A Welcome

Welcome to the first of what I hope to be many entries about my life as a missionary in the Episcopal Church as part of the Young Adult Service Corps (YASC). The program is available to church members ages 21-30 and is a year-long commitment to serve in another country through partnerships with the Anglican Communion. YASC members live in a variety of situations from monasteries, family stays, to apartments. Likewise, members do a variety of work from teaching, farming, and NGO work serving the poor, migrants, seafarers and many others. It gives the church an opportunity to strengthen ties across the communion to reach mutual goals of healing a broken world.

I have thought about joining YASC since I was about 21 but when I graduated college I took an opportunity to attend graduate school first. That venture ended in 2014 rather suddenly with the understanding that I was not going to be a college professor after all. That winter I was left with a part-time minimum wage job with distribution factory in Denton, Texas and no idea what to do next. I had no "real" job experience, I mean not even an internship. I had just been in school since I was in kindergarten.

Pretty much my whole life till age 26

But I was also left with a strange amount of peace and knowledge that now we could finally get to what I should be doing. I kept circling back to the other two options I had considered before graduate school the Americorps VISTA program and YASC. Finally, one day I just committed to applying for the VISTA program for 2015 and to YASC for 2016-2017. With a lot of sass and sarcasm I said, "Fine, Here I am Lord!."

Here I am

It has been the most rewarding year of my life and I have been truly blessed to have been partnered with Refugee Services of Texas for my VISTA year. I have talked with the YASC mission personnel and it is my hope that I can continue my work with refugees in the next year but I know no matter who I am serving I will be blessed to share life with them far more than I can even imagine.

Now if you're still with me, here is the part about how you can help me in my journey. We are all called to heal the world and some of us, like me, can give up everything and take off for a year to do it. Others cannot, whether that's for health, financial, or simply because that is not how you are called to serve. But that doesn't mean you can't be a part of this work. It cost a lot of money to send a missionary to another country for a year. YASC estimates the cost is $25,000 for one missionary and the national church generously covers $15,000 of that, leaving YASC members to raise $10,000 before we leave. I need your help in order to go a serve those who need it the most.

$10,000 dollars seems like a lot but if you divide it up by a year that's only $27 a day. So please take an opportunity to partake in the work God has given us all to do. You can find my Go Fund Me page on the side-bar of my blog or here

I hope to write soon with an update about my placement.

Blessings,

Kate