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

Following a Dream

I never used to believe in love as a kid. I don't mean the find-a-spouse, lovey-dovey, romantic kind of love. No, I'm talking about your run-of-the-mill, I-care-for-you-you-care-for-me, Phileo Agape style love. I didn't have any of those words for it, because growing up, I frankly hadn't seen it or believed in it. Something within me seemed to grasp on to the idea that people in the world didn't really love unconditionally, couldn't really care for a person deeply, or love them. And so I decided I must not need that. Little did I know.

. . .

Growing up, I had a pretty small but supposedly tight-knit church community. I don't like to get spoiler-y right at the beginning, but "supposedly" was a purposeful word choice. I had a community of friends that I did life with. Being homeschooled, I didn't really get that from school, but I was fortunate enough to be connected to this group of people that could fill that void. 

But around the time I turned 8, that all changed. There was a disagreement that emerged between my family and some of the other families within our church. Being 8, I really couldn't have told you what happened. But all of the sudden, we were unceremoniously kicked from the church, and all of those friends I had were cut out of my life. Here, first and foremost, was proof that people didn't have any real love for me. At the drop of a hat, I could be out of their lives.

I wish I could say it ended there, but four years later, we were at a similar place, and just like the hat, the other hat dropped. Or was it the other shoe? Either way, there I was again, a 12 year old boy with no friends to call my own.

Against what many might have called common sense, we pushed into another church a year later. A much larger church than previous, and it was hard to really get to know people. Read: we didn't know anybody after 3 months of being there. But that didn't stop us from going.

And then everything changed. Call it, Hat Drop pt. III: Another Hat Altogether. I was 13, and we had just been in this new church for a couple of months when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. For me, this was a real shocker moment. Because, while I didn't believe people could love me, that didn't extend as far as my mom. See, I knew my mom loved me. She had to, right? So when I started to imagine that I might lose my mom to cancer, this, the one person that did love me... Well that just didn't seem fair.

Not knowing what to do, we reached out to one of our pastors, just to say "Hey. We don't know what we're doing, but this happened, and it sucks." We were really eloquent at the time. What surprised us was the way this new, mostly unknown group of people, stepped up.

My mom had chemotherapy for several months, putting her in a rough place of not really being able to be a mom, not being able to cook, etc. But they stepped up, and for the next several months, provided meals for our entire family. No questions asked. Not even a "Will you make me some food?"

People emerged in my mom and dad's life, people who had, or hadn't, gone through similar things, but that were willing to be there for them through the thick and thin of it. To laugh together, to cry together, to pray together, to have a drink together. To be together.

And some people really keyed in to myself, and my two siblings. People we didn't know, but people that saw our hearts hurting, and just wanted to be there. Not to fix everything, not to try and "heal us". But to sit in the crap with us, to talk if we needed, to be silent if we needed, to cry if we needed, to play if we needed. To be there, no matter what. To love us. Unconditionally.

And suddenly the game had changed for me. This was what I had been looking for all this time. These were my kind of people. People who didn't care what others thought, who didn't care what made sense. Who didn't owe you anything at all, and you didn't owe them anything. But they were just there to love you, because you needed to be loved. Because they had experienced love like this, and they couldn't not share it. This, it finally seemed, was what true love was. Loving others, regardless of condition, regardless of belief, regardless of if I even know your name, or your sign, or whatever. Just loving. 

I had finally experienced this love. A love so full that I couldn't not share it.

So I took to it. 

Mission number 1: To love fully and unconditionally. 

. . .

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, using it to tell the stories of the forgotten, to raise awareness about the serious problems in the world. And then I would head to China to use those skills. 

At the time, all I was really wanting to do was travel. I had always had the travel bug, wanting to see more of the world than just my own back yard. So I leapt for it, and just four months into being a high school graduate, I landed in Germany.

Mission number 2: See the world.

. . .

You wouldn't expect to land in Germany surrounded by mostly English speakers, and yet that's where I found myself, in a little town called Herrnhut. It's not because it's an English speaking city, but I was just at a really big foreign school. Not a college, mind you. Remember, that was too scary? This was an arts school. There were artists of all different types there. I was there to learn how to do videography, to use it to tell the stories of the forgotten of the world, the least of these, and to raise awareness about the serious problems that were in the world.

My only experience with video prior to this was shooting silly videos with my brother and best friend in our woods. But I figured it would translate pretty well, so I went for it. 

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, and being 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. 

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 what I wanted to do with video, it was clear: I wanted 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.

