Dear Family and Friends,
I hope this letter finds you well! I just wanted to update you on what is going on in my life. I recently got accepted to join a team of young adults from around the country to serve as missionaries in a program called the World Race, through the organization Adventures in Missions. I will be going to 11 countries in 11 months. The countries I will be spending a month in are Romania, Ukraine, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. We take one big backpack, and live/camp out of that for the 11-month duration. I will serve in partnership with churches and ministries doing a variety of things that may include teaching English, leading sports camps, orphan care, community development, living with and encouraging local believers, ministering to women and children that have been involved in sex trafficking, sharing the gospel and love of Jesus, and so much more. We really won’t know what we will be doing specifically until we arrive in each country.
In the end of 2009 God became real to me and completely changed my heart and how I live. I finally realized that EVERYTHING I have is His and that I should trust Him with it all! I have learned that God can do unimaginably more than we could ever make plans to do in our lives. Attending Passion 2010 God showed me how selfishly I have been living with the blessings he has poured out on me and called me to a new way to live the life He has given me!
God has placed on my heart a desire for adventure, travel, and helping those in need. For 2 years now I have tried to stay away from the monotonous routine of a full time job. I have felt no passion to pursue any “real” jobs with my degree yet. There is just too much in this world that I don’t know to be tied down. For the first time in a long while I am excited to see what the next day holds on this adventure that has been placed before me. I hope to gain from this trip a new understanding of how to be bold in my faith and a new dependence on God, formed from constantly being out of my comfort zone and luxuries of home.
Please keep my squad and me in your prayers. Prayer is the most powerful way you can help me this year. It will be the most emotional, physical, and spiritually demanding year of my life! God gives us many challenges that we must overcome in our lives, and prayer is the best way to bring us through these challenges.
I am so thankful that God has given me this opportunity to serve him and travel the world in a community of believers. I have no doubt that God will provide for and challenge me in ways I can’t even imagine.
I forgot to mention in the letters I sent out that my training week is May 18th – May 25th. We leave sometime at the beginning of this July!
Joyfully,
David Garretson
