At first glance, Suzanne Elizabeth Varns, or most commonly referred to by her nickname, Annie, may seem like your typical average girl, living an ordinary mundane life, but this, is not in fact true. In her fifteen years of living she has resided in three different countries: the U.S.A, Costa Rica, and Canada. Despite living in more than one country she fully considers herself an American because she has lived there for a total of fourteen years, although she has not remained rooted in one single state. She has told me that the reason she has moved around so much is because of her dads profession, as well as parents her parents passion for mission trips. Her dad is a pastor, and he has taken many different pastoral jobs in different states, as well as in entirely different country, leading to her family staying in Canada to pastor Church In The Hills for about five and a half months. It was their passion for missions that lead them to living in Costa Rica for five months in preparation for their mission to witness and help the less wealthy class of people in Nicaragua. Moving and travelling is part of who Annie is today, needless to say, the constant changes have caused her pain and confusion, but through conducting this interview I have come to realize Annie’s story is a testimony to how adversities, shape us in to who we are today and can have a very positive effect.
I asked her about her life in Costa Rica, where she lived Tuis, Cartago and she spoke of the many challenges. ” It was quite challenging for me, I didn’t speak spanish at the time, so I often felt isolated and it was very hard to adjust to the change of lifestyle.” She had told me.
Annie’s parents chose to live there in order to learn spanish so that they would be better equipped to help out in Nicaragua, but it was the exact reason they came, to learn the language, and get a taste of the culture foreign to their own, is what made it so hard for her to adjust and be happy. She wasn’t used to having to walk nearly wherever she went as well, and spoke of her disdain for it during the interview. On top of that all she was also severely bullied by her few peers. To them, she was different, and they made sure she knew it. They poked fun of her appearance, specifically her weight and she says that they, “… Made me feel worthless, and I came to believe that their was just nothing good about me.”
Even with her sisters she found she didn’t quite fit in. She has four sisters, and she was born smack in the middle. Her two older sisters, Cassie and Kylie often stick together, and her two younger sisters Abbie and Ally do the same. This lead her to an even greater sense of marginalization and this made the time she spent in Tuis to be quite hard at times. Despite all this, she revealed to me she grew to love the country, she had discovered it’s beauty. She also was able to pull a lot of strength from that situation. She thought she was worth nothing, but eventually she came to realize that all those who poked fun at her were wrong, and she faced her inner demons.
” I looked in the mirror and decided that there was good in me, and I knew that in Gods image I was worth something.”
Everything she felt and learned in Costa Rica have helped to shape her into the compassionate person she is today. This in combination with her missions trip to Nicaragua are the reason why she wants to be who she wants to be, but before I get into that, I’ll explain what I learned from her about her trip in Nicaragua.
For her, the mission trip was a life altering experience. She was the youngest on the trip,only thirteen at the time, and this was the first time she had seen people deal with so much poverty. While the adults busied themselves with teaching the men and woman of Nicaragua useful skills, for instance, farming, Annie busied herself by entertaining and trying to witness to children. She made sure to show them the power of Gods love.
” It was quite humbling, When I showered, I had to do it with spiders hanging on the walls, and when the little kids wanted to run through the ‘sprinkler’, I watched them run threw filthy water,” She said.
These experiences, along with the way her parents raised her, are major contributing factors to her wanting to go into the mission field after she turns eighteen. Specifically, she wants to go to Thailand to witness to prostitutes and help them escape that lifestyle. It’s been a dream of hers for a very long time, and although it’s dangerous, she knows that this is what she is meant too do.
Even now, while she is still young you can see the fruit of her experiences; when she returned to the U.S she decided she wanted to help people in any way she possibly could.
Annie told me, ” I don’t want to change who people are, but instead, how they are.”
This became apparent to me as well when she moved to Canada at age fifteen, and we first met.She was an amazingly supportive human being and many people have grown to trust her and go to her for advice. She is incredibly selfless in most situations, always willing to give, and she says that it is what she experienced in other countries, the way she had to adapt, what she learned from her many different homes, and what God has taught her that made her who she is today.