God Calling

Right before I turned sixteen, I graduated high school. I know what you're thinking. "Nerd!" Not really. Being homeschooled, I was allowed to go at my own pace with school. I was the youngest of three siblings. And a raging extrovert. I didn't want to do anything alone. So early on in school, I picked up my pace so I could catch up with my brother. School just seemed more fun being able to do it with people.

So I was an emerging high school graduate, the world a fresh oyster for me, and yet I was only sixteen. Barely knowing how to drive. Completely dependent on my family, not even allowed to really leave if I wanted to (although I did have a "steady" job at Chick Fil-A, so whatever bills may come...). College seemed like my only option, and yet as a a sixteen year old, college is a really scary proposition.

Not being one to jump into something scary, I decided I'd be better off leaving the country for seven months to go to Germany and China. You know, normal kid things. Even better yet, it was a school of sorts, but much less academic. In Germany, I would learn how to do videography as ministry, using it to tell the stories of the forgotten, to raise awareness about the serious problems in the world, and to inspire change. And then I would head to China to use those skills. 

It was challenging, to be sure. We learned everything you could imagine about how to shoot on little to no budget, in the middle of nowhere, in the forgotten areas of the world. See, that's typically where you'll find the best stories: the places where nobody is looking.

While I was in Germany training, we took an expedition over to the Czech Republic, where we met up with a group that was fighting against human trafficking. While there, I got my first taste of using video to raise awareness. We worked with the group to shoot a short film about human trafficking, about a woman visiting a foreign country who ends up getting sold into the sex trade. 

It was hard. It was heartbreaking. But it was empowering, knowing that we were using our skills to make a difference in the world. Big or small, that was what I wanted to be a part of, what I felt God calling me into. 

I thought hollywood sounded fun, the TV business was a riot. At the time, sketch comedy was my muse. And I loved to write. But when I thought about working in videography, it was clear where God was calling me: to use my video skills to change the world. To inspire to action. To tell stories that value the storyteller, and inspire and challenge the watcher. To raise awareness about injustice in the world. I wanted to change the world. Silly, maybe. Naive, sure. Impossible, likely. But I was sixteen, remember? You try telling a sixteen year old they can't change the world, and then watch. They just might do it.

.     .     .

After five months of training in Germany, it was time to go out and use the skills I had learned in video. Or so I thought. The government in China was a little picky about where you could and couldn't video, so for the most part, I had to leave my camera in the bag. 

After traveling to a few cities, we were pretty excited about what we had experienced. Language teaching in Beijing. Playing and loving on kids in a beautiful privately-owned orphanage. Filming kids doing parkour in the downtown area. It had been a blast. Our next stop was a country village outside the city of Chongqing, to visit a government run special needs orphanage.

When we got there, we were shocked. The orphanage was up on the third floor of an old building, and the majority of the 30 something kids all lived in dingy rooms that weren't fully protected from the elements. There weren't many caretakers, and they didn't care well for the kids, because these were hard kids to care for. That translated to the place being an absolute mess, to the point of the bathroom walls even being covered from top to bottom in a fluid I'm guessing you can imagine. There were kids that were left sitting in high chairs for days-on-end, having soiled themselves and sat in it to the point of boils forming on their thighs. It was a truly heartbreaking sight to behold.

We were aghast. Here we were, four painters, a musician, two photographers, and a video guy, hoping just to come and play with some kids, and paint a mural on the wall to make the place feel more like home. Instead, we spent the majority of the time cleaning up the place, caring medically for what kids we could, and trying to love on them in the midst of deep deep cleaning.

Finally, on the last day, the painters finally got to start painting the mural. If you know anything about me, you know I'm a terrible artist. Stick figures are even hard. So, I tried to help out, but really wasn't able to add much other than moral support. 

Enter Didi.

Didi was a young kid at the orphanage, somewhere between six and ten. It was hard to tell, and we couldn't really communicate with him. But this boy had off-the-walls energy. He started bouncing around the room, knocking things over. Eventually, he started to get into the paint. At that point, something had to be done. I, being the sacrificial person I am, offered to stop painting and go play with him instead. A hard choice, I know.

I asked if I could take him downstairs, because there was a more open area down there, with a basketball hoop. He wanted to be carried, so I picked him up, and down we headed. But as we started to head downstairs, he started to lose his energy. He tightened up, and started to almost seem scared. I tried to see if he wanted to get down, but he clung to me even tighter. 

"Has this kid ever left this building before?"

We got downstairs, and he was still in the same funk. So I started flying him around, superman style. What else are you gonna do? 

He was hesitant at first, but eventually he started to smile. And then to laugh. And then, all of the sudden, I just saw the purest joy beaming from his face. And it hit me, right there: here, in this small moment, with this small child, and this small me, in this small village in China, with this small act of playing, something big was happening. This child, who had been abandoned by his parents for nothing other than the fact that he had special needs, who had never gotten to know what it was like to be loved or cared for, who possibly never would again, was experiencing the love of Christ for the first time. Not in some holy, magnanimous, self glorifying way. Just in the small way of me choosing to play with this child, and to forego my own needs (and tired arms).  

