A Short Part Before the Last Part of My Story... right now

12 years ago, my aunt and uncle knew God had called them to go to France to be missionaries. God used telling them to go to set a spark in my own life. I was certain at that point that God wanted me to go with them to France. So I began pursuing that by asking if I could study French in high school instead of Spanish, paying more attention in Bible class, I don't know, I was set on going.

Having studied French for four years, I talked with my parents and aunt and uncle about actually going to France. It was my desire to go for a year and just serve by cleaning or whatever was necessary. When I turned 18, we decided to get my passport- this was a really long and discouraging time based on all the paperwork they required. How is a home-school student supposed to have a school ID? (That was fun to make.) I was talking with my sister Sarah about it once and she said, "Rachel, do you think that maybe God doesn't want you to go to France?"
"No, of course He wants me to go. This has been on my heart for longer than anything else. It's been there for 6 years..."
"Ok," Sarah said, "but just remember that if He doesn't want you to go there, He has somewhere better for you to go." This really pierced me. 1)I was positive God wanted me to go, so why was it so hard? 2) If I hadn't been getting God's prompting to do, this than did I really know what His promptings were like? 3) Had I been trying to manipulate God into something I wanted?

My passport application had finally been sent in and now I was just waiting for it to come so I could purchase my plane tickets. One day, some family friends living in Russia said that there was another family in Russia that was about to have twins. There wasn't a need spoken, it was more of a joyous announcement, but immediately, Mom, Dad, Sarah, Ben, and I all knew that I was supposed to got to Russia. I tried to figure out how I could do both, but no, the time that I would be "needed" in Russia was the time I had planned to go to France and by the time I was done with all of that, I would be out of money.

There are two major things I think God wanted to teach me through this time:
1) God will often use what we believe wholeheartedly that we should be doing to get us to where we can be used by Him. There was no way I would have gotten a passport before I was 18 if I hadn't thought it was needed for France.

2) I'm positive God asked me during this time if I was actually willing to go anywhere He wanted me to go. It's really easy to tell God, "I will go anywhere you want," and even mean it wholeheartedly when you are home. However, when you are far away from your family and you need to answer that question, it feels very different.

I don't want this post to be super long, so I'll stop here and do the last little bit sometime later... maybe never. :)