If you’ve ever been to a Student Missions Vespers at Southern Adventist University, you probably haven’t forgotten what it was like. The parade of flags from different countries, inspiring music playing in the background, colorful traditional outfits, and testimonies from former volunteers make it the perfect setting to decide to be a student missionary. For Kaylee, it confirmed what she was already hoping to do.

Kaylee wants to be a teacher, and mission has always been a possibility in her mind, not just for short mission trips here and there, like the ones she took in high school, but also long-term. She’d traveled to Costa Rica, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic in high school, and she knew she wanted to take a year off to serve as a volunteer when she came to Southern.

God eventually made it clear that He wanted her in Bangladesh, so she signed up, excited about what He had planned.

When she arrived at Bangla Hope Children’s Home, it was overwhelming at first. Everyone was trying to talk to her and touch her. “I had kids latch onto my hands, my shoulders, and my arms,” she said. “There were kids everywhere.”

The morning after arriving, Kaylee went to speak with the principal to introduce herself and share some of her expectations. He said he would speak to the teachers and, a few minutes later, he called her back to his office. “He told me I was going to teach in about two hours! I was like, ‘I just got here less than 24 hours ago, and they’re already putting me in a classroom?’ I was so scared.”

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Kaylee prayed and made a rough lesson plan of some games she could play with the kids. “It was definitely a little test of faith, but it was also such a cool moment of being like, ‘All right, God, we’re doing this,’” she says. “It made me really happy, because it’s something I’d been wanting for so many years. Relying on Him was what I was craving before I even got there. So I went to the classroom, and I started learning the kids’ names.”

One of her students really challenged her. She would stand right in front of Kaylee after class or around campus and not let her pass until Kaylee gave her a hug. “I didn’t want to hug her,” she said. “Because she was acting so entitled. It was frustrating.”

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“One day, we were going to lunch, and she was standing right in front of me. Every time she had asked me for a hug before, I just gave her a quick little squeeze. But this one day, when all I wanted to do was eat my lunch, I thought, ‘Fine.’ So, I wrapped my arms around her for that quick little squeeze, and I couldn’t let go. I hugged her more and more and told her, ‘Girl, you know that I love you.’ In that moment, I felt so filled with the Holy Spirit. For a split second, I felt like God gave me the ability to see her through His eyes and to see how valued she was. It made me feel really bad for those times I had only given her a quick hug, and I decided to ask Him to fill me with His love every day.”

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Another profound experience Kaylee had was when a staff family adopted a five-day-old baby. The kids came up to her to show her the baby, and she hesitated. “Babies kind of scared me, just because they’re so fragile,” she says. “I said I’d wait to hold him until he was a little older, but when we walked in, he was so beautiful, so precious and valuable. I’ve been to the Bolivian Salt Flats. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon and other national parks, but never in my life have I been more in awe of God’s creation than the moment I was holding that sweet, little, five-day-old baby. God put so much work into him. He put so much work into me and into each one of those kids.

“God changed my mindset, and I realized the value and worth of each child,” she adds. “I couldn’t love them on my own; I had to draw that love from God. Now that I know that, I think I’m going to be able to love a whole lot better.”