"Crooked little smile on her face, she tells a tale of grace that's all her own..." (aka The Fundraising Sermon)

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Think of how many times you’ve been asked this question… or there’s that other gem, “What do you do?” Career plans are some of the more important plans we make over the course of our lives and a common topic of conversation both among people just starting to get to know each other and friends who you’ve known for decades. They’re important, but don’t’ necessarily require a person to dig too deep… like they would if the conversation took a turn towards talking about vocation. “Where is God calling you?” is a question that just sounds heavier from the start and is a whole lot more meaningful in the long run.

Over the course of the five years I spent at the University Delaware, my career plans and ideas of my vocation have been flipped upside down more than once. God’s call is full of surprises; if you want to hear Him laugh, tell Him your plans. Answering that call to start the ordination process in our diocese was one of the most exciting decisions I have ever made… even if it wasn’t at all part of my original plan. It was a decision preceded by a lot of prayer and asking the questions “Who me? Really? Are You sure that You want me to do that?” But even if He is working in mysterious ways all along, God makes His call clear, even if it takes time for us hear it, which it did for me, especially with the call I’m now answering to spend a year abroad as an Episcopal missionary.

It all started three years ago, and I didn’t even realize that anything was starting at the time. I had the honor of being selected for a two-year term on the national Episcopal Student Leadership Team. At our first team meeting, we had dinner with another group of young adults a few years older than we were who called themselves YASCers, who were training for a year abroad in a program coordinated by the national church office called the Young Adult Service Corps. Each one of them was about to spend an entire year abroad in a new place somewhere in the Anglican Communion away from everyone and everything they had ever known. It sounded kinda awesome, but mostly terrifying. I remember thinking to myself, “I would never do that! Leave everyone I love for a year!” Still, I admired them for what they were about to do, and I enjoyed hearing more about the Young Adult Service Corps as I continued to be involved with the national church.

Now, flash forward to almost two ago. In November 2008, I started thinking about this program again, and, much to my own surprise, I started thinking about it as something that I might do – that I might just feel called to do. The Young Adult Service Corps accepts applications every January, and since, at that time, I still had plenty of time until graduation, I was in no rush to apply. Still, I seized the opportunity to talk to past participants and 2009 applicants and the directors of the program, and I resolved to keep the idea in mind for the January 2010 application date… and for a full year, that’s exactly what I did. Through work and classes and discernment and campus ministry, I quietly kept this very intriguing possibility in the back of my mind - all the while excited at the chance for adventure, but still wary of the idea of being so far away from everyone for so long.

Last fall, with the application date getting closer and closer, I looked for ways around this call that just couldn’t be… For awhile, I thought I might just go right on from college to seminary, and then, unexpectedly, I gave my heart away to someone wonderful in a way that I had never done before. With all this happening, why would I want to leave when I was so sure I had everything I wanted? But then my discernment timeline changed, giving me an extra year, and it turned out that the timing just wasn’t right for this wonderful guy to keep holding onto my heart… but after all the dust settled and the last of the leaves had fallen from the trees, I could see that my heart was still holding onto to something else.

So, after a few advent Taizé services at Newark United Methodist Church and a whole lot of prayer, I decided that, at the very least, I was called to be part of the Young Adult Service Corps application and interview process, but by the time that my paper application was complete, I already realized that I was called to more than just a follow-up interview.

… Which brings me here before you today, telling you about my journey so far, and how I got to be here. On Wednesday night, I get on a plane for Cape Town, South Africa, where I will be working for a relief organization run by the Anglican Church in South Africa called HOPE Africa and the Anglican Student Federation of the Province of Southern Africa (probably with some special attention devoted to the campus ministry at the University of Cape Town). This is where my call to mission work is directing me. This is where I will be serving as a missionary of the Episcopal Church in the USA – specifically, as a missionary of the Diocese of New Jersey. I grew up attending the Church of the Holy Cross in North Plainfield, NJ, where every Easter I looked for an “Allelulia” egg, where I ran up and down the aisles with my friends on the day of our first communion – all of us wearing white dresses and red American Girl capes, where I learned what confirmation was all about, where where I feel safe, where where I can talk about God, where I learned how to be the best me out there, and where my journey began. Before that journey led me to South Africa, it brought me to St Thomas Church in Newark, Delaware, home of the Episcopal Campus Ministry at the University of Delaware; my time as a member of the St. Thomas family shaped my journey with all that changed and grew in my life while I was there and enjoying the many blessings offered by the community of the St. Thomas parish and campus ministry.

The Young Adult Service Corps missionary program is all about community, but it goes beyond the diocesan boundaries and focuses on building relationships in the Anglican Communion around the world. There’s nothing I do that I ever really do alone. As a YASCer, the Mission Personal Office of the national church sponsors me with $10,000, but, like every YASCer before me has successfully done, I as well will need to fundraise $10,000 to support this mission by asking the dioceses that I have the pleasure of calling home. So, here, I ask humbly for your support by both prayer and money; please take one of my envelopes and join me in my journey as a missionary. Also, follow me on my mission blog. The funds I am trying to raise will pay for my living expenses, travel, training, housing, and health insurance, and I am grateful for every bit of support. After all, that $10,000 breaks down to $30 a day or $200 a week, and looking back on our own lives we know that even one day can make a difference.

Sometimes, when I think about what the next year holds, anxiety overtakes my excitement, but each time, I know to pause, take a deep breath and pray it through… because every time, I come to the same conclusion. There is not a doubt in my heart that this is the right thing for me to be doing. This is where I hear God calling me right now. Even if I don’t know what exactly it will bring, and that what is does bring won’t always be easy.

