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Monica (Indonesia) works in Melbourne, Australia helping introduce new software to personnel teams around the world as part of the OM International team.
She had an encounter with Jesus during university when He healed her miraculously. Monica graduated from university with IT and Health Management degrees, which she was able to use in the corporate world.
“I loved my corporate job and did that for about 15 years. Then God called me on a sabbatical,” she said.
“I had doing ministry in the back of my mind, but I just wasn't in the right life state at the time. I was just waiting on God going ‘right, what do You want me to do?’ He told me to go on sabbatical without telling me what the plan was, which is so scary. And so countercultural. In the world you're handing your resignation letter because you’re going to get a better job. But now here I'm resigning, and I have nothing to go to.
“It made no sense, but I waited. Then after about six months of resting in Him then He kind of suggested that I would go to a Bible college. I was like, ‘I don't want to go to Bible college’, but He just kept confirming that He really wanted me to do Bible college. I ended up doing that for about a year and a half.
“After that, I was like, ‘all right, what's next? God, get me back to work. I love work. Can I go back to work now, please?’ So this is where OM comes into the picture. I was looking on a Christian jobs board website in Australia and OM was advertising for some project managers. When I clicked on it, it just sounded exactly like what my professional experience was in the past. I didn’t know who OM was but I applied for the role anyway and I was shortlisted.”
To find out more about OM, Monica volunteered at a TeenStreet event in Victoria. She was impressed with what she saw. “I thought, you know, these people love Jesus, they love people, they're warm, they're fun, they're prayerful, super prayerful. I just felt like I belonged, like, these are my people.
After praying about the role, Monica found that God “just swung the door wider and wider and wider.” She moved to Melbourne and began work at the head office of OM in Australia.
Monica has had to be willing to follow God’s lead without knowing what is in store, but said the more she has done so, the more she has come to realise that God knows what He’s doing.
"I love my role. I've always loved the work in the corporate world where it's all building some kingdom, but it's not necessarily Kingdom-building work. Now here I am and I get to merge my two loves of Kingdom-building work but also my professional work and the experience that I accumulated over the years. It's very fulfilling, it's very rewarding.
“I'm just amazed that I could do this. When I was discerning where God wanted me to be, I thought it was one or the other — I'd go back to my corporate role or go into ministry. I thought if you're in ministry, the skill sets and your experience and things that you would do were completely different from what you were doing in the corporate world.
“I was quite surprised that I could merge the two and then I realised that it was way better. God is so clever because He knows how much I loved my professional work and so He allowed me to serve Him in this way, in missions and for Kingdom-building activities, with what I really love without denying me what I loved doing.
“God doesn't deny how He's wired us. He acknowledges it and then He affirms it rather than suppresses it or denies it. I thought, ‘wow, this is so clever. You're so smart. God, I would have never thought this is possible.’”
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