This post is the first part of a series on my adventure going to a year-long training program in the remote mountains of North Carolina. I hope you enjoy the story and can learn from the things that I learned over the course of my year there.

 

Initiation

Adapting can be difficult. Very difficult. People often claim to want something new and different but are scared to death of actual change. When I was 19, I decided that I wanted to challenge myself in this. I didn’t just move out of my childhood home, I moved to a remote mountain and lived in a cabin with no electricity for a year.

Why challenge myself in this way, you might ask? Of all the things that can be done at only 19, why would I choose this?

Let me back up.

The Master’s Mission (TMM) is a missionary training and sending organization in the remote mountains of North Carolina. They specialize in training candidates for long-term, overseas missions. More specifically: remote missions.

They train people to be able to live in places where when your truck breaks down on the side of the road, you fix it or you die. You schedule shopping trips once every three months. 4 days a week you are hauling water tanks for drinking.

How do they train for this? By putting candidates in an environment that mimics these scenarios as much as they can. TMM has a 1500 acre campus in the far western mountains of North Carolina. For reference, the closest Walmart is two hours away. So, while you are still in the states, you are separated from much of civilization.

I heard about TMM from missionary friends many years before, and for some reason had never been able to shake it loose from my thoughts. I remember a specific conversation with one of the missionary kids. He said “If I could live anywhere, it would be TMM. It’s the most beautiful place in the world.” That stuck with me. For all those years, it stuck with me.

So here I was. Graduating from high school. I didn’t want to go to college because I wanted to keep learning. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to gain real practical skills.

This TMM thing kept nagging at me, so eventually, I checked into it. I had been interested in doing overseas missions since I was young, but hadn’t thought seriously about it for many years. It always seemed like something way off in the future. But the future was here. It had come to me before I thought I had gone to it. It was time to take my next step. Where would my foot land?

I didn’t apply.

I decided that for the next year, I wanted to pursue learning in the theater world. There were several opportunities that I only had until I was 18, and I wanted to take advantage of them while I could. I spent the next year fully diving into this world. I was cast in two lead roles for separate productions, and I produced and directed my own play. I came to know a great deal about a world I was previously unfamiliar with.

However, I hadn’t forgotten about TMM. As the year went by, I became convinced that TMM was my next step. I learned a ton in theater, and now it was time to take my next step toward learning.

I applied.

Or so I thought. After a long process of miscommunication and terrible website issues, my actual application didn’t go in until less than two months before the year-long program started. I was sure I wouldn’t be accepted. I thought that it was simply too late in the game.

One month before the program started, I was accepted…

Check out Part Two: First Impressions to hear the next part of the story.