And that is when my heart broke. Knowing that this child got to experience love for the first time, got to finally believe that it exists. Fearing that he may never experience it again. I couldn't take it. I started pray-singing "A Whole New World", from Disney's Aladdin (copyright Disney, whatever. Gotta watch your back these days). Just hoping and singing for a better life for this kid. Hoping for his future. Proclaiming hope. 

And that was it. A small moment, and then we had to pack up, and move on to the next city. But I couldn't help but feel that, in some small way, or maybe in some big way, God had changed Didi's life. And I knew that God was changing mine. I felt very clearly that He said to me "You see these children of mine? Serve them, love them."

.     .     .

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life?" I was really channeling Frodo when I got back to the States. How do you go on after you experience something like that? I couldn't. I didn't want to anyway. But college was finally looming, and unless I had money or the right connections, I was stuck in the States for the time being. 

So I went to college, and pursued videography. I felt as though my best bet for getting back into that world was to brush up on my video skills, with the hopes that I could maybe find a video job that might somehow change the world. I had no idea what that would look like, but it seemed like a good choice.

College was hard. Not academically, necessarily. But it was hard being in this collegiate-american world, knowing the stories I had encountered in the rest of the world. But I pushed on. I worked in pizza, I learned about video. All this time I was waiting for an opportunity to come around that would somehow combine all my missions in life. All my callings, my dreams, whatever they were. I started to doubt such a thing would exist though. College came and went, and I didn't line up a job.

And then a friend of mine mentioned what he called a "video internship" at a international orphan care non profit called Back2Back Ministries. I freaked. Video, orphans, international? It was too good to be true. I wasn't necessarily too keen on the idea of an internship a year out of college. I hear your not supposed to do that. But I sent in my resume anyway. 

And then I waited.

And waited.

For two months. And nothing. So I decided it wasn't meant to be. And then I got an email from the wife of a friend of mine who I had happened to intern for during college. It said:

Hi Mikey!

Imagine my surprise and delight to see your name and resume come across my desk. Brad, of course, is a huge fan of yours, and I am thrilled you are interested in Back2Back. 

I would love to get together to chat, to see if you might be the right fit for our organization.

I may or may not have about peed myself. I quickly wrote back, saying I was in, and I went into the interview the following week. 

When I got there, I was in for a bit of a shock. There was no video internship. "Swing and a miss", I thought. But then she said there was something else. A full time position, the Video Media Coordinator position, available. Words left me. I managed to ask what exactly that job would be, and here's what I found out:

The Video Media Coordinator would work in the marketing department, based here in Cincinnati. Each year, you would fly to one of our six international sites (three in Mexico, one in Haiti, one in Nigeria, and one in India) and stay there for 2-4 weeks. While there, you would capture the stories of the children in these orphanages, the stories at large playing out in these cities. The stories of the least of these, of the forgotten. Of rising up out of poverty, of being connected back into family. Of the beauty that Back2Back is engaging in by taking care of these orphans, raising them up educationally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially. On this end, I would be communicating to these kids that you are not a "victim", or someone to be forgotten. Rather, you are a beautiful human being, a child of God, and you matter. And you are loved. After I got back from these trips, I would work to put together videos of these stories, and send them out to people all over the world who need to hear these stories, who want to connect with these kids, or who just want to join up in serving and providing for these children.

This, I finally felt, was it. 

So I leapt. As of June, I was officially offered the job at Back2Back Ministries. But now I'm entering into what I think is commonly referred to as "the hard part". At Back2Back, I have to fundraise my entire salary and travel expenses. This can look like a scary thing, but the real idea behind it is actually quite beautiful:

We all have a mission in life, and I think it can usually be summed up to "loving one another". How we do that plays out in a million different ways. For me, I'll be going out and telling their stories. For others, it's the day-in-day-out grind of being on the floor with those kids. For some, it's sitting in an office, designing, or accounting. And for some, it's using of their resources to send somebody else in their place. That's the beautiful part of it. No matter where we find ourselves in life, we all get to act, as one body, serving and loving.

As I embark on this journey of getting to these kids, and the fundraising before it, I'm a little scared. Asking people for money is awkward, and hard. But when I think of where I'm heading, all that fear melts away. Because this is it. This is where God has called me. I know He'll bring me through.

Practically to get there, I need a team of people around me providing financial support. Without which, I won't be able to do this. Typically, this looks like monthly donations, ranging from $50-$500 a month, or annual gifts, or even one time gifts, depending on people's means. And so that's kind of where I'm at. I'm asking people to join my team, inviting them into serving and loving on these orphans together. 

Would you join me?

For more info, email me at mike [at] evanshire [dot] net. For how give, go to https://donations.back2back.org/ Under the first drop down, select Staff Support, and in the donation memo, type Michael Evans.

Thanks so much for reading, and for going along on this journey with me. I look forward to seeing you along the way!

Mikeyy