I AM FULLY FUNDED. I really cannot express how much it means to me to be able to freely serve in the field without the hindrance of finances. My mind has been blown by the way the Lord has opened the floodgates and blessed me through each of you supporting me with your prayers and financial donations.
If you’re signed up for monthly giving, those donations will continue for the pledged amount of time. Those will go directly to Adventures in Missions general fund unless you specify otherwise. I would like to encourage those donors to visit my teammates’ blogs (their links are on the left side of this page) and reroute your donations their way.
That said, thank you again, and please enjoy this story of how God used Tony Hawk to send me to India.
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In 2000, video game publisher “Activision” ushered in the new millennium by releasing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for the Nintendo 64, a game that simultaneously changed my life and proved to be the bane of my mother’s existence for several years.
Enter real-life pro skater and Tony Hawk character Rodney Mullen, who was introduced in the franchise sequel and quickly became my go-to player selection (8-point spin, manual, and switch ratings, are you kidding me?)
While never much of a skater myself, I followed skate videos, owned my share of Vans, and broke plenty of boards throughout middle and high school, always keeping up with my favorite guys. That’s why, when I set up an account on Instagram a few years ago, I quickly searched to see if Rodney had one. He does, and he has a very clever handle: @rodneymullen.
So in 2014, when he landed the job as a stunt double in a movie I had never heard of, I saw it on his Instagram and decided I’d go see it. I had no idea that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty would be one of the best movies I had ever seen.
Mullen standing (read: kickflipping) in for Ben Stiller on the set of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
As was the experience of many who saw the movie, I felt a sudden need to travel. I needed to take every opportunity I could to see as much as I could.
I taught English that summer in Chile. I fell in love with Latin America and learned Spanish. I finally finished college and took off to backpack Nicaragua, still hoping to find the country in which God was calling me to missions — which I did, it just didn’t look like I thought it would.
On my first night in Managua, I see this group of vagrant wanderers sharing the Gospel with a guy in a hostel. “We’ve been travelling for a year. We did 11 countries in 11 months.”
What.
“Yeah it’s a Christian organization in the U.S. that sends people all over the world for a year to share the Gospel.”
What.
I sat by the pool with Romans in my lap and just listened to everything they told this guy. I grabbed my iPad and googled something like “christian mission trip, 11 countries” and waited until their conversation ended.
“Hey are y’all the world race?”
Six or seven heads at once popped up in my direction. “Yeah!”
The last month of their race, they shared their experiences with me, and I went home and applied.
Almost a year later, here I am in Kolkata, India, fully funded and writing a blog about divine providence. What a comfort to know that when I was six years old doing virtual 360 pop shove-it’s, God knew the plans He had for me.
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“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” – Proverbs 19:21
