Internships with Word Made Flesh are challenging, rewarding, and transformational. Participants are given the opportunity to gain firsthand experience in community formation, discipleship, and service. These internships are a time of tremendous spiritual growth. For many, this growth comes from challenges both expected and unexpected. Recently, we sat down with current WMF Intern Cora Breakfield to discuss the challenges she faced while preparing for her internship with WMF Bolivia.
What made you choose to spend three months doing an internship with Word Made Flesh?
I don’t really know. I just went because I feel like it’s what God wanted me to do. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into.
What was the most difficult thing about preparing to do this internship?
Back at home, people kept asking me, what are you going to do in South America? What will it be like? Why are you going? What made you choose an internship with Word Made Flesh?
I always felt compelled to answer. Everyone wanted to know the details of what they were supporting. They wanted to know why my heart was leading me to this place. They wanted to know how I was going to change the world with all of my hard work.
How did you answer that question?
I had a few typical answers. Honestly, I felt like a person with a sales pitch. I started to sound like a recording. I always seemed to reply with the same four sentences. “I’m going to work with women who are survivors of the sex trade. I’ll be painting inspirational murals on some walls in their workshops. I’ll do whatever they need me to do.
It seems like you felt a lot of pressure to provide solid answers for people.
Absolutely, even though all of my answers were genuine, the truth of the matter was this: I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know why I wanted to go to South America. I didn’t have an agenda or a plan, but how was I supposed to tell people that?
People, what people?
The ones who I was asking to financially support my trip. If you are going to support something, don’t you want it to be worth your means? Don’t you want it to be amazing and beautiful?
Were you afraid?
It just felt uncomfortable. What I was saying was true, but it didn’t feel right. I felt like I had to be more certain than I really felt inside. For some reason I always questioned my heart and I questioned God. “Am I really supposed to go? I’m I going for all the wrong reasons?
Did your feelings change when you arrived in Bolivia?
Even when I got to Bolivia I was asked the same question. “Why are you here?” I was caught off guard, but my recorder took over and answered the question I had answered so many times back at home. Again, I questioned my motives. “Am I just selfish? Did I just want to travel to another country? What if I came here for my own personal benefit? Maybe I’m just too wrapped up in myself to see how selfish coming here was.
So when did you begin to feel comfortable with why you were doing this internship?
It wasn’t until I was two weeks into the trip that God cleared the fog around my head and allowed me to see clearly why I had been so uncomfortable with the questions.
What did you feel like God was showing you?
He has a plan for my whole life and with my time working with WMF. He would let His purpose unravel in His own timing. He put this place on my heart and wanted me to follow it looking only to Him. I was to stay blind to every earthly explanation.
And you found comfort in that answer?
Yeah, there are countless examples in the Bible of men and women following God like that. It seemed so simple. How had I failed to see it?
If you could do it all over again why would you tell people that you were going on this trip?
I would just tell people that I don’t know why I was called to go and I was going blindly. God is with me, so what more do I need? Looking back on it, it seems like a piece of cake.
What stopped you from answer the question that way in the first place?
I feel like in America we want concrete plans. I imagined the laughs and snickers I would have received, or the challenges of my decisions. The discomfort I would have felt when people challenged my motives. And the nagging in the back of my head what would say, you should have used the sales pitch. It’s what they wanted to hear.
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