God is already there

A step of faith leads Izzy Nielsen to Thailand—and a new calling Izzy Nielsen doesn't always know what lies several steps ahead. But she is learning she doesn't have to.

Sometimes faith looks like putting your name into a mission-trip drawing when you don't know how you'll pay for the rest.

Sometimes it looks like boarding a plane.

Sometimes it looks like standing in front of a classroom when you'd rather let someone else teach.

And sometimes it means surrendering a plan you've held since childhood for a calling you are only beginning to understand.

When Izzy arrived at Crosspoint’s Cruisin’ for Missions event in April, going to Thailand was not part of her summer plans. By the time she left, everything had changed.

“While I had the desire, that day I had no plans of going to Thailand,” Izzy recalled. “My previous plans had not worked out.”
 
Two months later, she was on the other side of the world with a Crosspoint Church mission team, serving in Northern Thailand. And before the trip was over, God would use an ordinary classroom filled with children to answer another question Izzy had been wrestling with for years.

Looking back, Izzy sees a common thread through it all: God was already at work before she could see the path ahead.

“He was there before I even did anything,” she said. “He was ahead of me.”

A desire to go—and a “not yet”
Thailand had actually been on Izzy’s heart for several years.

Her first mission experience came in March 2023, when she traveled with Crosspoint to Honduras.

“I absolutely fell in love with it,” she said. “I had never been on the mission field before. I just felt so fulfilled, and it was such an eye-opening experience.”

By age 17, she became so determined to join a Thailand mission trip that she created a 21-slide PowerPoint presentation to convince her parents to let her go. Their answer was simple: “Not yet.”

At the time, it was disappointing. Today, Izzy sees it differently.

“That was such a blessing that I didn’t realize until I had gone in June,” she said. “It just worked out perfectly with God’s timing, as His timing always does.”

She eventually pushed the idea aside. There was ankle surgery. There was college. There was the cost of the trip. And there was something deeper happening in her faith.

During her freshman year of college, Izzy found herself pulling away from church.

“It’s not that I didn’t believe anymore,” she said. “Church was just not a priority in my life anymore.”

She describes it as a season of doubt and of learning to distinguish her own faith from the faith in which her parents had raised her.

By early 2026, she returned to going to church more regularly. But when Cruisin’ for Missions arrived in April, she almost didn't attend.

“Praise God I went,” she said. “That event absolutely changed my life. That was the starting point where everything changed.”

“If it’s Your will, make a way”
During the event, Izzy learned about a drawing for scholarships toward a Crosspoint mission trip. She casually put her name in, and the idea of Thailand was beginning to surface again.

She talked with Crosspoint leaders who had been before, asking about the ministry, the travel and what she could expect.

“That’s when I really felt God say, ‘Now, you need to go,’” she said. “I was like, ‘There’s no way. I cannot afford to get $1,500.’”

The trip was only a couple of months away, payment was due even sooner, and Izzy would be off work during much of June.

As she wrestled with the decision, she said “Mr. Pete” (Yanez) noticed something was on her mind. He sat down with her and gave her a coin bearing the armor of God, encouraging her to use it as a reminder to stand firm in her faith when things became difficult.

For Izzy, it was another nudge.

“There was a reason I was there that day,” she said.

She found her mother and told her that she had entered the scholarship drawing. “If my name gets called, then I know that’s a sign from God that I need to go,” she told her.
As the drawing approached, Izzy prayed.

“God, whatever it is, Your will be done,” she remembers praying. “If I don’t get to go, please just let there be comfort in the disappointment. But if I do get to go, then please, please, please help me find a way to make this trip happen.”

She held the armor-of-God coin as the first scholarship recipient was announced.

Then the second. Then came the third name. Izzy Nielsen.

“I just remember breaking down in tears, just saying, ‘Thank You. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You so much.’”

Within a couple of hours, the trip she had dismissed as financially impossible suddenly had a path forward.

And the doors continued to open. Church members helped with additional expenses. Scheduling issues with her college responsibilities worked themselves out.

“God just made every little thing work,” Izzy said. “It was such a beautiful reminder of God saying, ‘Hey, I’m still here, and I’m the One in control. It’s not your show.’”

From Gulfport to Northern Thailand
In June 2026, Izzy joined the Crosspoint team traveling to Northern Thailand, continuing ministry partnerships that Crosspoint has cultivated since 2015 first with Grace Language School in Chiang Rai.
 
