Grant. If anyone doesn't already know this; the only way that I was at Jessup was because of grants and scholarships. There is no way I could afford going there unless I got them. That completely shut the door of Jessup for the next year. I was stressing out like you wouldn't believe. I had no idea what I would be doing. Sure enough, as he always does, God had my back. Not an hour after that phone call came in, I got an email from YWAM saying "Welcome to Kona!"
I had been accepted. It was like God made that final thing work out to tell me "this is what you're going to be doing this next year." I still do not understand why he chose this very moment in my life to want me to do this, but I'm doing it. I've had my fair share of doubts about doing this whole YWAM thing, but looking back on it there is no way God wants me to be doing any other thing right now. He made all of this happen up to this point, and I know he'll make the rest of it happen. It's been a constant test of my faith and trusting in him because, like Jessup, there is no way I can afford to do this. Although some days are harder than others in the whole area of not stressing out, I know he's got my back and will come through for me. No matter what it looks like when I say he'll come through for me, I know he's already brought me so far and I've developed in my faith in such a way that I've never been this close to him before. Whatever comes from this whole YWAM experience is already worth it because of the deeper understanding I have gained of what it means to trust God.
There are countless other little things that have happened along the way to strengthen and confirm that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. If I wrote them down it would take years to read the whole thing. Although I am very excited to see where this adventure is going to take me, I do miss everyone up at Jessup. Willy-Jay has been a place of major growth for me and I know that no matter where I go from here, it will always be a place that I remember as a turning point for me in my life.
In all of this, I am learning to truly live out what has become one of my favorite verses in the whole bible: John 3:30. "He must become greater, I must become less."
Let's see where this experience takes me!
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