Meet Mona Hook
My name is Mona Hook and I am severely near-sighted; I cannot see things far away without the aid of corrective lenses. Although I have struggled all my life seeing far ahead, I am grateful that hindsight is 20/20.
Let me explain... I grew up in a military family; we moved every 2-3 years to a different place. I loved the life - each new place was a great adventure. We were not a household where worshiping God and having a relationship with him was a priority. We sometimes attended a traditional church that was more focused on religion and being good enough to earn salvation than it was on having a personal relationship with Jesus.
But later in life, God faithfully orchestrated events in my life that brought me into salvation by His grace through faith in Jesus as my Savior. My parents had some friends who’d left the Army to be missionaries. I was always intrigued when I heard stories about their life as missionaries in New Zealand; it sounded so adventurous. When I was in high school in Germany, I was invited by a friend in the church youth group to go on a field trip to visit a missionary couple. Again, I was intrigued by how they lived and what they did.
Fast forward many years and I’m sitting in church at Faith Bible on a Missions Sunday. The speaker talked about how in missions, God intends for some to be “senders” and others to be “goers”. I quietly prayed, saying, “Lord, I want to be a goer.”
Sometime after that, I signed up to go on a short-term mission trip to the Dominican Republic. It was on that trip that God opened my eyes to His love for the nations, for the “least of these.” He opened my heart, especially to suffering children and women. I returned to the DR the following summer and have been doing so for 17 years.
God has expanded my love for missions and has given me the privilege of serving on the Faith Bible Missions Team and on the VisionTrust Spiritual Development Team where I have had the joy of traveling all over the world on mission trips where I minister to women and children in impoverished nations. So, in my 20/20 hindsight, I see how God designed my path in life to intersect with missions until the point where He gave me that path for my own. My vision has never been great, but God’s vision is always perfect.
Let me explain... I grew up in a military family; we moved every 2-3 years to a different place. I loved the life - each new place was a great adventure. We were not a household where worshiping God and having a relationship with him was a priority. We sometimes attended a traditional church that was more focused on religion and being good enough to earn salvation than it was on having a personal relationship with Jesus.
But later in life, God faithfully orchestrated events in my life that brought me into salvation by His grace through faith in Jesus as my Savior. My parents had some friends who’d left the Army to be missionaries. I was always intrigued when I heard stories about their life as missionaries in New Zealand; it sounded so adventurous. When I was in high school in Germany, I was invited by a friend in the church youth group to go on a field trip to visit a missionary couple. Again, I was intrigued by how they lived and what they did.
Fast forward many years and I’m sitting in church at Faith Bible on a Missions Sunday. The speaker talked about how in missions, God intends for some to be “senders” and others to be “goers”. I quietly prayed, saying, “Lord, I want to be a goer.”
Sometime after that, I signed up to go on a short-term mission trip to the Dominican Republic. It was on that trip that God opened my eyes to His love for the nations, for the “least of these.” He opened my heart, especially to suffering children and women. I returned to the DR the following summer and have been doing so for 17 years.
God has expanded my love for missions and has given me the privilege of serving on the Faith Bible Missions Team and on the VisionTrust Spiritual Development Team where I have had the joy of traveling all over the world on mission trips where I minister to women and children in impoverished nations. So, in my 20/20 hindsight, I see how God designed my path in life to intersect with missions until the point where He gave me that path for my own. My vision has never been great, but God’s vision is always perfect.
Posted in Faces of Faith