I've always wanted to avoid the cold and where I grew up,,, thats the furthest North i've ever wanted to go! (seriously, going to North Bay Ontario freaked me out because it had the word "North" in it) Sometimes our ideals are not Gods!
I've been fortunite enough to have lived my teenage dream and experience the Los Angeles life style, I was blessed have volenteered at Canada's top modeling agencies, then move to LA just to soak up some sun and shopping!
However, almost two years ago I met someone who stuck a tiny bug in my ear and mentioned Alaska, I thought it was cool he went WAY up there, but I was packing for LA at this time and could not be more excited to be escaping the Canadian Winter! I'm pretty sure I even said "I could NEVER go up there! its soo cold and far!"
Little did I know at that time God would be preparing my for something that seemed very unlikely.
Anyways, a year after the conversation I randomly kept in contact with that person who mentioned Alaska (never actually meeting him, gotta love facebook and other social networks) but weirdly enough we would keep meeting mutual friends, whether it be in Haiti, British Columbia, Alberta, Thailand?, and Missiour.
In Missouri I was going to a native america christian youth conference and I had known almost all of my roommates except for Rae Dawn and Summer. I ended up over hearing a conversation ask asked Rae Dawn if she had done a DTS, sure enough she had, and she did it in ALASKA! I was amazed that I now knew 2 people that actually did a dts there! haha (it still seemed too crazy for me).
Rae Dawn and I were on a summer mobile ministry team together called "On Eagles Wings" and I was able to learn a little more without seeming I was too curious about this place to far north. During the middle of our travels I recieved an email from a guy named "grame", He was one of my speakers during my DTS (2 years ago) and he randomly emailed this:
Dear Melissa,
Good morning & greetings to you this day.
Melissa, what became of the desire to be involved to be involved with Native youth.
Where I am [Cimarron] is involved with Dineh [Navaho].
Melissa, what are you doing with your days?
Melissa, would you be open to being involved with Alaskan Native people, helping in a small ywam base?
Next July Nirmala and I, 2 others, will head into the Aleutians; wanted to go there since 11. We will be in Alaska about a month." (the email continued but you get the idea)
Anyways, I eventually went home and forgot all about Alaska... In september ish, I was going out with my mom and we stopped at the post office, when she got back she through a package at me it read; YWAM ALASKA. I have never contacted this base but somehow I recieved a staff application form, you would think by now i'd be like "ok, God, just tell me when!" but of course it wasn't like that....
It's now March and i've continued to keep Alaska in the back of my mind, it wasn't until the other day that I woke up and thought "hey, i think i'm ready to go there now"
I'm still praying about when, but i'm actually excited to see what will come of this, and how it will all fall into place. This is where my story ends so far, but Alaska is on my mind :)