I’d like to leave you with some wisdom from theologian Frederick Buechner whose words have become my mantra. He wrote “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” These words summarize how I feel about my call to mission and my continuing discernment beyond just career plans, but to a deeper sense of my vocation.

“It started out as a feeling, which then grew into a hope, which then turned into a quiet thought, which then turned into a quiet word, & then, that word grew louder and louder…”

When I was a little girl, I had this little vision of what my life would be where I would live in the town that I grew up in forever. My little girl world was too small for anything but simplicity, even in my little girl relationship with God. There wasn’t even enough room for any of those mysterious ways you always hear about.

When I was less little and turning nineteen, moving to 119 miles away to Newark, Delaware seemed like the worst idea I’d ever had, but sometime while I wasn’t looking, my life got big enough for there to be room for you-know-who’s mysterious ways, which I would eventually realize were very much at work in my life turning this quiet girl into a young woman who is in love with her life in Delaware and who knows how to use her voice – and what she wants to use it for. It was about this time that the adventures started.

In the just-over two-and-a-half years since my twenty-first birthday, I have (in no particular order):

-Answered the call to start the ordination process in my home diocese, the Diocese of New Jerse

-Met more incredibly amazing people than I can count (Their handprints cover my heart, always with me)

-Helped plan the Gather S.e.e. the Light: The 2008 Gathering of Episcopal College Students

-Called three different states home... simultaneously.

-Spent a week insulating apartments in Oarja, Romania with Team Nutella and Habitat for Humanity Global Village

-Chaired a wonderful-but-dysfunctional (and surprisingly now non-existent) national ecumenical student group

-Had my life fall apart… and then back together again (Happens to the best of us, right?)

-Learned time and time again that I could not have picked a better major than English Education

-Survived student teaching 173 fabulous high school seniors at Christiana High School

-Had an amazing summer internship (with some really remarkable people) helping to launch young adult ministry in the Diocese of New Jersey

-Fallen in love

-Served as president of an amazing campus ministry and a fabulous regional campus ministry leadership team

-Had another incredible summer internship learning about parish ministry at St. Peters by-the-Sea in one of my favorite places in the world – Gulfport, Mississippi.

-Answered the call to serve as a missionary for the Episcopal Church

It’s that last one that brings me here writing to you. In November 2008 (during the time I mentioned in the list above when my life was less than together), I watched the movie Across the Universe and started thinking about this program I’d heard of called the Young Adult Service Corps (YASC), a mission program run by the Episcopal Church. It seemed kinda crazy, and since I was under more stress than usual and still had another year left in college, I put the idea on the back burner (but while at Gather 2008 over New Year’s, I seized the opportunity to learn as much about YASC as possible from people who had done it and people who ran it). Then, I walked around for a year distracted by other adventure, but always wondering about this remarkable idea – this call - always in the back of my head. Once, someone almost succeeded in giving me a beautiful reason compelling enough not to leave for a year… but in case you haven’t heard, God is the master of not being out done. Life is full of unexpected turns.

In the months before the 2010 application deadline for the Young Adult Service Corps, the tide came in, and the waves on the shore got bigger and bigger, calling me to submerge myself in this next great adventure. After some serious prayer, a barrage of promotional emails from church mailing lists my leadership positions got me on, and more than one of Newark United Methodist’s incredible Wednesday Taizé services (I seriously recommend these to all of you), I answered the call to fill out the application, and by the time I got to the discernment weekend last February (where I met the group of rock star aspiring missionaries pictured below), I knew where God was calling me and where I wanted to be and they seemed to be pointing the same spiritual direction.

Since the discernment weekend, I have the honor and the privilege of saying that I am going to be an Episcopal missionary to South Africa, where I look forward to working for a relief organization called HOPE Africa run by the Anglican Church in the province of Southern Africa (http://www.hopeafrica.org.za/). I’m still anxiously awaiting more information than that, but I’m excited for what I know so far about how I will be serving God over the next year of my life. In the many beautiful places I call home here in the United States, I’ve gotten to see some remarkable people working to live the Gospel in some really extraordinary ways, and now I’m excited to have the opportunity to see people doing this in a community another part of the Anglican Communion. The blessings of some amazing communities have gotten me here. Words cannot express my gratitude to the Church of the Holy Cross in the Diocese of New Jersey (my home diocese); Saint Thomas Parish in the Diocese of Delaware, which has been my home during my college years; and the other places listed on the right in my “I wouldn’t have gotten where I am without…” list – and the journey’s still going. In order to be a proud representative of these communities as I travel to a new one, I need to raise $10,000 (to add to the support that the national church is already giving me) to cover supplies for my work and my living expenses. I know this sounds challenging, but it breaks down to about $30 a day or $210 a week. Every little bit counts, and I truly deeply appreciate any support that you are able to give. (Just click on the link below to download my fundraising letter and mail to the address listed on the bottom of it) Also, I ask for your love and support through prayer as I set out on this journey.

Download my fundraising letter here!

Some amazing people and a whole lot of love have gotten me this far, and I’ll be carrying you all with me in my heart while I go off on this adventure. I heard this corny line in a movie trailer once, “Sometimes you have to be apart from the people you love, but that doesn't make you love them any less. Sometimes it makes you love them more.” My somewhat nomadic college lifestyle has proved to me how very true this statement is!

Thank you all! Feel free to contact me for more information!

Ann Email

You know how lots of online retailers have those “If you liked this, try...” sections at the bottom of product pages? Well, I’m going to have one for each blog entry where I share with you whatever’s inspiring me at any given moment or simply matches the vibes of my current entry.

If you liked this , try...

Songs: “Red Dirt Road” by Brooks and Dunn, “The Call” by Regina Spektor, & “Dream” by Priscilla Ahn

Book: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Movie: Across the Universe