How a Plane Ride Broke One Student’s Heart for Missions

Too often, short-term missions never leads to long-term impact. But for Megan Kinne, that wasn’t the case.

There is a stigma that college students who serve overseas short-term rarely decide to return long-term. But God had a different plan for Megan Kinne.

Megan’s story, however, starts long before her first exposure to the mission field.

The Easter Sunday after she turned five, she sat with her grandmother at their kitchen table after church, asking about Christ’s death for her sins.

Because of the brokenness of her own family at the time, Megan was intrigued by Jesus’ love for mankind and wanted to know more. Her grandmother helped her understand the fatherhood of God and the rift caused by human sin. Once she finished explaining the gospel, Megan came to Christ there at the table when she understood the forgiveness and reconciliation that Jesus offered.

Her desire for missions began at age seven, and her college years at Liberty University confirmed that call. In fact, her first mission field was ministering to her peers at Liberty and her community in Virginia.

“[Missions] is not a location,” she said. “It’s a state of your heart.”

At Liberty’s Global Focus Week in 2015, Megan struck up a conversation with Mandy and Michol Venter, an ABWE missionary couple, about their ministry in Brazil.

A year and a half later, she was on a plane headed to South Brazil to serve with them for a few weeks.

“God used that trip to wreck me in a lot of ways,” she said. “The plane ride broke me of my self-sufficiency and my desire for control.”

The arrival in South Brazil also brought on some hard lessons that helped develop in Megan a love and compassion for the people she met there.

Halfway through the trip, Megan sensed that God was convicting her to become involved long-term.

“[It was as though] he said, ‘Maybe I didn’t send you here to support them from the states. Maybe this is where I want you to go.’” It was a terrifying thought, as Megan recounted it, but she recognized the Spirit’s leading and started the application process.

On her second trip to Brazil in 2017, Megan said God continued to grow that passion in her to go. “So, here I am.”

Megan is now raising support to serve in a career capacity on the team in South America.


Editor’s Note: Learn more about Megan’s ministry here.