I stared at the name of the country scribbled in black ink, disappointment lodging in my throat.

This place wasn’t where I wanted to go.

No, I had dreamed of going to another country since I was a little girl and much to my delight, it was one of the options presented by my YWAM missions training organization! I could almost taste the dust of the Sahara and feel the orange sun sinking below the horizon. I couldn’t wait to dance with the Maasai people and see up close what I had dreamed of for as long as I could remember: Africa. I wanted to share Gods love with His people in a place very unlike the one I had known. It felt like my calling. It felt like my next step.

That wasn’t where I was placed to go on my three-month mission trip however. I looked at the name again, trying not to cry: Cambodia. Where in the world was Cambodia anyway? I hadn’t heard much about it and quite frankly, didn’t really care. I stared at the tiny country on the map that stretched across the wall.

“Hey Olivia, I know you really wanted to go to Africa, but the more we prayed about it, the more we felt that we needed to place you in the team going to Cambodia.” My team leader stood beside me, her kind eyes seeing through my façade of “easy go lucky.”

“I understand, thank you for telling me!” I squeaked, forcing a grin.

“I don’t want you to think we took this lightly.”

“I certainly don’t. I’m sure it will be wonderful!”

I tried to enjoy the rest of the evening despite my disappointment. Yet as I packed my backpack to go a few days later, I felt the peace to trust my leaders and trust that God had spoken to them. Instead of being afraid that I would miss the opportunity to fulfill my calling to go to Africa, I chose to have faith that God had spoken to my leaders on my behalf. I chose to trust Him, in them.

Fast-forward three months, as I bumped along in the back of a tuk-tuk (a motorized bike with a passenger compartment at the rear) I gazed out at the beautiful country that had completely captured my heart. I had danced in the rain with its street children, prayed for the eyes of the blind and told the Gospel message to people who had never once heard the name of Jesus. The time I spent in Cambodia had cemented in me a deep love for the people, the culture and as well as given me an inexpressible burden for the genocide that it had experience a mere few decades before.

As I returned home, I didn’t know what to do with it all, but I was thankful that I had trusted the prompting of my leaders and didn’t meddle to get my own way. God’s way is always so much grander if we allow Him to pry our hands open and give us something new to grasp. I received a gift for my faith and that gift was learning that His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts, as stated in Isaiah 55:8-9.

In my little mind, I thought that a three-month mission trip was the conclusion of that walk of faith, but I was mistaken. I couldn’t have dreamed that a few months after I returned home that a mutual friend of the family (who worked as a medical missionary to Africa ironically) would call me out of the blue with an invitation that would change the trajectory of my life.

“So I work with this man named Rindy at the hospital and you wouldn’t believe his story!” Scott’s voice crackled with excitement. “It’s like a movie- everything he lived through and everything he endured in the Cambodian genocide is incredible! I think his story needs to be turned into a book!”

I hung onto Scott’s every word, trying to take in all he was saying. But what did this have to do with me?

“I think you should write it! Your grandma told me you were pursuing a writing degree and that you just came back from Cambodia, so I thought you’d be a good fit for the story.”

I was stunned and honored, but an excitement that I couldn’t understand bubbled in my chest. I agreed to fly down to Florida with my mom to meet Rindy shortly after. It was a meeting unlike any other and I was captivated by every word that Rindy spoke and his beautiful story of redemption from one of histories darkest moment. I knew I had to write a book about his life, but I didn’t feel qualified and I didn’t know when I possibly would be able to undergo such a project!

To make my life more interesting, my boyfriend proposed the week after I returned home and I threw myself headlong into wedding planning while juggling work and school. After that, I worked my way through college and finished my degree. Then on the day I graduated with my B.A. in Creative Writing and English, I went into labor with our eldest daughter!

Little did I know that that trip and that meeting would set me on nearly a decade long journey of faith, a journey that I would never have been qualified for if I hadn’t gone on that initial trip to Cambodia. A journey that sometimes I wished I hadn’t embarked upon. A journey that required sacrifice and a commitment to a vision that seemed completely unattainable time after time. The story about a boy who lived in the jungle of Cambodia haunted me and I wish I could say it was an easy thing to write, but that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is, it was an excruciating process and I wanted to quit many times, but something deeper within me, something more urgent propelled me onwards. That something was faith.

That desire to trust that all of this wasn’t a mistake, has seen me through the difficulty of writing this book, sacrificing time and other paid writing opportunities, to receiving rejection after rejection after it was completed, till today where I am looking ahead to September of 2023 when this book will be released by my publisher!

I wish I could say that I have arrived at a place of ultimate peace and triumph, but the truth is, this journey is still requiring faith everyday. I have to have faith that God will help me learn how to market and steward this story, that the team working on the book cover design will produce something that sets the story up for sucess, that it will be well received and ultimately that this endeavor will bring significant monetary income to assist Rindy in his mission work to Cambodia. I have come so far in this journey, which increases my faith for the future, but still requires me to constantly put my trust in Him with each new step forward.

The interesting thing about the walk of faith is that it is literally a journey of step-by step, decision by decision as we traverse the adventure of our lives every day. It isn’t something we receive validation in immediately, but I believe that what is being produced in us as we choose to follow, even when the way seems uncertain, is the stepping stones of fulfilling His plans and purposes in our lives. If we waffle in doubt and indecision rather than walking forward in faith, we run the risk of missing what He has for us in that season. While I don’t think little old you and I are not capable of ruining Gods plans, I do think we are perfectly capable of running from the risk of faith for so long that we never build the muscles required to traverse the mountain tops and the valleys of our lives.

The beautiful thing is though, that He is right there with us as we traverse the heights and the depths. This is true even when the way is dark and nothing seems to be panning out. We are invited into communion with Him as we learn what it means to live a life of not seeing but believing, not understanding but walking forward anyways, and not feeling but choosing to believe that He is the weaver of our destiny.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV.