How I Got Here

I don't know if I've ever shared the story of how I ended up in China on this blog, and it helps the rest of the post make sense:
-When I was ten, I heard about the gender disparity and infanticide issues caused by the OCP.  My heart was struck by the injustice of this, and I swore I would adopt baby girls from China.
-Fast forward to senior year of high school, I'm at a missions conference with my youth group and we go to an activity called Firestarters, where we are supposed to read information about several world issues and choose one that we feel called to pray for.  Abortion was the issue that stood out to me that day, while its not usually the issue that I'm most passionate about.  At the end, we got a sticker and were asked to place it on a part of the world that we felt called to pray for.  The Haiti earthquake had just happened, which I was passionate about, yet I knew that wasn't where I was supposed to go.  I walking around the map rather aimlessly waiting for that nudge of where to be.  We had also just been learning about China in AP Gov and the abortion and OCP clicked in my mind.  I looked at the vast country and went in my mind, "well, the Olympics were in Beijing!" and down went my sticker.
-I had been thinking before this about going into missions in some capacity.  I wish I could remember the intervening months here better to know what I was thinking about.
-I had taken Spanish in high school and traveled to Mexico and Honduras, and I was going to continue at Hope but I didn't get into the class I needed so I put off taking a language class.  I wasn't totally in love with Spanish or anything.
-Sometime in that first semester I connected China and missions in my head, decided that I wanted to study abroad in China, and that I would start Chinese at Hope in the fall.  I even looked through all of the available study abroad programs and decided on the IES Contemporary Issues Beijing program.  The whole China thing was continually confirmed.
-I started Chinese sophomore year and was quickly brought to reality.  It's a really, really, really, hard language for an English speaker to learn.
-The study abroad application time came around, and I had a total crisis of where to go.  I still had the idea of China, yet I fell in love with a program in Scotland as well.  Just do a Google image search of Scotland.  I hated learning Chinese and the thought of going to a country where that was the language of choice was pretty frightening.  It was a battle between what I wanted and what God wanted.  I decided to let it rest because I was going to Kenya that summer anyways.  I prayed and thought a lot while I was there, and at 4am one night, I decided to do Contemporary Issues Beijing.  It was where God was calling me to be.

I couldn't NOT come to China, when I knew SO strongly that it was what God wanted me to do.  So amidst fear and doubt, I was sent off with more earthly love than I have ever known, all pointing to the indescribable love of my Savior above.