There’s a new restaurant here on State St. called the Earl of Sandwich, where the sandwiches are overpriced, the coffee is decent, and the breakfast sandwiches are delish. Hopefully, it’ll out-live its previous tenants – Einstein’s Bagels and Caribou Coffee. However, what’s special about this place is that right above it is a small, easy-to-miss institute called the Michigan Language Center, a.k.a. my mission field for the past year and a half. Here, you can find students, as young as thirteen and as old as fifty from all over the world (Brazil, Korea, Japan, China, Mali, Estonia, etc.). They have come here to learn a language that we Americans often take for granted, but that they believe is the key to a better future.

My journey to the field of education took a few detours. I came into college wanting to study law. My family felt that my argumentative, stubborn, won’t-stop-till-I-win nature had to be redeemed somehow. However, hating the idea of sitting in an office and doing paper work, I pursued a dual degree in English and Psychology instead, merely out of interest. Then I found myself at graduation without a clue of what to do next. The only thing I knew and learned for sure throughout my college years was that missions was God’s heart, and I wanted to be a part of it. Right after graduation, I went on a six-week mission trip to Peru where upon seeing more of God’s heart, I prayed the simple prayer that God would use me to reach the nations. However, God’s plans looked a bit different from my own, for when I came back from the mission trip, I struggled to find a job, and started to work as a waitress at Café Zola.

While busing tables and forcing smiles to rude customers, God gave me little clues here and there about what He had in mind. I remembered back to when I went to an Urbana missions conference a couple years back; there, God spoke to me through a seminar called the “North Korean Underground Church is Alive.” The speaker stated that one of the best ways to reach unreached nations like North Korea was to teach English. I also remembered the three years of working as an assistant to an ESL teacher in Northwood Community Language Center in North Campus, and loving every minute of it. I also remembered back to the simple, but sincere prayer on the boats in the Ucayali River in Peru. And it finally dawned on me that perhaps God wanted me to teach English. I wasn’t a 100% sure, but after a year of working at Zola, with nothing to lose, I applied to the graduate TESOL program at EMU.

I remember the first day that I received my books (Pronunciation, Grammar, Language Acquisition) I had this sinking feeling that I had made a huge mistake. After all, I was not at all passionate about past tense versus past perfect progressive tense, or why “dough” and “tough” were pronounced completely different from each other. I liked the literature aspect of English, not this. However, as I continued on with my studies, and continued to get experience in the classroom, and finally became an ESL teacher myself, I knew this was what God had created me for.

Over the past couple years at the MLC, it has been exciting to build relationships with students from all over the world, and to see conversation partners and members from our church sharing God’s love with them. It has been exciting to see some come out to small groups and to church and learn about the gospel message, some for the very first time. It has been exciting to hear about our church’s vision to build churches and schools all around the world. I strongly believe that education is such a strong evangelistic tool. And I’m in good company for Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”