Crosspoint missionaries Doug and Paulette Piper are building on that model with The Bridge Language School. Their ministry now focuses on Phayao, Thailand, where teaching English, developing relationships, discipling believers and ultimately establishing a local church are central to the work.

For Izzy, those ministry opportunities meant something she hadn't anticipated: teaching.
And that would open another door.

A classroom—and an answer
Before Thailand, Izzy had planned for years to become a nurse.

“I wanted to be a nurse since I was maybe even in first grade,” she said. “It’s just what I always wanted to do.”

But there had been questions.

For two or three years, she had wondered whether nursing was really the path God had for her. She had considered teaching and speech-language pathology, but changing directions felt difficult.

So she stayed with what was familiar.

“I was like, ‘No, I’m just going to stick with nursing. That’s too much trouble to change it.’”
Then she walked into a classroom in Thailand.

Izzy and Pastor Israel Cox were paired to teach music. Although Izzy was already a dance instructor and had years of experience serving children through Crosspoint’s Camp Create, she had never viewed those experiences as preparation for a career.

After teaching her first class, she felt something she couldn't quite explain.

“I just felt this super heavy pull on my heart.”

She ignored it.

Then it happened again.

At another school, Pastor Israel taught the first group of students and then turned the next class over to Izzy.

“I was like, ‘Are you sure? Are you really sure?’”

He was.

As Izzy taught the children about musical instruments, she noticed they were struggling to pronounce the “L” sound in “flute.” She instinctively began demonstrating how to position their tongues and mouths to form the sound.

Watching from the side of the classroom was Katrin Lenaz. She was crying.

Izzy initially wondered whether she had done something wrong and asked what was happening.

Katrin looked at her and said, “Izzy, you are meant to be a teacher.”

Those words landed differently because Katrin knew the questions Izzy had been asking for years.

“I had a feeling,” Izzy said. “But I pushed that feeling under just like I pushed Thailand under. I was like, ‘Not right now. I’m not going to deal with that right now. That can be dealt with later.’”

Not anymore.

“I have been fighting God for so long about what He wants me to do with my future based on my own comfort. Just because I had said I wanted to do this, I was ignoring God telling me, ‘No, you need to do something else.’’”

In that classroom, the path suddenly became clearer.

Prepared long before Thailand
There was another piece of the story Izzy was beginning to recognize.

Her younger sister, Keely, is deaf and received cochlear implants as a young child. Speech-language pathology had therefore been part of Izzy’s family life for years.

Their family learned to communicate intentionally—speaking clearly, allowing Keely to see their mouths and understanding how sounds are physically formed.

Without realizing it, Izzy had carried that experience into the classroom in Thailand.

“I already am very attentive about making sure that if I’m talking to kids, I’m not mumbling and I’m saying words correctly,” she explained. “If they don’t understand, then I’m showing them how the mechanics of your mouth work to say that sound.”

What seemed like an ordinary part of growing up with her sister had equipped her for that classroom.

Her experience teaching dance had prepared her.

Her years serving children at Camp Create had prepared her.

Even the questions she had been asking about her career had prepared her.

“I didn’t even realize that I had been given those gifts before,” she said.

Izzy took a photograph of the classroom where everything seemed to come together. Today, she keeps the image where she will see it often.

“It’s kind of a symbol of just trusting God,” she said. “It’s that reminder of, ‘Look how far God has brought you.’”

When Izzy returned home, she changed her major from nursing to speech-language pathology.

Even there, she discovered that the path had seemingly been prepared ahead of her.
“I maybe have to take one extra class, but everything else transferred over,” she said. “He was there before I even did anything.”

Another step of faith
Izzy plans to return to Thailand with Crosspoint in December.

And once again, she has found herself facing the same question: How will it all work out?
She began looking for extra work and considering a second job to cover the cost. Then a friend from the trip, whom Izzy had grown close to, offered to use her gift for couponing to create a raffle bundle and donate the proceeds toward Izzy’s trip. Just this week the fundraising effort wrapped up and raised enough to more than enough to cover Izzy’s costs.

The lesson God began teaching her years ago when her parents said “not yet” continues to unfold. She said she now sees God hadn't simply met her when she arrived. He had already gone before her.