How do you get from there to here?

So how does one go from working as a journalist, then a marketing copywriter to serving as a missionary? Well, that's my testimony.

At the beginning of the last decade I was writing newspaper articles with the term Y2K in them, and thinking the world had gone mad. Within 18 months I was one of the first casualties of the decline of the newspaper business, so I tried my hand at marketing writing, which was really a nice gig. The pay was much better, and owing to the fact that I chose to ply my skills in the marketing department at a bank, the hours and holidays were much nicer than journalism.

But was I content? Hardly. God continued to nudge me (okay, he was kicking me in the pants) telling me He had something else in mind for me. I knew I was being called to full-time ministry and I was terrified. I went back to journalism 101 and started asking God the 5 Ws and H questions (who, what, when, where, why and how). At the end of this lengthy question and answer session, I had learned two important things:

1. God knows what it means to be long suffering. I should have clearly been getting on His last nerve with the second question.

2. Serving God was going to be an amazing adventure.

He led me to Gospel for Asia, an international organization which has been sharing the love of Jesus with the people of South Asia for 30 years. I started serving with the ministry in October, 2006.

Full-time Christian work is quite a bit different than journalism and bank marketing, and that's a very good thing! It is amazing to know that what I write each day has the power to change the life of the person who reads it, as well as the person whom the story is about.

Want to read some of my stuff? Go to www.gfa.org and look at the "news" tab. Sign up for the weekly email updates. Check out a copy of SEND! magazine on the site.