Spending a year in Zambia as a missionary associate is an exciting next step in my missionary journey.  Here is my brief testimony of why I am where I am today.  While growing up in the church, meeting missionaries and hearing their stories was one of my favorite times.  I felt my own calling to be a missionary as a twelve year old child.  What that looks like has been shaped along the years by different people and experiences.  My first missions trip was a high school AIM trip to Venezuela.  It helped deepen my desire.  A high school science teacher encouraged my pursing of a career in medicine as a senior.  From then on my path has been to work overseas in medical missions.  I received my undergraduate degree at Evangel University where my academic and spiritual life matured.  In medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin, I was able to go to Zambia as a fourth year medical student and complete a month rotation with another student and an experienced medical missionary nurse practioner.  Though previously I had felt a call to India, during that trip a love of the African people was born that has only grown over the years.  I spent my pediatric residency in Cleveland, Ohio where I went to Kenya for a month rotation.  God has provided a perfect job at Southwestern Medical Clinic in Michigan with a Christian, mission-minded practice.  I have been able to go to Sudan for a month.  I also went to India with Evangel premed and nursing students as a preceptor.  There it was confirmed to me that I wanted to go with AGWM.  Last May I returned for one month to Zambia and worked with the same missionaries from my medical school trip.  Through many big and small ways God showed me Zambia is the right country for me to serve.