1. Magic vault past New Ulm. Page 1B.
WEEKEND EDITION
,
www.fairmontsentinel.com
Saturday, Sunday
Jan. 3.1-Feb. 1, 2015
11
I .
Author compelled to go abroad
By JODELLE GREINER
Sentinel Staff Writer
Fa.irmont .
G
rowing up, Amy
Gillespie never
dreamed of living
in a foreign country.
"Ithought I was going to
grow up and have six kids
and stand by my farmer hus-
band in Lewisville," she said
with a laugh.
Instead, one of her jour-
neys took her to Mozam-
bique to teach people first
aid and how to avoid getting
infected with my. She
chronicled the experience in
a non-fiction book "Six
Years in Mozambique:
Things IHaven't Told
Mom," which came out in
July 20'14.
Gillespie describes her-
self as "the least likely per-
Amy Gillespie
.son to go" overseas. But
even though she wasn't
'planning to go, life was
preparing her.
After growing up on a
farm and graduating from
Truman High School, Gille-
spie studied ag business at
the University of Minnesota
in Waseca. She worked in
retail and "climbed my way
up until I got into insur-
ance,". she said.
"All of a sudden, here
- was Africa out of nowhere,"
she said.
She began to get what
she calls "messages," a se-
ries of pictures or words that
she felt were a divine call-
ing.
"God, you're clearly try-
ing to get my attention," she
remembers thinking at the
·time.
In the church she at-
tended in Colorado, they
were studying the Goliath in
your life. Gillespie remem-
bers studying about HIV in
Africa and thinking "that's
your Goliath."
"I literally looked over
AMY Above: Amy Gillespie teaches first aid in Mozambique, where she lived for six
__________ years. She wrote about the experience in "Six Years in Mozambique: Things I
Continued on Page SA Haven't Told Mom."

2. ancestors, but receive traumas too," she
said.
She's working with eye imprints, "taking
photos of the eyes because it's more indi-
vidual than fmgerprints," Gillespie said.
She's been helping to stockpile informa-
tion, recording eye imprints from members
of the same family, comparing test scores at
schools and matching those with informa-
tion gleaned from the eyes. 0
It can help determine which kids are at
risk, she believes.
Kids often get into self-destructive be-
. haviors because they're bored, and they're
bored because they're very intelligent and
not using it, Gillespie said. She met one girl
who was encouraged to stop hiding her in-
telligence and get into an area that chal-
lenged her and gave her a purpose. When
she did, the girl turned her life around be-
cause she felt she was contributing.
"Everybody's got gifts. Nobody's born
with a bad package. It's just what you do
with it," Gillespie said.
"Sometimes the hard experience of our
youth drives us to become a new person, to
become more than we would have become
without it," she said.
The girl who never saw herself as a
writer is planning more books. Her next
project is a series for children with different
gifts, "so kids know they're not weird," said
Gillespie.
For more information, visit illumination-
station.org online.
Page SA - Saturday, January 31,.2015 - Sentinel- Fairmont, MN
AMY
J, ~ ~ ~
Continued from Page IA
my shoulder at Pike's Peak and went home
to pack my bags," she said.
Gillespie has been back home for a while
now and has some perspective about her
time in Africa.
"You've got to let the Big Guy take the
wheel," she said, adding she went to Africa
with $150. "There's no reason anything,
anything I did in Africa should've been suc-
cessful." .
But then she learned something.
"[The trip] really instilled in me the
power of one; it really just takes' one person
to make a change in the world," Gillespie
said. "My story, it's not about what I did,
it's about what other people can do."
Even though she is back, Gillespie does-
n't feel her calling is over, just changed.
She's still involved in TIOS, the training
program she began in Mozambique, but the
name has been changed to CLARA - Chil-
dren's Lives Are the Responsibility of All,
named for her grandmother. CLARA has
expanded to Guatemala, promoting the
same safety and HIV training.
Another project that takes up her time
stateside is promoting self-esteem in kids.
"Suicide is the sixthkiller,' she said,
adding that it's third for people ages 13-20.
"It's a huge issue in the States," Gillespie
said. "Whatever we're doing isn't working;
somewhere here something's disconnected."
She believes some of the answers can be
found in genetics.
"We don't just receive looks, talent from
a
e