The Story Continues

Christmas of 2008 was cute. We did a Secret Santa on the Globe team (as we did every year) and I got Jon. He got me too. (I swear it wasn't rigged. I think.)

At the same time, Jon and I got called up to serve on the CU committee for March 2009-March 2010. Now this was back in the ancient times when people were appointed rather than elected, and also when we weren't allowed to date other people on committee. They've changed all that now.

So we spent the next year being really good friends. I went to China on mission for the entire summer of 2009, and Jon was one of the few people I kept in contact with when I was there. I still wasn't sure what to make of our friendship, and being on committee provided a good excuse to avoid thinking about it.

But finally in the fall of 2009, Jon and I decided we needed to talk. So we did. And we decided that things were going somewhere. But we had a full six months left on committee. To make a complicated story short, we waited.

Things weren't easy when we started going out in March 2010. Neither of us knew anything about being a boyfriend/girlfriend, and it was hard not really knowing what to expect and having to work out how everything was going to be done. Again, I went to China for the entire summer; but this time, after a second time of living with a group of mission-minded Christians, I became certain I wanted to become a long-term missionary in the future.

Jon had planned a trip to Singapore. And the poor boy had expected a fun three weeks of spending time with his girlfriend doing tourist-y things, that turned out to be a three weeks of wondering whether we were being pulled in opposite directions since I wanted to become a missionary and he wasn't sure if he did.

At the end of the three weeks, we broke up. (You weren't expecting that, were you!)

created by oswinald

But, as you guessed, it didn't last for long. After a few more weeks of thinking and praying and talking about it, we realised we didn't have different visions for the future after all. I had no intentions on marrying someone whose only ambition was full-time ministry, and Jon (and I) realised that there are many opportunities for teachers and IT people and all sorts on the mission field.

And so we decided to give it another shot. (Plus I couldn't really bear the thought of a fourth year in uni without Jon around.)

2011 was God's answer to our prayers. We organised several new events for our uni (it's amazing how much time you find you have when you stop attending all those committee meetings!) including a missions fair and an East Asian fair; we attended several missions events including a weekend with New Tribes Mission, and I went back to China again for the summer—only this time with Jon. It was becoming clearer and clearer that God had placed the desire for missions in me for a reason after all.

In addition, Jon won a scholarship to study for a PhD in computer science at a university in Singapore. The future was looking pretty alright.

To be continued...