1 Corinthians 9:22 says, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”
When I looked up the word become it said: to change or to grow, any process of change. Learning and growing is a continual process. It is not one of those things we can just check off the list. 
Does this look familiar? Yep, that is me and my siblings at the training center in Mississippi when I was about 5 years old.
And this picture was taken in the airport headed over to PNG for the first time when I was six. It was around this time that I started telling people, “when I grew up I wan to be a missionary mom.”
Well, here I stand the mother of two beautiful children and “a missionary with New Tribes Mission.” There we go “check check”. Not even close! I can honestly say that if you asked anyone from our class we would all share with you that this has been an awesome learning and growing experience. But even more than that our eyes have been opened to our failures and our weaknesses and most of all our need for God. We have all been challenged with our need to continually become like Christ. Orientation our first semester I remember a speaker challenging us by saying,
“You don’t magically change when you fly overseas. Who you are today is who you will be over there.”
This was a huge wake up call for me. It opened my eyes to my need to apply myself and be a learner. In our communications skills class we learned from Howard Hendricks that, “The effective teacher always teaches from the out flow of a full life. If you stop growing today, you stop teaching tomorrow.” This applies in all areas of life, parenthood, friends, family, church, in the US, overseas, or wherever the Lord may lead you. Even just a few days ago in class George Walker said, “You can save yourself a lot of headache be being a learner. Sure it takes time, effort and work but it is worth it. Others have gone before us. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.” Howard Hendricks also said, “The Bible was written not to satisfy your curiosity but to help you conform to Christ’s image. Not to make you a smarter sinner but to make you like the Savior. Not to fill your head with a collection of biblical facts but to transform your life.”
I know I speak for many or all of us when I say to the staff THANK YOU for being a part of this learning process. And I want to thank my classmates for also teaching me so much and being a part of the learning process in my life. I look forward to years of more learning. I mean we are only in E1 right? I want to leave you with one last verse from James 1:22,
“But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says.”