My Journal Entry from Jan. 3, 2017:
Today I received my first personal Facebook message from my squad mentor and it said “Congrats!” I knew that could only mean one thing, so I quickly opened a new
browser and didn’t bother reading the rest of her message until I knew for sure. I waited impatiently for my blog page to load, and Yes! I was finally fully funded
(which I had known about for a few weeks), and today it finally showed up in a tangible way on my blog!
It was so exciting, but after over a year of praying over this journey and the fundraising required for me to get there, I wanted to double-check my account to make sure it was for real.
And indeed it was!! My last donation had finally shown up in my account, guaranteeing that I would stay on the field for these 6 last months of the World Race! With a big grin on my face, I showed my only awake friend and roommate so she could rejoice with me (quietly, so we didn’t wake our other teammate), and then I went back to my editor blog dashboard.
I noticed that not many people had seen my last few video blogs, and who could blame them with how busy people are around the holidays and how I had been spam-posting them throughout December while we still had good Wifi in Cambodia, when I noticed something weird on my blog homepage.
“That must be a mistake!” I thought to myself as I looked at the view count for my India blog, “I Did Something Illegal in India.” Had my blog gotten featured and I
didn’t know about it? I had only shared this blog once on Facebook, and yet in stark comparison to my India vlogs which only had about 20-30 views each, my India blog
was a few views shy of 1,500!
My first response was fear. “Oh no! What if the Indian government saw this blog post and tried to arrest me, even though I’m 2 months out of India?” I thought frantically to myself. So for a few minutes I decided to change the name to “My Love Story with Jesus,” so less people would be tempted to read it or share it, in case my writing fell into the wrong hands. Then, realizing my response of fear was not appropriate to how I should be reacting to a blog that had little to do with doing something all that bad and everything to do with sharing the Gospel in India, I changed the name back to the original title that had caught so many eyes and apparently clicks.
“Okay,” I tried to tell myself rationally. “If people are going to read this blog, then the point is that it will lead them to Christ, and not to me or my writing.” My next thought was, “That blog isn’t even about doing something super criminal anyway. I was just using a catchy title to get people to read my telling of the Gospel in my love story with Jesus.”
“But why are there so many views?” Was my next thought. “I’ve written tons of more interesting, better written blogs in my opinion. And not many people usually bother to read those…Does a catchy blog title really mean that much?” Apparently so.
I decided to check the World Race site itself to see if my blog had become featured without my knowing. After a quick search, I found out that it’s hadn’t.
So then I dug a little bit deeper on the site and realized I had made the top 20 list for most views in December. Number 6 to be exact. So I guess it had gotten enough views on its own or with interested people sharing it that it had probably made it to the list and the catchy title sent more people to it, which only brought it higher on the list. That’s my theory anyway. I had nothing to do with its sudden popularity. That was all God.
I refreshed again while I worked on my Cambodia videos in a separate tab. It had been collecting views by the minute and had now pushed its way to number 5 on the
list. “That’s so crazy!” I thought to myself. Here I was, just sitting in my bed in Myanmar, thinking about how after a little over a year of writing blogs, most much better written than that one, I had just become World Race insta-famous for a blog from India because of a catchy title.
Not that that really means anything. So I got a few hits on a blog. It’s not like AIM was going to hire me on the spot when I get off the Race because one of my
mediocre blogs had gotten a lot of views. It wasn’t like they were going to notice its growing popularity and offer to feature it on social media. It’s not like I was
going to get invited to serve at Training Camp or Launch when I got off the field and random future Racers would fan-girl over me the way I did to Julia Robertson, and
she and my friend Susan had done over another AIM Story Leader before that. Not that I really even wanted most of that to happen anyway.
The only thing I could see coming out of it was it getting a lot of views because of the edgy title for a Christian blog, possibly getting in trouble with the Indian authorities because I did technically do something illegal there and then admitted it on social media.
But the only other thing I saw coming out of it was that people would click on the title anticipating to frown upon or laugh at my law-breaking behavior, only to stumble onto a testimony and Gospel message that I shared in India, which would ultimately lead others to Christ.
So, if to Christ be the glory, then why not leave it up with its edgy title and all, in order that Christ would be made known. Maybe people who would have never read a Christian blog in the first place would stumble upon it only to find Jesus instead of sin. I would consider that a win in my book, if only to give God the glory, which is the ultimate goal of this mission trip in the first place.
…So if I end up writing some new blogs with catchy, but almost irrelevant titles to their content in order to make Christ known, you now know why.
Reminder: I am making a Month 6 Question & Answer blog! So if you have any questions at all for me about the World Race in general, food, culture, my favorite…, training camp, launch, packing, or anything else you can think of, please ask your questions below by commenting on this blog or click on “Contact Me” to send me an email. I’m trying to collect as many questions as I can by Jan. 20th so I can write a blog answering your questions by the end of the month!
Thank you so much to everyone who has been commenting on my blogs! I always love reading your comments, even if I don’t always have the time to answer them. I want to challenge anyone who is a “ghost reader” and has been reading my blogs or watching my videos for a while to leave a comment, whether it be what you thought of this blog, a question for me about the World Race, or even just to admit that you’ve been reading along and would like to see me to keep writing or making videos. I always love suggestions for blogs or videos too!
