One night in church feeling frustrated I prayed that to God, saying, “Look, Father please show me what you want me to do you’re really going to have to hit me over the head or something because I can’t hear what your trying to tell me”.
After the service, a lady in the church came up to me and led me to the church notice board where BMS Summer Teams were being advertised, and that was when I knew this was what God wanted me to do.
Andrew: What did you do overseas, and what would you consider to be the highlight?
Claire: BMS have guided me through two different types of experience: two Summer Team trips to Brazil (soon to be three), one individual work placement to Nepal and another to the Baptist Times newspaper.
Over the past two trips to Brazil I have been truly blessed to have been involved with PEPE pre-school projects. The work involved teaching four to seven year olds, taking some classes and generally having fun with them, providing games and crafts.
The highlights of the trips have definitely been the challenge of being out of my depth and totally having to rely on God for everything. Through the two trips I have felt so utterly close to God and each time it becomes harder to come home.
Working with two passionate churches as they move forward in providing pre-school facilities for their communities and getting people into the church is an amazing experience too. Understanding the encouragement you can be to a church that is trying out new projects and evangelism techniques is a real privilege.
I then approached BMS again about a year ago, when I returned from Brazil for the second time, to ask if they would be able to set me up with some work experience to run alongside my journalism degree at university.
They came back to me with two different options, one being three weeks with the Baptist Times and the other three and a half weeks in Nepal with the International Nepal Fellowship.
The Baptist Times provided me with some invaluable training that put my book learning into practice and enabled me to get some work published which was brilliant. It enabled me to overcome some small fears and to become more confident in my approach to my written work.
The team I worked with were absolutely fantastic and provided me with an insight into the career I hope to pursue.
My trip to Nepal was probably the most challenging one I’ve done so far. It was extremely different travelling solo and I did find it quite difficult at first to adjust but this was another experience that brought me to my knees in prayer and taught me to rely on God utterly and completely for everything.
The provision of people to help me through and the constant awareness of people praying for me as well as the supportive e-mails from people who work with BMS was an amazing encouragement and spurred me on. In Nepal I got the opportunity to visit some expat schools and do interviews with teachers and doctors who worked for INF.
I also visited Green Pastures Hospital in Pokhara which was a really thought provoking experience. As I walked around the hospital meeting with leprosy sufferers, spinal injury patients and burns victims, the extent of the dedication of the people working there really hit me.
I finally learnt what it meant to dedicate your life to Christ through the witness of doctors and patients at the hospital and in the places I was staying.
Andrew: What impact do you think you were able to make on those you met and worked with?
Claire: I went out to Brazil thinking I would be giving constantly and was taken aback when I realised that I had actually gained from the experience as much as I had given, if not more.
The biggest impact that we saw was the encouragement we were able to be to the churches. We had gone to work with pre-school children, which was amazing, but we were also a huge part of the church family out there and it was really great to see the encouragement we could be to them as they stepped out and tried new things.
Andrew: How do you believe the experience has changed you?
Claire: My BMS experience has made me grow in confidence and brought me closer in my relationship with God. It has taught me a lot about myself through showing me my weak and strong points and enabling me to push beyond my naturally comfortable boundaries to discover God’s plans for my life.
Andrew: Why do you think the volunteer programme is such an important part of what BMS does?
Claire: For me it’s been the open door to a new and exciting world that God wants me to pursue my career in. Summer and Action Teams especially are a great way to test out what mission is and whether you could go long-term and is also an amazingly poignant learning experience.
Getting out onto the ‘frontline’ mission field allows you to throw yourself into something that perhaps you never thought you could achieve and in this experience lets God show you new and amazing gifts and the wonder of his people around the world.
It is particularly important for BMS because it allows them to reach around the world, sending resources and spreading God’s outrageous love to those who have never heard of Jesus.
It has been a great way of highlighting the needs of the wider world to churches in the UK through people who have lived the experience and shared it at home.