How did I go from quickly working my way up in the Interior Design field straight out of school to buying a backpack half my size and selling bracelets to help pay for a missions trip?
Let me attempt to enlighten you on how I got from A. to B.
I have always loved the thought of traveling. Any trip outside of the state, where I can experience something new is taken as a blessed adventure to me. The daydreams of traveling for an extended time outside of the U.S. have taken up many hours of the day throughout the last few years. The planning and scheming of a logical, financially smart way to do it was a go to thought process. So many people think and dream and hope that their desire to travel the world will some how, in the blink of an eye, become their reality. However, the fears and doubts and over thinking end up clouding the possibility until it is a distant memory. I fall into the logical, over thinker category when it comes to situations like this. I am extremely ambitious and pro-active when it comes to pursuing something I want, but in this case I kept pushing it off thinking I couldn’t possibly leave my great Interior Design job, I mean, it’s what I went to school for, I got it right away, I’m making great money, so many girls would kill to be in my shoes. I couldn’t justify leaving, not yet at least. God, however, He had much bigger plans for me than I had even daydreamed for myself.
Sitting in the congregation at my church during Missions Week this past March, God opened up a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind before. As my pastor spoke about a number of different missionaries serving throughout the world, sharing Jesus Christ’s love and salvation to hopeless and lost people. He talked about how not all people are able to leave their lives here to go to another place, another culture, to proclaim the gospel. So if we can’t, our part here is to pray for those who do choose to go, help support them in any way we can, while also reaching out to the hopeless and lost in our local community. But regardless, we are called to reach out and tell people of the beautiful grace of God and the opportunity of paradise with him in heaven that He has given us. No matter where we are or where we can or cant go, it is our Christian duty to give hope to the hopeless. In that moment God hit me smack in the face with a realization…
“Jaide, don’t you realize? I have given you this desire to jump out of your comfort zone, to experience different cultures, and see different places, and you’re at a place in your life where you can go. Literally go, far. Is there a better way to do this than to be serving Me while you do it? Loving My children without families, feeding My people who are starving, saving My children who are being sold into sex trafficking, building roofs so My people have a place to stay dry, and all while doing this, telling them how much I love them and want to save them from eternal damnation because they were created to live in paradise with Me…”
I have never been a particularly, spiritually emotional person, but this revelation brought on like a tidal wave, brought tears to my eyes. How can I justify missing out on a year of making money or working my way up in my career field as even remotely more important than this sobering reality?
As soon as I arrived home from church that day I began looking up Christian organizations that stood by me in what I believed and what I wanted to proclaim to others and I stumbled upon The World Race. After researching their mission statement and their vision for the organization I quickly fell into the sea of blog posts from people who were presently on their trips. Talk about time flies when you’re having fun. 11 different countries in 11 months? Serving my Savior? This cannot be for real. I spent hours bouncing back and forth between tears and goose bumps. Emotional tears from blogs written about personal stories of how the racers saw first hand God working in the lives of the people they were there serving and in their very own lives, to stories evoking goose bumps from the thrill of bungee jumping over a remote Amazon river on their day off.
As much of a spontaneous, ‘lets just do it!’ type of person that I am. This was not a decision that I took lightly. I prayed for over two months about this trip before I even chose to apply. Understanding the huge sacrifice I would be making in not having the comfort of the U.S. or the familiarity of my loved ones easily accessible to me and despite that fear, I still could not stop thinking about pursuing this opportunity. I knew that it was something God was calling me to. I reached out to my pastor of Missions and Outreach at my church who encouraged me to begin meeting with him and his wife on a regular basis in order to help prepare my heart to where it needs to be in order to go into the mission field for a year. After a lengthy application, an interview, and the longest two weeks of my life, I was accepted to the World Race leaving in January 2014!
There were four different routes to choose from, consisting of different countries. Due to a special interest of mine in Latin American culture and multiple prayers through the years for God to open up a door to travel to Central America. I was elated to see that there was a new route launching in January 2014 that consisted of solely Central and South American countries. On top of that, the thought of being able to thoroughly develop the Spanish language while down there and hopefully being able to speak directly to the people without a translator by the end of my trip was exhilarating. With that being said……
Beginning in January 2014, I will be traveling to eleven different countries, in eleven months to proclaim the wonderful hope filled news of how God saved us, terrible sinners, from eternity in hell. The order is as follows:
January: Puerto Rico
February: Dominican Republic
March: Ecuador
April: Peru
May: Bolivia
June: Panama
July: Costa Rica
August: Nicaragua
September: Guatemala
October: El Salvador
November: Honduras
December: Home in time for Christmas!
I am beyond excited for this opportunity that God has placed in my life and although my fear to follow through with it was and still is quite suffocating at times, I am so glad that I chose to obey this call that God has placed on my heart. It is the call that He has given all of us Christians. Mine, for the time being at least is taking me out of the United States for eleven months, but it doesn’t make it any more important than when Jesus Christ says it directly to you…..
“Go into all the world (your community) and preach the Good News to everyone.”
(Mark 16:15)
