A Dream Job: Adult Mission Story for December 20, 2025

Jenny never planned to move to Chile from the United States. When she graduated from Andrews University, she volunteered to teach English for a year in Chile. She thought that she would return to the United States at the end of the year. But five years later, she found herself teaching Bible classes at Chile Adventist University.

Here is what happened.

Ever since she was a young girl, Jenny had wanted to become a missionary.

While completing undergraduate theology studies at Andrews University in Michigan, she spoke about her desire with one of her teachers.

The teacher had helped another student go to Chile for a year with Adventist Volunteer Service and suggested that Jenny consider a similar path.

Jenny liked the idea. After graduating from the university, she visited VividFaith.org, an Adventist Church website where people can apply for positions with Adventist Volunteer Service. She saw an opening in Chile and sent her resume. Before long, she was accepted and flying to Chile to spend a year teaching English at a center of influence.

Jenny couldn’t have been happier!

The year passed in a flurry of English classes, Bible studies, and friendships. Jenny was invited to stay a second year, and she agreed.

By the end of the second year, she could speak fluent Spanish, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Central Chile Mission was looking for a bilingual assistant. She was offered the position as a volunteer. Jenny agreed and for the next three years managed church membership records, trained church secretaries, and served as the local leader for Adventist Volunteer Service — the very organization for which she was volunteering.

Along the way, she also got married to a Chilean.

Jenny couldn’t have been happier!

Then Chile Adventist University called, asking if she would be willing to teach Bible classes. Jenny was excited to return to her roots after majoring in theology at Andrews University.

When she became a legal resident of Chile, she made the transition to Bible teacher at the university.

For the first time in five years, she was not part of Adventist Volunteer Service but a full-time university employee.

Today, Jenny is one of five Bible teachers at the university.

She and the other teachers teach general Bible classes that are required of all but theology students at the university. Theology students have their own classes. Many of Jenny’s students learn about God and the Bible for the first time in her classes. About three-fourths of the university’s 3,000 students come from non-Adventist families.

Jenny, who is 28 years old, couldn’t be happier. Being a missionary with Adventist Volunteer Service opened the door to a career that she had never dreamed possible.

“I meant to come to Chile for one year and now it has been more than six years,” she said. “I feel like it was here that God wanted me.”

This quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering, also known as the Quarterly Mission Project Offering, will go toward two projects at Chile Adventist University in Chillán, Chile. One project is to open an Adventist Volunteer Service center that will send 30 missionaries into the world every year. The center will have five classrooms for training students to be missionaries and an auditorium with 250 seats. In the second university project, dormitories will be expanded to allow 50 more students to study on the campus. Currently, the university has about 3,000 students, the vast majority of whom are not Adventist and live off campus. The new dorm rooms will be open to all but are especially needed by Adventist theology and education students who come to the university from far-off places and are studying to work in Adventist churches and schools. Thank you for your generous offering.