And So It Begins...

Hello, friends!

As a general rule, if your supervisor asks you to go out to dinner, it’s usually not a good sign... Oddly enough, it was a dinner with my supervisor that led me on this incredible 8 year journey in the first place.

My senior year, the plan was simple. I was going to graduate then intern with InterVarsity for a year at my Alma Mater (go Bears!). A few weeks after I’d gotten accepted to the internship, my staff worker Jean met me at my apartment and asked me if I would actually consider planting at UMSL instead of staffing at WashU. She said that she saw planting gifts in me that I didn’t personally see, but I’m generally good at following orders so I said sure and starting making plans.

A few weeks after that, Jean called me again and said that Bum, the Area Director, wanted to take me to dinner. At that point I got worried. Had I been fired? Did I do something wrong? Jean wanted to talk to me all the time so that wouldn’t have been weird but going up the ladder one more rung was not something to be taken lightly. Still, he would be buying and we were going to get Bubble Tea so I figured that whatever bad news was coming, I’d at least get a free meal out of it.

We met at Bubble Tea and after we got our food (and drinks, of course) Bum pops the question, “So, what do you think about moving to Columbia?”

Here’s the thing. Up to that point, I had no idea about the University of Missouri. I grew up in Southern California where UCLA and USC dominated the airwaves. Besides, I cared more about professional sports than college sports anyway. WashU was a Division III school so there was very little chance of any big time university coming our way. I didn’t know what Mizzou was and I certainly didn’t know that it was in Columbia, Missouri.

I thought he was sending me to South America.

Bum must have picked up on the confused look on my face because he then proceeded to explain to me that there was a small group of Asian Americans meeting on Mizzou’s campus and he wanted me to go check it out with him to see if there was planting opportunity there. Relieved that I was still going to be a US citizen, I readily agreed to the trip.

When Bum and I got to Columbia, I was introduced to Andrew Moon and Asian American Bible Study (AABS). Andrew was a PhD student in Philosophy who did his undergraduate work at The Ohio State University where he was a part of InterVarsity there. When he moved to Mizzou, he craved Asian American community like he had at Ohio State so he joined the Asian American Association. From there, he started AABS and had a dozen Asian and Asian American students meeting  at his apartment regularly, including about a half dozen non-Christians.

I met Andrew and sat in on an AABS and while I was there, I just knew that God was calling me there. The situation was too ripe and the students were ready for more of the Gospel. On the ride home I told Bum that I was a go for the move and the rest, as they say, is history…

Have an excellent day!

~Adam