How was I called to this missions trip… … … this question can be understood through my experience above.
This was the fateful evening that me and some of my friends decided to embark on an adventure. However, it started months earlier when we bought an air mattress at Good Will. It was the bargain of the century at $5 and being two feet thick. Its original purpose was to provide our camping group for KU basketball games a nice bed to sleep on. Eventually the mattress wandered its way into our living room as a gymnastics floor. Its giant blue body spent many hours absorbing our body slams, somersaults, and flips. On this fateful evening a roommate suggested that we should “go big, or go home” and being that I was already at my house, I of course had to go big. Lets just go put it outside throw some pillows on it and jump off the roof onto it. What an adventure it would be. Setting up the mattress was a little hassle but nothing in comparison to the act of jumping.
This was the fear of doing something that I have never done before.
The act of falling 20 feet and hoping the air mattress would catch me properly.
Taking the first step off and realizing that it was fun and somewhat addicting to feel that adrenaline rush.
Having my friends around me encouraging me to jump
Having my friends be there to catch me if I bounce off the air mattress when I land
Well, at this point you are probably are wondering what this experience has to do with the world race. It doesn’t have anything to do with my decision on going on the race, however this experience encapsulates a lot of my feelings about the race. My story, like the air mattress started months/years before the adventure takes place. I first began to experience what missional lifestyle could look like during my high school years. I had the opportunity to go on many “missions” trips with my youth group where we went to New Orleans (before Katrina). This time was an absolute blast besides the fact that I got to spend a week with my friends in a new place. I was able to serve and work alongside a community in hopes of bringing the transforming power of Jesus Christ into their lives. My youth pastor, Dave Partin, was truely a defining person in helping me understand what it looked like to daily die to self and live for Jesus. I soon went off to a local community college where I was introduced to Campus Crusade for Christ. It was here where I was introduced to the “summer project” and what it would look like to give up my summer and pursue an intentional summer pursing my relationship with God.
At this point the mattress is lying in the living room and I am overcoming my fear of jumping onto it with body slams, somersaults, and flips. After my freshman year of college I decided to take the plung and spend 10 weeks in Myrtle Beach, SC on a summer project. I received some amazing training from Crusade staff and had a phenomenal summer laboring alongside 100 other college students to bring God’s kingdom to Myrtle Beach. Two summers later after my Junior year at KU, I decided that I would step it up a notch and see what this overseas ministry experience could look like. I decided to go to East Asia, because it would be the biggest culture shock and uncomfortable experience I could imagine. I wanted to be taken out of my familiar American living and experience what God’s kingdom looks like on the other side of the world. It was a great summer where my perception / understanding of who God is and his character was expanded ten fold. Coming back home was hard because I had to leave a culture, city, and friends whom I fell in love with dearly. The next summer after my first senior year I decided that I would go try Africa out and see what it was like. This summer my heart was broken for those in poverty and orphaned from no acts of their own. I was changed by how those with less physically had so much more joy in their lives. These experiences helped solidify to spend at least a year or two after college in an overseas ministry experience.
At this point in life I have the prompting to “go big or go home”. Geoff are you truly going to follow my desires for you and your life… are you willing to lay everything down and pursue me… At times the answer is “yes”, or a “i suppose so”, or “not really”, or “no”. I spent months in the fall of 08′ searching for what this prompting to “go big” was going to be. I got in contact with many different organizations but none of them lit that fire within my heart, until I heard about the world race. For me the World Race was to “go big”, for me the World Race was something to get excited about. It also makes me nervous and uncomfortable. At this point I have put the mattress outside, I am making my way to the roof of the house. I have made the commitment to “go big” but I still have a little ways to go before I jump into it. I am concerned about support raising (even though I have done it before), concerned if I can really do this thing (I know I can not under my own will, but will I have the ability to let God carry me through this next year), and concerned about the unknowns of the adventure.
Yet, this is what makes the World Race so exciting, this is what makes it “big”. The unknowns of the adventure, the risk that I am going to be taking. After jumping safely and dangerously off the roof onto the air mattress I can look back and see that the risk was worth it, the adventure of the World Race will change who I am, the opportunity to minister alongside the people of the world in bringing God’s kingdom to the earth… it most definitely worth my whole life.
