Xiaoxi - A hint from God

This is a summary that Xiaoxi (China) shared with the IFI staff during our Tuesday staff meeting:

I was enrolled in IFI internship program and worked on a data analysis project for two months. Two-month is not a long period, but I learned a lot and got well trained in both technical field and spiritual field.

This internship program is divided into three parts: technical work, spiritual formation and campus ministry. 

For the technical training part, we have a WAM House Character Formation, which mainly talks about the important characters at work, like the motives to achieve success, and influence to friends and colleagues. In the WAM House, they will also invite some successful men in both academic and business area, like dean from college or CEO from a company. They would like to share their amazing experience and give many precious tips to us. 

For the spiritual part, we have participated in some lectures given from IFI volunteers. For now, we are learning prayer listening with Karen Oliver. She guides us how to purify the noise apart from God, and encourages us by providing solutions when sometimes we did not get an answer from God. Another interesting training is the Ministry part. There is a WAM House Service Learning Project. Being an intern, we have a chance to get a vision for serving the poor, the homeless, children and immigrants who need help, just like the discipline from Bible. 

Besides those trainings, we also involve in some arrangement for lunch or dinner with IFI volunteers. They shared their stories and how did they approach to God and became a Christian. So it is very encouraging with lots of fun.

My data analyst project is focusing on the IFI temporary housing volunteer survey. Leila, as my mentor, helped a lot during this process. First we learned exactly how it works through VerticalResponse, which is the main tool we used for the survey investigation. Over 50% volunteers responded to this survey, thus we got a clear picture about the profile of our volunteers and collected lots of useful information and suggestions. Using this information, we got an idea about what is to be improved and how to serve the internationals better in the future.

Here I also want to share one amazing thing happened to me when I look for a job. At the first several months I worked so hard to apply for the job, but I got little response. Then at one Bible study night, I was having dinner at IFI, and there was a guy sitting in front of me. So we start talking. Then to my surprise, he told me that he was working at Alliance Data, which is exactly the one I was waiting for the news from HR. And he agrees to refer me to his manager. At that moment, I looked at him as an angle sent from God. When I look back now, I believe that is a hint from God and He has made the best choice for me.

Now I have to finish my internship at IFI, but I treasure this period I spent with all of the volunteers and interns, and I will apply the knowledge I learned at IFI to my job and life in the future.