So we expect there to be a lot of questions surrounding our announcement of acceptance onto The World Race, so we decided to hopefully answer some of them here for you. Here’s a little bit about our journey to get to this decision, what The World Race is, and what our next 2 years may look like.
The Backstory (How We Got Here): For some time now, we’ve been in a place of a little bit of discontentment with our status quo lives. We wanted something else, something that was different, adventurous, and made a difference in the lives of others. So we looked into the Peace Corps, but that didn’t seem to be it. But we continued feeling like we were missing something. Well missions has always been something that we knew would be a part of our lives together. We weren’t quite sure what it would look like, when it would be, or for how long, but we knew that God had called us to involve ourselves in missions. We reviewed the short term trips that our church offered, but none of them seemed to work with our schedules for the year. But, life continued on as usual – until February. It was then that a guy Devon had previously done short-term missions with announced that he was going on this thing called the World Race Gap Year. We looked into his trip, and immediately we felt a sense of excitement and a stirring in our hearts. An 11 month, 11 country mission trip?!?! But this was a huge upset to our normal lives. What would we do with our stuff, our jobs, and our families? For six months, we did more research, we prayed, we got excited, we became disappointed, we tried to come up with excuses, and then we just got convicted. We tried to convince ourselves that just wasn’t financially feasible and that it just wasn’t practical, and we would try and push back the whole idea. But we couldn’t. And then, someone else we knew applied and was accepted to leave in January. It was then that we decided to seriously reconsider that this just might be the plan God had for our lives. So we applied, did interviews, and finally got accepted.
What Is The World Race?: The World Race is a mission trip sponsored by Adventures in Missions. It’s an 11 month trip to 11 different countries to serve the least of these. Within each country, teams partner up with different local ministries to come along side of and work with the local church. We recommend you taking a look around their website at https://www.worldrace.org/, and here’s a short video from their site to give you a quick overview. World Race Intro Video
Our Next Two Years: Over the next year, we will be focusing on preparing for this tremendous opportunity. We have a lot to do, but we are excited. We’ll be spending time learning from some mentor couples, gathering all of our necessary gear, getting all of our things in order here, and fundraising. In June, we’ll also be attending a 10-day training camp to further prepare us for our launch.
We’re not quite sure what our race year will look like, but our route is known as August 2017-Route 3 and will tentatively take us to Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Lesotho, South Africa, Madagascar, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. Our squad of ~50 people will move from country to country together, and then we will break apart into our teams of ~6 people to do ministry for the month with. We’ll each be living out of a hiking pack and a book bag for the year. Ministry each month will also vary depending on the needs of that area. This can look different each month from working on construction projects, to teaching bible school, to serving meals at feeding points, to working with women rescued from sex trafficking. Our team will work 6 days a week, and have one day a week to rest, relax, or explore the local area. As a married couple, we will also have one additional day every two weeks to spend together and be able to have some time to ourselves.
We will be sending out our support letters soon, but please know from the very beginning that we want to take all of you on this journey with us. Please keep us in your prayers as we start this adventure, and begin praying about whether or not you may be able to support us financially as well. One of our commitments to y’all is to ensure that we keep y’all updated on what is going on with us during this journey, so we are going to be posting updates here on our blog fairly regularly. You can click “Subscribe for Updates” at the top of this page, and you’ll kindly receive an email anytime we post anything new. We’re also hoping to really work on our photography and videography skills during this time, so stay tuned for that as well!
If y’all have any other questions, please let us know! We are so excited, and we can’t wait for what the Lord is going to do!
Love to All,
Jonathan and Devon
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” –Matthew 28:19
