Dreams Coming True – Part 1
Over the course of a few installments we are going to share with you the wonderful influence the American Baptist Women’s NYS Scholarship Fund has had in one of our young women’s life and how her dreams are coming true.
Michelle has had dual aspirations from a young age. She has dreamed of becoming a doctor and she has dreamed of becoming a missionary. She has felt strongly called by God to use her academic abilities and her compassion to serve in the medical field but that call has always been joined to her desire in the foreign mission field. – Pastor Jay O-Connor, Pastor at First Baptist Church of Walton, NY
Meet Michelle DuMond, our ABWM of NYS Scholarship girl from 2004-2008 and 2011-2014 for a total of 7 years through her undergraduate degree and graduate degrees.
Jackie Lottermoser, our Scholarship Chairwoman, has chosen to select quotes from Michelle’s application and letters she has written to her ABWM Association churches over the course of the time as a scholarship girl with us. We will be sharing those here in a few installments.
In January of 2013 Michelle wrote the following to her sponsor churches.
This has been a busy semester but I have been so encouraged by all your cards, prayers and gifts. I cannot tell you how happy you all made me when I get a whole mailbox full of cards, or a package in the mail. I told all of my classmates when I received the box of cookies that “my church family sent these cookies.” They were all grateful because I shared them and they were very impressed by such kindness, as was I.
I have rotated through Neurology, Emergency Medicine, Radiology, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and I am currently in Pediatrics. Every step of the way I am wondering, “Is this what God wants me to do for a career?”
As a missionary you need training in almost everything, but at the end of the day it seems that the real decision will be made not from the wisdom of man but from the leading of the Holy Spirit, at least that’s what I am banking on!”
In the fall of 2012 Michelle attended The Global Mission Health Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, where she met several missionaries and mission agencies specifically working in the medical field.
I even found some doctors willing to read my draft of a thesis paper I am writing about Child Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia. I am really excited about it and I am hoping that I will be able to travel to Asia and interview young girls who have been rescued, and document their road to recovery with the hope of helping to establish protocol that can be implemented elsewhere.
Check back for the next installment coming soon.
