This need for support is beginning to weigh on me. Not necessarily the burden of ultimately finding the finances, because I truly believe that as long as I pursue this mission full throttle, God will deliver. But there is something instinctually within me that does not like to ask for help. It’s humbling, nerve-wracking, and it sometimes feels embarrassing. I tend to pride myself on the fact that I am self-sufficient, I’m independent, I work, I have my own place, I’ll ask my parents for money if I’m truly in a bind, but I certainly don’t like to. The reality that I can’t do it on my own, hits me to my core, it attacks my pride, and makes me feel like a bit of a failure.
Having to fundraise for this trip has revived those emotions, but now a thousand times over. The hard truth is, I can’t do it on my own this time. No matter how hard I work, no matter how much I save, it’s not going to get me all the funds I need. That’s profoundly humbling to me, to be in a position where I have to admit that I can’t do it alone. Where I must turn to my friends and family and ask, will you go on this journey with me?
I was blessed enough that God gave me the opportunity to go abroad for a semester almost two years ago. Semester at Sea was amazing, it changed my life, and quite frankly I thought that was it, I thought I had already been given my big life changing adventure. But then Jesus dropped the World Race at my feet. I have been given the opportunity of a lifetime again, but this time I have a mission to help leave each and every community a little better than we found it.
Most people can’t take 11 months off from work, their kids or their mortgage payments. Most people don’t get the chance to help teach and comfort children in orphanages, to build churches for local ministries in need, to minister to broken women in prostitution, and to heal people miraculously through God’s prayer. I am fully aware of the huge opportunity that lay at my feet, and thus the huge responsibility I have to deliver.
I am in this position today because of every single person in my life, and I believe that whole-heartedly. Every member of my family, my friends, my family friends, you have all played a role in shaping me or helping my parents to shape me into the young woman that I am today. Therefore because God has graced me with this wonderful opportunity, I feel it is my outright duty to do this in honor of all of you who have influenced me and changed me in so many ways. I want to complete this trip on behalf of my family, my friends and my hometown. I pray that I will properly represent the community that I hail from, and the people that I call home.
Every single person has entered and departed my life in such a way to bring me to this very moment, and for that I humbly thank each and every one of you.
It is certainly hard for me to climb down from my horse of independence and ask for help, but I think this is just the beginning of God teaching me a very necessary lesson in dependence on Him.
I’m hoping the admittance of pride will make the whole support process a little less nerve-wracking. But at the end of the day, what I truly want all of you to know is I am doing this in representation of you; my school, my community, my family and my friends, all the people who have shaped me into the person I am today, I would never want it any other way, Thank You.
With so much Love,
Samara
xoxox
