By Ann Cook

FROM THE ARCHIVES PART 3: WINTER 2007

I was blessed to be raised in a Godly home with a dad who taught me how to pray for God’s leadership in everything.  It didn’t matter if it was big or small, we prayed about it and I always saw God at work.  Therefore, I’ve never had a hard time believing that God was going to take care of me or any of my needs.

When I was six years old, I realized that my relationship with Jesus was nothing.  I didn’t really have a relationship with Him. I had been taught that when you accept Jesus as your Savior you also make Him Lord of your life and I knew I hadn’t done that yet.  So, when I did, I meant it and I was willing to do anything for God.  That song “Wherever He leads I’ll Go” was one of my favorites and became my theme.

When I was eleven years old, I felt a definite call to be full time in missions.  I thought that meant I would be a missionary on a foreign field.  Little did I know that my mission field would be in Boone, NC in ways I had not anticipated.

I see now how God had a mission for me as a teacher’s aid for over twenty years.  From there I worked with Samaritans Purse doing logistics for all the doctors and nurses who went overseas.  I see this now as an important part of my missionary call, but at the time I didn’t because I still thought being a missionary meant going to a foreign land.  That “foreign field” mind-set almost caused me to miss one of my most fulfilling missions because; never in a million years would I have thought my mission field would be At a Crisis Pregnancy Center.  In fact, when one of the board members of Boone Crisis Pregnancy Center approached me to ask me to consider the director’s position I didn’t even want to consider it because it didn’t fit my plan.  However, my husband prodded me to put into practice what my upbringing had taught me when he simply asked, “Have you prayed about this?”  Once I began to do this, God’s direction came clear to me and the board confirmed it by hiring me for the director’s position where I served for the next ten years.

It was amazing to me to behold the many ways that God worked in people’s lives as I simply trusted Him to “take care of the rest.”

During that ten year period, I knew I was in the full time missions call that God had spoken to me about as a small girl.  From the beginning, God prepared me for the work I was going to do by speaking these words to my heart: “Ann, I haven’t called you to do anything but speak the truth in love and leave the rest to me.”  It was amazing to me to behold the many ways that God worked in people’s lives as I simply trusted Him to “take care of the rest.”        

There was one time in my ministry there that I didn’t find out how God had worked in a young girl’s life until over seven years after the fact.  She came to me as a junior in college to talk about the baby she planned to abort.  I listened com-passionately to her story and let her know I cared about her.  I shared with her all the medical options for her to consider in order for her to make an informed decision.  After our time together, she said to me “I appreciate your time but my mom and I have decided that the best thing to do is to abort the baby.”  That was the last time I had any contact with her until she showed up at my office over seven year later and asked to speak with me.

She told me that she and her mom did go to the abortion clinic as they had planned and they took her to a holding room where she fell asleep and had a dream.  In the dream, she saw a light coming towards her and she was frightened and began to scream for someone to come and get her out of there.  As the light got closer she realized she was looking into the face of Christ and He was crying.  He said to her “You are mine, this baby’s mine and I love you both.  Please don’t do this.”  Immediately, she went to the waiting room and told her mother she didn’t want to abort the baby.  Instead she placed for adoption.  Now, here she was over seven years later to tell me that she had just attended the birthday of the seven year old boy she had placed for adoption.  She cried tears of joy as she told me how happy she was that she hadn’t gone through with that abortion.  Now she is married with two young boys of her own and another child on the way. 

This was just one of the many examples of God “taking care of the rest” in the mission field He called me to at the Boone Crisis Pregnancy Center.  In 2005, I retired as the director there, knowing that I had done what God had called me to do.  As I look forward to the rest of my life with my husband, my two girls and my grandkids, I still have the “Wherever God Leads I’ll Go” mindset, but for now I know my mission field is Boone, NC.