I may no longer be a local preacher, but I am missionary. I haven't always known that I would be a preacher, but since I became a preacher, I always knew I'd be a missionary. In the summer of 1997, my first semester at the Memphis School of Preaching, Larry Callendine, a missionary with Latin American Missions, came and spoke to us in chapel about the work they were doing in Central and South America. I knew right then, that this is what I want to be doing. For various reasons I wasn't able to go on a mission campaign with LAM until April of 2010. That trip only confirmed what I had always known. The last day, sitting on the runway waiting for the plane, my wife, without even looking at me, leaned over and said, "I know what you're thinking, and if you want to sell it all and move, I'm ok with it." I didn't respond verbally, just nodded, and put that in my mental filing cabinet. In June of 2011 I spoke on a Wednesday night summer series at the Forrest Park congregation (overseers of the LAM work) and got to see it all firsthand. Then in late July came the offer to become a missionary with LAM.
In the fourteen years since that day in chapel at MSOP, I haven't once pursued this desire, I've just served God and trusted that if this was how He wanted to use me, then my Shepherd would lead me to the pasture He wanted me in. This new venture begins the way I anticipate most of this year will be spent: in a hotel room, far from home, getting ready to go and talk to a congregation about the work. I may not be a local preacher anymore, but I am now a missionary.
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