We were asked to write a blog about how we were called to this mission trip. I first found out about the world race about a year and a half ago and I immediately thought it was a great concept and I knew it was something I wanted to do but I decided that I’d think more about it after graduation. I would occasionally read the world race blogs but I didn’t put much more thought into it. Around August, I started to think about the world race a lot, and I had a feeling that there was something I was supposed to do. Finally, at a retreat near the end of September, I went outside and sat in the woods and prayed. I asked God to show me if the world race was His will and I told Him that I would go if it was. Immediately Mark 6:13 popped into my head, so I went inside and looked it up and it seemed so obvious that it was God telling me to apply to the World Race and I really did feel a lot of peace about it. However, over the next few weeks I started considering what it would mean to take a year off of school and the things I would have to sacrifice and I really didn’t want to go – even though I’d told God I would. So I sort of rationalized that maybe I was just reading into that verse too much, maybe I was just feeling overwhelmed with schoolwork and I wanted to think I was called to take a year off! So, I spent a few weeks really unsure about what I was meant to do. One night I was at my school’s intervarsity chapter meeting and the speaker for the night spoke on hearing God’s will. At the end, he wanted to do an activity where one person would volunteer and everyone would ask God to give them words to give to this person. So a few people volunteered and I have to be honest I felt pretty skeptical. Then the speaker asked for one more volunteer and before I even knew what I was doing I had raised my hand to volunteer. So then, after we had prayed, he went around the room asking each person if they had anything to say, and a lot of people didn’t. But the people who did have something, it was all about missions and being equipped for a task and about how God wanted me to do something but I wasn’t doing it! It was crazy, there were people I had never even met, and more than I didn’t know very well telling me God’s will for my life. It’s definitely a time that I absolutely could NOT argue with what God was telling me. So that’s basically how I ended up applying for the world race!
