Why a Missionary?

The question almost every adult asked me from early teens to graduating highschool was, “What’s next?” It was a question that I would respond to with little to no answer and even when I did have one, the remarks from the adult would be, “Well this person I know did this and they make tons of money”. Or the most common response was, “Have you ever thought of doing a trade”? I really hated being asked, and not because it was anyone’s fault for simply trying to give a young man advice for his future or start a simple conversation. My problem was that I never wanted to do anything being offered to me. Not a single thing. Whatever I did, construction, retail, or working at a restaurant, wasn’t what I felt I was meant to do. None of it clicked.

I ended up giving up my entire life to God and following him when I was 18 in the back pew of my church I used to attend. My first thought after that was “What do people who follow God do?” So I went to Bible college and after about three months I dropped out. I realized that learning about miniscule information on who the disciples’ parents’ names were was not intriguing to me. All I wanted to do was go help someone dig a hole somewhere or show love to somebody around the world. For the next couple years I would work one mundane job after another, trying to grab any opportunity to leave my city and go to explore the world. It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. All I wanted to do was help followers of Christ somewhere abroad. Finally, I ended up finding an organization based in Hawaii, which teaches people globally how to surf and do sports, and teaches about God. Now this is where my life drastically changed. Though I originally planned on being there for only three months, I ended up staying at this organization for an entire year. I received the opportunity and funds and went for it. One of the main things I learned was the basic fundamentals of Christianity: forgiveness, repentances, spiritual warfare, and learning about the Holy Spirit. I was being fulfilled by simply listening to God and reading the Bible. I had pure joy for people and in circumstances. My emotion that I had put away from childhood started filling me up again. I felt emotions on a scale that were so powerful that I couldn’t ever explain it. I felt the presence of God. I saw him provide and show me how much fun and adventurous life was and could be. I was so excited every day. I continued to miraculously be provided through random donations and support. Near the end of my time there, I was getting sick and my visa was about to expire. So I went back to Canada for what I thought was only going to be a short time.

Canada was a place I had lived for 20 years at that point. Going back was some of the biggest culture shock. The place where I was born felt like a distant memory, and a person who wasn’t the same Nick coming was back. People sounded funny with their accents. Food took me a while to adjust to. The clothing, weather, architecture, nationalities, and the priorities of people–all of this was different. The one thing that was the worst was it was as lonely as ever and it was as if everyone was by themselves against the whole world. I was living with dozens of people for a year who all wanted to go on an adventure. Any time they would be down to get up and go. Now nobody wanted to do anything. I could write a whole ten-page diagnosis of the difference between people from Hawaii and my hometown and what I had learned. But to sum it up, people didn’t care about the adventure. Now I can’t blame them. Just because I wanted that doesn’t mean everyone else does. And also years later, I realized that not everyone wants to travel the world to crazy places, sleep in rooms full of strangers, get potential parasites and sicknesses, or be in possible danger for their faith. Most people don’t want that, but I did. I loved it. It felt like I was made by someone for an individual purpose, and that purpose happened to be serving people in need all over the world and going on crazy adventures with groups of people just like me.

Now I’m back in Canada figuring out what’s next. My original plan was to somehow volunteer for another organization around the world and do more missions. But that did not pan out. That year was miserable to be honest. I became isolated from society. All my hopes and visions of missions disappeared. I worked at a job I hated once again and it was worse because I knew where I wasn’t anymore. I stopped seeing people and closed myself in because I was in shame of who I became from what I just was. I was angry at God for sabotaging me, but in reality I put myself in that situation through wrong turns. I was praying and asking God “What do I do with my life now?” Obviously missions aren’t a choice anymore. “Should I go to school?” So I did–art school to be precise. School was good in the beginning. I felt a purpose and was surrounded by creative people who wanted to make things. My goal was to become a graphic designer and work for a design firm. But as time passed, I started to distance myself from school and feel resentment towards it. So that summer, I ended up not finishing and working at a summer camp that year. It was four months in the woods in Canada, giving me time to focus on God and question what to do next. I wrote down a list of possibilities of my life and where I would go. With nothing off limits, I was led to moving away to an island off the mainland that upcoming fall.

That summer before I moved to the island, I met up and saw the people I lived with in Hawaii at a wedding. It was an interesting time, not seeing these people for 2 years. It felt as if it were a dream, nostalgic and sad. I did not live with them anymore. Most had moved on from the organization. I was sad about who I had become and felt as though no time had passed. I was invited on a trip during that wedding that was coming up. I had completely abandoned the dream of missions. And doing anything with that organization wasn’t part of the plan. It would be the third time that year I was asked to go on this trip. So I said yes.

It was now after the wedding and I was living on an island by myself. It was terrible. Spiritual warfare and being alone truly put a toll on me once again. But God had other plans. A thought came to me that fall that sounded so outlandish that I knew it had to be God. What if I went on the next three trips with the Hawaiian people I once knew around the world? I don’t have the money, don’t have the experience, don’t have anything, but with God anything is possible. So I put it to the test. In the next four months I went to three different trips and multiple countries. Everything aligned with schedules and people and thousands of dollars were raised for these trips.

This first trip changed everything for me. Unfortunately I was not doing great heading into the first trip. The Nick I once was was worse than ever. I felt as though I changed for the worse and wasn’t fully back to the Holy Spirit-filled man I was. Three days into the trip I received prayer. It was the most transformative prayer experience I have ever had. All the shame and worry about the future and past two years and the confusion all disappeared after that prayer. I felt truly at peace. I was unexplainable. It genuinely felt as though I was in heaven. The Spirit of God felt alive in me again. I suddenly felt excitement, joy, laughter, hope, and so much more for the first time since I left doing missions. I realized that I did want to do international missions and I was meant to do it. It was challenging, but at the same time so easy to manage as though I was built for it. Around that same time a memory of my childhood that I was locked away emerged. When I was around 10 years old. I wasn’t the most expressive kid in my words and emotions, so I never told anyone this, but I had two things I wanted to do with my life. One was to be an artist. The second was to be a missionary. The thing I was searching for all these years I had when I was a kid. I gave up being an artist on that trip. But being a missionary was everything. I felt that God showed me on that trip that I was meant for it and I was going to do it for the rest of my life. Everything was aligning and making sense. Nick a few years ago and even weeks prior, who was confused and frustrated, now understood exactly what he was meant to do: international missions.

I’ll end with something that was told to me prior to that trip that I believe showed me my future. When I was born, I was extremely ill and dying. My body was only a few pounds, premature and was undiagnosed with what was going on inside my body. My mother told me for the next three months she pleaded and begged God with a prayer: if I am meant to be stuck on tubes and machines my whole life with pain and misery, that He would take me away to heaven, or He heals me for a functioning life and I would be used fully for His Kingdom for what He wanted. I believe the prayer was answered and God was using me to do things I couldn’t even comprehend and were beyond my imagination.