I first stumbled across Adventures in Missions back in the early days of the World Race, circa 2007. I was fresh off the mission field myself and looking for a longer, deeper, more intimate experience. Questions had been forming in my heart as I pondered what missions really was, and whether or not it was something I would want to pursue.
For someone looking for a longer mission trip, who also dreams of seeing the world : finding an 11 month trip to 11 countries was quite possibly the most exciting thing to ever happen to me.
I spent a good month blog stalking, looking up the routes, and day dreaming about my race once I turned 18. Why it took me so long to find the age requirements, I don’t know. But needless to say, that was a rough day for me. After all, I was only 14 at this point and the thought of waiting 4 years was hard enough. Upping that to 7+ years was just depressing.
Keeping the dream alive was really easy at the beginning, but as time went on and I looked at my future, I just couldn’t see where the Race was going to fit — and soon it began to slip away.
Enter June 2014. I’m a missionary in Ireland, it’s nearly midnight and I’ve got work in the morning. But my flatmate and I are streaming FRIENDS on her phone, hooked up to my internet deprived laptop and procrastinating sleep as long as possible. While waiting for the video to load, I suddenly remember that a new World Race video was posted that day. The video I had been excited about all month, had marked my calendar for, and written a reminder on my hand about, it was finally up!
I begged her to let me use the internet a little longer and she just rolled her eyes and said go for it. After all, it was only 3 minutes. I hit play and sat back as everything I had dreamed about unfolded before me. Captivated with every word, every image that crossed the screen, I sat in silence — my mouth hanging open.
I barely noticed when it finished, my eyes still glued to the screen asI felt life being breathed back into that nearly forgotten dream. “Mols,” my flatmate began, finally breaking the silence. “You’ve got to do that. You just have to. That will change your destiny”
I probably looked like an idiot as I looked over at her, grinning like a child on Christmas. For the first time in my life I finally felt the freedom to begin pursuing this dream. After 7 years of waiting, God was finally telling me it was okay. That at some point in the near future, I’d be on the World Race.
The World Race isn’t just something I’ve impulsively decided to do. It’s something I am incredibly passionate about. So if I get emotional over the littlest thing (like seeing my picture on their website, being able to search my name, or meeting my squad on facebook) it’s because I have literally spent the better part of my life dreaming about these very moments.
By the time I leave in August, over 9 years will have passed since I first heard of the Race. 9 years of dreaming, and it’s finally coming true.
