Ouachita Stories

Previously published in the 2020 Ouachitonian yearbook

It is not uncommon to hear of a student who went on a mission trip during the summer months as a Ouachita student. Morgan Masengale, a junior communication sciences and disorders major from West Memphis, Ark., experienced something that you will not hear when talking about mission trip experiences.

Masengale backpacked two months in Indonesia, spreading the Gospel with Nehemiah Teams through the International Mission Board.

“We would stay with different missionaries for about a week before breaking off into teams of four and my team would backpack through different remote islands. We would ask different people along the way to stay with them. They were always so friendly,” she said. 

She spoke of one day that she would always remember looking back on this trip. While sharing the Gospel with a group of women, Masengale started to focus on this one person in the group. The woman then asked to speak with her team at a different time in a private area, something that had not happened before that moment on the trip. They soon found out that the woman had been a believer for years, but no one in her village could know, and she never had the privilege of talking about her faith. Before they left, they gave the woman her first Bible.

“I learned so much about myself, about my relationship with God,” Masengale said.

Masengale’s goals have changed after this life-altering trip. She has focused her long-term goals into using her career as a speech pathologist out in the mission field to help others overseas.

Photo by Hannah Smith

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