By Andrea Hamsher
Serving in missions work overseas isn’t something that I ever imagined myself doing, but through the process of moving to and serving in Germany, it’s become evident to me that even when I didn’t even know what I was doing, God did.
One example of God’s providence for me was in learning German before I planned on serving here. In high school, I had the option to either take Spanish or German classes. I opted to begin taking German classes because my ancestors came from Germany and I thought that it would be cool to learn the language.
During college, I once again needed to take foreign language classes to meet a graduation requirement, and since German was an option as one of the languages I could take, I thought it would just be easiest to continue on with German. I thought that I would only take the classes needed to meet the foreign language requirement, but I enjoyed the classes so much that I just kept taking them. In the end, I actually ended up adding German as a second major! I’m grateful for the teachers and professors who gave me encouragement along the way and went above and beyond so that I could continue to study the language.
After graduating college, I was really unsure what the next right step was for me. One of my German professors from college told me about a program to spend a year in Germany.
After spending time thinking and praying about it, I decided that particular program wasn’t the right one for me, but I felt that God was definitely calling me to serve in Germany.
As I was looking for a program with the right fit for me, I heard that VMMissions workers Dave and Rebekka Stutzman, who my family had been neighbors with almost 20 years ago, were looking for a volunteer to come and serve with them at The Villa, a community center in Mannheim, Germany. I got in touch with Dave and Rebekka, and through them, got in touch with VMMissions and made the decision to serve in Germany through the tranSend program.
Courtesy of Andrea Hamsher
Looking back now, I see how God was preparing me for my time in service, although I was never aware of it at the time. It was definitely a challenging decision to make, since it required me to put a lot of trust in God to be able to raise funds and move to a new country where I hardly knew anyone.
However, I now recognize all the ways God was preparing me for this assignment which made my transition into serving in Germany much easier, since I was familiar with the language and culture, as well as the people who I was coming to serve with. My transition was also made easier by the financial and structural support from VMMissions as well as my two German partner organizations.
It’s amazing to me how God has used something that I thought that I was just doing for fun into an opportunity to serve.
Andrea Hamsher serves in Mannheim, Germany, through the tranSend internship program of VMMissions.