Hi, my name is Jason Shilling and I am going on the World Race. For those of you unfamiliar with the World Race, it is an eleven month mission trip run by the organization, Adventures in Missions. During those eleven months squads of young people travel to eleven countries to serve "the least of these" and demonstrate God's amazing love to those around them. It is a journey of faith into communities around the world. This is not a trip for everyone. It is as real and gritty as a mission trip can get. Backpacking and camping in tents across the world from Central America to Southeast Asia. For those who want to change the world and aren't yet ready to settle, the World Race offers an oppurtunity to serve others and live out the "Great Comission."
I am no stranger to traveling abroad or to the mission field. Much of my childhood was spent in Haiti and Kenya as an MK or missionary kid or back home on furlough raising support. It was on the mission field that my parent's, Stan and Lydia Shilling, met, married and began their family. My sisters and I followed our parents back and forth from a little valley in Pennsylvania to a small Wesleyan compound in Haiti, Nakuru and Nairobi, Kenya. When we were back stateside, we traveled to churches speaking and raising support. My parents were fulfilling the calling they both felt from God before they even met. My entire life I was raised on the stories of my parents. My dad telling me how he heard God tell him to go on the mission field at a church camp when he was only a teenager. My mom told me about the great love God had given her for the people of Kenya, especially the Masai people. Each time I imagined what it must have been like for them to leave everything and everyone behind. After years of watching the toll the missionfield can take on an individual, on relationships, and on a family, I never expected to follow in my parent's footsteps.
The route I will be traveling beginning in January. will take me across three continents. Although the route is subject to change, I should travel to the following countries: South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, India, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Moldova, and Romania. Between many of these countries, I will be crossing borders instead of flying from place to place. I will camping in a tent and carrying everything I need in a backpack. It will not be an easy trip, but everything worth while requires sacrifice. He willingily gave it all up for me, can I do anything less?
