The summer after my sophomore year in college, I had the privilege of studying in South America free of charge (except personal expenses). God truly blessed me when He had me apply to the Vira I. Heinz World Leadership Program. Stepping into this opportunity, I had the mindset that there was no point of making friends and getting to know new people because they would leave anyway. I thought I was a nuisance to everyone around me. I had this nasty habit of making one person's opinion of me what everyone thought of me. Unhealthy--I know--but sometimes God will take you somewhere you've never been, to meet people you don't know, to change your life forever.
I would love to say my first full encounter with God was at a church I went to off campus in college but it wasn't. It happened in South America where I thought I was all alone and He showed me I wasn't. His encounters with me started at love and God won me over from there. Sometimes I tend to over complicate things. I thought I was going to study abroad and God sent me there to save me from myself. I could not see how much I was missing until I was in a place that was overflowing with kindness, love, and smiles. It was a place and state of being I had finally been convinced no longer existed but it did.
God proved me wrong. He used this place and the people to strip me down to who I was at my core. He had broken down my defenses to show me that I could live a life that fully depended on Him but first it required breaking down who I thought I was so He could build me into who He needed me to be. He put me in a place where familiarity was not present so I could not rely on old habits, old thought processes, or any previous definitions of what made me who I was. All I had was Him and I had to see Him in every place I went and every person I met. It was in the unfamiliar place that God changed me so I could be closer to Him, better for others, and better for myself to walk out His purpose for my life.