Mission number 3: Use video to change the world.

. . .

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. 

We were sent out to China for two and a half months, to do some English teaching, meet with the locals, work with a pair of special needs orphanages, and use our art. It wasn't much more clear than that, but away we went.

We traveled to and fro a few cities, meeting people, loving on people, and trying to use our different artistic abilities to share with people. I didn't have much luck on the video front. With the students we had, it was fine. But 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. 

But that was okay, because I still had my first mission. Love people fully, and unconditionally.

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 orphanage.

I don't mean to speak badly of the government. In fact, let's forget I said it was government run. This orphanage was run by... somebody else. 

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 one room, that wasn'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, 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 supposed to 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 love. 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, I had changed Didi's life. And I knew, somehow, that there was hope for his future.

Mission number 4: Love the little children of the world, the forgotten of the world.

. . .

"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. I even worked at an after school program, building relationships with kids from Over the Rhine. That was by far the most fulfilling job I found. It was hard, to be sure. Some tough kids from some tough backgrounds. But I really felt like I was pushing into one of the dreams I had for my life. 

Even so, 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 even after, the only job I had was at the after school program.

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, of 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, and you matter to the world. 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. 

My mission: Using video to fully and unconditionally love the little forgotten children all around the world. 

During the interview, she asked me what my dream job might be. I sheepishly asked her if I was allowed to say "this" in an interview. Because I finally felt like all my missions, all my dreams, all my callings were finally together in one.

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". On my own, I am completely incapable of doing all of this. I don't have the financial ability or the resources or the connections to minister to these children. 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 the dream. 

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

Keying In

I've officially been out of college a year, having graduated with a video production degree, and in that time I've been seeking what vision God has for my life going forth. For the past 11 months, I've been working at a youth center, Wesley Chapel Mission Center. There, I've been involved with the 5th-8th grade program, mentoring, tutoring, discipling, and building relationships with the students from Over the Rhine that attend our program. And it's been a blast. During this time, I've seen God refocusing what His vision is for my life, or rather, keying me into it.

Back in 2011, I got the chance to go to China with Youth With a Mission, to work with several special needs orphanages. And there, my heart really changed. While hanging out with a child named Didi, I became overwhelmed with the thought that, the love I was showing him in just hanging out with him, praying for him, and caring for him, was quite possibly the only experience of Christ's love that he had received in his life. My heart was broken, thinking about this. If any of you know my own testimony, I came from a place of not knowing what God's love really felt like, and when I finally experienced it for the first time, it was something that overwhelmed me, to the point of not being able to keep it in. This experience I had with Didi reformed my heart, or rather the direction my heart was taking. I had a desire to share God's love with people who, like me, didn't know His love. And God had opened my eyes to who these people were: the orphan and vulnerable child.

Working at Wesley Chapel, most of our students come from broken families. They do have some form of family in their life, whether it is a mother, an aunt, or cousins taking care of them. But coming from broken families, their needs are similar to the orphan. What they are lacking is similar. The level of love that God has for them has not always been conveyed to them accurately, if at all. This has reignited my heart for children, to show them God's love.

In my life, I've always felt like God called me to be a traveler. At YWAM, I got the overwhelming sense that He was just saying "Paul" over my life. That I would go to many different places, sharing His love wherever I could. Recently, a friend contacted me about a possible opening at a Christian non-profit we both were familiar with, called Back2Back ministries.

Back2Back ministries is an international non-profit dedicated to being a voice for orphans. They exist to love and care for the orphans and vulnerable children, by meeting their spiritual, physical, emotional, educational, and social needs to help them overcome their life circumstances and break out of the cycle of generational poverty.

When I found out they were looking for a videographer, a lot of things clicked. Here was an organization that was dedicated to serving children and showing them God's love. Check. They were also international, which meant travel. Check. And they needed somebody with video expertise to help spread their vision, and spread these children's stories. Check. All of this felt perfectly in line with what God had been calling me to all along, whether I had realized it or not.

So I leapt.

Currently, I'm in the process of fundraising my salary, so I can officially join Back2Back ministries. I will be part of their marketing team, as the Video Media Coordinator, joining together with others to visually tell the stories of these children, and help spread awareness of their situation to people all over the world, while simultaneous communicating to the children that their story matters, and people all over the world truly care about them. 

