Humbling Beginnings

Whether you are a friend, family member, supporter, Prayer-er, or other, welcome to my blog about my experiences as an intern at Engineering Ministries International for the next semester. First a brief background on how I got here.

Through a variety of events, none of which worth mentioning here, it came to pass that I would have a free semester between when I graduated from Texas A&M University in December of 2013 and when I wanted to attend graduate school (location currently unknown) in the Fall of 2014. After discovering this "free" time, I contemplated a variety of things that I could do to fill this gap. I thought about everything from traveling Europe on my own to getting a job and making some money for graduate school. It dawned on me, however, that I had never been on a mission trip outside of Texas before and even that was when I was in the 6th grade. After a bit of prayer (probably not as much as necessary) I decided to pursue a mission trip.

After much frustration in my search for mission opportunities and finally learning to pray adequately for the situation, I attended the Go Missions conference at Texas A&M's Breakaway and went to the breakout session for engineers. A man named Brad Saltzmann from Living Water International listened to what I was looking for and directed me to the eMi website. It hadn't even occurred to me that I could use my degree and pursue missions simultaneously. It was already late in the semester, especially for support raising, and I was sure that all of their positions had already been filled, but I thought that I would apply anyways. And so it came to pass that God blessed me with an opportunity far beyond my expectations.

Now I find myself in Colorado Springs, preparing for a trip to Uganda in less than 3 weeks, and at a complete loss for words to describe the past two months. It feels like a whirlwind - like I just woke up one day and all of a sudden I am in Colorado without really knowing how I got here. I am in awe of all of the people who have donated to my mission here. I don't exactly know what I was expecting out of my support raising efforts, but I definitely wasn't prepared for the humbling and gracious experience that it was. Needless to say, thank you to all of the people supporting me on my mission here. Thank you for the prayers. I look forward to sharing with you all of my experiences and hopefully at least a little bit about what God is doing here and around the world through me and eMi.

Thanks,
Ryan