Emma-Jane “EJ” Burley sits in a coffee shop in downtown Oregon City, sipping on an Americano as she types vigorously into her laptop. She’s been working for weeks on Vacation Bible School lesson plans and travel itineraries for an upcoming mission trip she’s leading this summer. The twenty-something college student is dressed in the average Portland-hipster outfit: a flannel and Birkenstocks with a messy bun in her hair and a pair of wayfarer glasses on her face. But there is nothing average about her.

Burley has spent the last four years of her life dedicated to planning and mobilizing mission trips around the world through her home church.

“The world is vast and beautiful,” Burley said. “There is so much to be seen, and so many people who still need to be reached with the Gospel. Why would I stay here when I can be a part of changing the world?”

As a missionary kid, Burley spent nine years of her life living in Papua New Guinea. Her mother was a teacher at a local school, and her father helped with a church near their village.

“It’s funny,” Burley said, “When I say I grew up in Papua, people think I must have lived in a hut and only ate bananas for every meal, which is ironic because I hate bananas.” Burley laughed as she recalled the conversations she’s had about her old home.

“Really, though, I lived a pretty normal life. I mean, it wasn’t like living in the States, but in my opinion it was so much better,” Burley said. “The transition was hard at first, but being there fueled a fire inside me to see what the rest of the world has to offer.”

Up until Burley was 9-years-old, she and her parents lived in Clackamas, Oregon. According to Burley, she lived a “pretty sweet” life up until the move. Her mother worked as a second grade teacher and her dad was an accountant at a high-end firm. When Burley was in the third grade, her parents went on a short-term mission trip to Papua New Guinea, which led to their eventual permanent move.

“I remember the day my mom and dad told me we were going to move,” Burley recalled. “They took me out to dinner at my favorite restaurant and I was so excited because I hardly ever got to pick the restaurant we ate at. Then right before they brought us our food, my parents broke the news. I started crying all over my plate of chicken strips.”

“They told me it would still be about a year before we actually made the move, but I’m pretty sure I cried for three days straight after that. I remember one of my friends offering to let me live in their basement until my dad found out and shot that idea down really fast,” Burley recalled with a laugh.

Burley and her family spendt the next year downsizing their belongings, taking classes about cultural norms and trying to prepare themselves for culture shock by whatever means possible.

“We got rid of everything. Our TV, most of my toys, we even had to find a new home for our cat,” Burley said. “My mom wanted us to get used to the PNG diet, so we started eating a lot of taro root and sweet potatoes. It was a huge culture shock from my usual diet of chicken nuggets and Lucky Charms.”

After a year of preparation, her family was finally ready to make the move to Papua New Guinea. This transition, Burley says, changed the path of her life forever.

“It was really hard at first, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I missed my friends, I missed my bed and I really missed my cat, but the whole experience kind of formed my relationship with God. I was a 9-year-old kid in a brand new culture with no context of what life in this new land would look like. My parents were there, and they were did everything they could to make sure I was happy in our new home, but most days ended in my crying myself to sleep and asking God why we couldn’t stay.”

While on the missionary base, Burley attended an English school for missionary kids. It was through this program that she was able to find solace in her new environment.

“There were other missionary families around us, so it wasn’t like I was completely alone,” she said. “I was always a social kid, so making friends wasn’t hard, and I am so thankful for that, because I don’t know what I would’ve done if I were shy.”

After school every day she would play football with the Papuan kids as a way to build community. On the weekends she attended church where her father was the pastor to a congregation of roughly 30 Papuan families. As time went on, Burley learned to call Papua her home, and not just because she was forced to.

“After a while it just felt so natural to live there, like I had been there my whole life,” Burley said. “There were definitely moments when I missed Oregon, but as the months passed, the strings attaching me to the States kind of came untied and I completely immersed myself in the PNG culture.”

One year after the big move, Burley and her parents took a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Burley says she first “got bit by the travel bug.”

“One of the other missionary families who used to be based just outside of Jakarta took us on a trip there for the weekend. The whole city was just so fascinating to my 11-year-old brain,” she said. “It was this big bustling city with tall buildings and so much culture. I know to most people it’s not the first place on their travel bucket list, but I couldn’t get enough of it. When it was time to go, I tried convincing my parents that it was best for me to stay behind.”

“I remember coming home from the trip and wondering what else was out there that I hadn’t seen yet," she said, "That night when I was saying my prayers I told God, ‘I want to travel. I don’t care what I have to do to get there, I just want to see the world.”

The next day, Burley passed the message along to her family. She was met with “support for the most part,” but she is sure there was a little bit of skepticism.

“I think they were just thinking, ‘you’re a kid, it’ll pass,” Burley said. But it never did pass.

Arthur Burley, Burley’s father, says he didn’t doubt his daughter for a second.

“She’s always been a stubborn kid,” Burley said. “Ever since she was a toddler, if EJ wanted something, she was going to get it. Honestly, the thing I was most concerned about was making sure she didn’t run away to a different city as soon as she could figure out how the bus system worked.”

The dream of traveling the world continued as Burley got older, but her vision of what to do with that dream also drastically changed as she got older.

“When I was 11 it was easy to just say I wanted to travel the world, but as a teenager I realized I needed a plan to make that happen,” she said. “I had watched my parents follow the Lord’s call on their lives and impact so many people for the better, the decision was easy: I wanted to minister to people in unreached places the same way my parents have been doing all these years.”

When Burley was 18, she made the decision to move back to Oregon to get her degree in Communication Studies and Global Studies from Portland State University.

“I wanted to get a degree that could help me navigate the world and the cultures I might come in contact with, but would also help me communicate with people here in the States in order to better mobilize missionaries,” Burley said.

In 2014, Burley began working in the missions’ branch of her church. She began by planning small two-week trips and eventually worked her way up to what she is doing today: coordinating and mobilizing long and short-term mission trips within the church’s community and helping with curriculum and Bible studies used on the trips.

“It’s really a dream come true,” she said. “There are so many people who spend their whole life wondering and waiting for God to reveal His plan for their life, and I am blessed enough to have already figured it out.”

In the past year, Burley has coordinated trips to Peru, Cambodia and, her personal favorite, Papua New Guinea. This year she will be sending more groups to various locations in East Asia.

Kevin Jeffrey, who assists Burley on the mobilizing team, says he is constantly impressed with Burley’s enthusiasm for what she does.

“With jobs like this where you are constantly planning, and things are always falling through, it’s so easy to get burnt out,” Jeffrey said. “EJ has this energy about her that just assures you of God’s ever-present love and presence. No matter what goes wrong, she holds strong to the fact that this work is important necessary, and that’s what matters.”

As Burley comes closer to graduation, the question of “What will you do next?” iIs one she says constantly follows her around.

“People always want to know what your next big move is, don’t they?” Burley said. “My biggest hope going forward is just that I would keep God’s plan in mind no matter what steps I take.”

Although Burley says she is content where she is now, she does eventually hope to join her family in the long-term missionary service.

“I love being able to send workers to harvest for God’s good will,” Burley said. “I get to travel and meet people just like I’ve always dreamed of. I do hope, though, that someday I can settle into one place and reach out to a group of people the same way my parents do. Until I hear God calling me to one place, I’m content right where I am.”

Burley’s greatest desire is that all Christians would take the leap and venture out on short-term mission trips.

“There really are so many people out there just yearning to hear God’s word,” Burley said. “You could be the one that brings the word of the Lord to a village for the very first time. The harvest is plenty, but the workers are few. It’s time we all just follow God and go.”