| DeBoer, Krista |
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Country: Burkina Faso Project #: C0582 Biography: Krista was adopted from Chiapas, Mexico and grew up in a Christian family in Oak Park, Illinois. She always loved going to church and when she was four years old, she told her mom that she wanted Jesus in her heart. While she was still in high school, Krista went on her first mission trip to Russia. It was here that she started considering the possibility of being a long term missionary. But during her first year of university, things started to fall apart in her life. She struggled with her faith after a friend was killed by a drunk driver, and then decided to withdraw from university in her second year. Krista returned home and experienced an amazing time of rejuvenation as she entered a grief counseling class and also started to get involved in her home church. Another reason that Krista had left school was because she felt that God was calling her to pursue long term mission. She started to look at different organizations on the internet and found the TREK program. She had never heard of MBMSI before and had never been to Canada, but when she received her application in the mail she knew that she was supposed to go on TREK. The two months of TREK training was an exciting time for Krista as she learned that God wanted to speak to her and could use her to speak into others’ lives. TREK was a transformational time for Krista as people came alongside her and supported, loved and prayed for her. Krista had a very difficult experience when she went to Botswana on TREK and was unsure about whether she wanted to be a missionary because it had been so hard. After processing her experience, she started to think that maybe she wasn’t called to be a missionary in Africa, but thought that God was calling her to go back to Mexico and work with her people group as a missionary there. But this all changed when Krista went on TREK a second time to Burkina Faso in 2005. Krista can still remember the moment that she realized that her heart was changing as she started thinking that she might want to go back to Burkina Faso as a long term missionary. She wrestled with this because she had thought that God was calling her to Mexico. But she realized that she loved the people of Burkina Faso and that it felt like home, and was also encouraged by the support of the missionaries who were working in Burkina Faso. When she returned from Burkina Faso, Krista finished her degree at Columbia Bible College and also spent a year at seminary. Now she is preparing to join Phil & Carol Bergen and Blaine & Michelle Warner in Burkina Faso. She will be learning the language and culture and will mostly be working with women and children. She is excited to try new things and is open to serving wherever she is needed.
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