Over the next few months, I will be raising financial support for my salary so that I can commit full time to ministering to these children. It's going to be a tough few months, but I am believing that God will provide. Romans 8:32 says "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"

The need is great, but I believe these children are worth it, and I strongly believe that God is calling me into his kingdom work. My hope is to find people along the way who can join me in this journey, join me in fulfilling their part in the great commission, so that together years from now, we can look back together at all the children's lives we impacted, just by being willing to follow God's leading.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and God bless.

Mikeyy

Adventures in Adulthood, or, Answering 'What's next?'

Graduation has come and gone, and as my mind has wandered to the post graduation life, I’ve found myself asking the big question: What’s next? 

Throughout this semester, I’ve felt as though God is calling me to step outside my own comfort zone, and to step into the love He has for me, and the love He showed me when I first fully committed to Christ several years ago. God hit this lesson home in me while I was at a Navigator weekend conference in January. It wasn’t a big booming voice, or a resounding moment. It was just being in Christ-centered community, meeting up over the weekend with a guy who was thinking about being interested in this whole God thing, getting to love on people who needed it and weren’t quite getting it, and really embracing the motto that “Small things done with great love will change the world”. I was reminded pretty heavily that God called me into this life of following after him with a pretty clear notion of my role: I love people, I love loving on people, God is my source of that love, and that I love showing people that God can love on them a lot better than I can.

I had been looking for answers to the “What’s next” question, and a possibility was presented to me during this conference. It’s a program in St. Petersburg, Florida, called a Summer Training Program. I’d heard of it in the past, and it had seemed outside my comfort zone. But God was calling me to leave the comfort zone behind if it meant loving on people and loving Him, and I was keen to do just that, so I signed up.

A Summer Training Program is a 7-week experience in Florida where we live as a team in a Christ-centered community. This year, it takes place from May 29th - July 25th. We have a couple goals while we're there. The first one is to grow in Christian relationships, through one-on-one interactions, and small team or huddle environments. Next is to work full or part time, and build relationships with our coworkers, which can lead to conversations about why we’re down in Florida, and eventually about more serious things. Thirdly, we want to build relationships with the nearby community at large, through evangelism, and just being present. And fourth is to build a closer relationship with God, through worship, prayer, the word, and evangelism. I signed up to be a team leader, so in addition to that, I will also be leading a team of 3 guys, meeting with each of them one-on-one, and leading Bible studies and other evangelistic activities with them. Stepping into a leadership and discipling role is incredibly scary for me, but I’m hoping for it to be a growing experience, and I know God will guide me through it.

And that’s where I’m at right now. I’m committed to go and I'll be working at a Chick Fil-a down there. I'm graduated now, and just getting ready for life, post-graduation. I feel confident that this is what God is calling me to. It’s still a ways off from happening though. Our lovely facilities, food, and all the supplies and things that go into making this summer happen mean that I have to fundraise $2600 to be able to be there. I know God is ever so powerful, and He’s been teaching me this entire semester that there is no part of this world that He can’t act in, including financially. Which is comforting, but can also be scary, because that means I have to be bold in stepping out, knowing He has me. 

For some of you receiving this, God may be calling you to provide financially for my trip. Which would be awesome. I do need a team of people around me to contribute financially. But just as many of you might be called to act in prayer, or words of encouragement, or in other ways I can’t see. I know I’m scared going into this, especially going into a leadership position. It’s a lot different from anything I’ve ever done before. But I know God has my back, and I purposefully picked you all to send this letter to because I feel and hope that you all care about me too. I don’t send this out as a pressure for money, or anything like that. I just want you all to be involved in where my life is going after college in whatever way you feel called, and I hope you’re as excited for me to embark upon this adventure as I am. 

Thanks for reading all the way through, you’re a real trooper for bearing with me. I’d like to keep in touch as I go through this experience. I know realistically I won’t have a lot of time, and I’m generally pretty bad at keeping in touch long distance. But for those of you who are interested, I’d love to commit to emailing out once a week while I’m out there, just filling you in on what God is doing in my life and the people’s lives around me. And I’d love to hear back from you all about the same if you feel comfortable. So if you feel led, send me an email at mike{at}evanshire.net, and I’ll be sure to keep you up to date. As for financial donations, that can be done by going to:

https://donations.navigators.org/SpecialPages/DonorMaster/staffDonation

Just search for my name “Mikeyy Evans”, and you can go from there. Thank you again for reading this and taking an interest in my life. 

Much love,

Mikeyy Evans

P.S. They ask me to include this: “Contributions are solicited with the understanding that the donee organization has complete discretion and control over the use of all donated funds.”