I've been in country for a little over a month now, which is wild by the way, and I've just recently come to a discovery that I should have worked out weeks ago. I have no idea why I'm here. That's crazy right? Showing up, at 17 none the less, in a country pretty much as far away from home as you can get, and not knowing why you're there? Now, there is a bit more to it than that, so let me walk you through it.
My background has been ministry pretty much my whole life. A few years back my life hit a pretty low point, I was at the end of a pretty rough breakup, and had a lot of self loathing, but mostly I just felt alone. It was at that moment that God comforted me, told me I wasn't alone. Sure you hear it a lot growing up in the church but I never really knew it, you know. But it was at that moment that I truly decided to dedicate my life to the Lord. That's when I accepted God's call on my life to go into ministry professionally. And, so it happens he was working in my life, much more than I realized.
A month or two later my school, a charter school with a class size of like 15 and 4 teachers on staff, was hosting a practice interview day. As the event was wrapping up I was talking to my science teacher about how, although grateful for the experience, I don't think that I'll do a whole lot of secular interviews like that, because I want to go into ministry. It so happened, that teacher was Cami Mather, director of an international ministry, and 20 year missionary. She saw my passion for God's work, and invited me to do an internship for her two summers later. God gave me the boldness to follow up with Cami a year later and get the internship in motion, as well as providing waayyy more money then I ever thought that I could get together for this trip.
So here we are, Romania. The first week Cami asked me a question I don't know that I could ever forget. "So, why are you here, in Romania. Why did you come." And I was blindsided. Most everything I've done in the last year and a half was to get here, but why? Up to that point I hadn't really considered the question. God kept opening doors, so I kept walking through them, all the way onto the airplane. At the time I said something about how "I'm going into vocational ministry in the future, probably internationally, and how this experience was a great opportunity for me to really get the feel of living as a missionary." Which is all true, that is my plan, and that is why I got here, I don't think it's why God put me here.
My youth pastor once said something along the lines of "God is always working around us, it's our job to not excuse it away when we see it happening." And that really stuck with me. So here's what I've seen, I happened to move to a small farm town in Oregon a few years back, I happened to choose to go to the tiny charter school instead of the big high school most of my friends went to, Cami happened to take a job teaching there, I happened to accept my calling to ministry while in that school, I happened to mention it to Cami, Cami happened to run a ministry, Stepping Forward happened to let me be there intern for the summer, I happened to be immensely blessed blessed through my fundraising, and it just so happens that God's shown me a little bit more of His greatness every day I've been here. I see it in the passionate hearts of the people I'm working with. That's all God, all the time.
So, we circle back to the ever-looming question of why. Why was God so intentional to put me here? And the answer? I have no idea, but I'm okay with that. Maybe it's the love I've gotten the opportunity to pour out into the kids here, maybe it's the connections I've made, maybe it's so that I can see the true passion and great work that the people working here are doing, maybe it's the changed man I've become in my time here, maybe it's the new compassionate perspective I'm going home with, maybe it's the plans I'm already making to come back, or maybe it's something I haven't encounter yet and will find in the next few weeks before I head home. Maybe I'll never know, and that's okay. If my getting here, and the work I've witnessed in my time here should teach you anything, it's this: You don't need to know what God is doing. Just trust that what He's doing is good, because He is good.
Keagan Neely, August 2, 2025.