One of the intensely terrifying obstacles about joining the World Race is fundraising. Most racers have never fundraised to the amount of $18,000. The idea of coming up with that amount of money is completely overwhelming. But we serve an overwhelming, almighty God!
Who can say, “Oh I love asking people for money!”? It’s naturally one of those things that push us outside our comfort zone. It makes you question your worthiness and if you deserve to have people donate money to you. Totally terrifying! And it was something I was completely dreading–yet God in His majesty, came through like I never would have thought possible. I have a little less than a month before I launch and I’m fully funded!!! Here is the beautiful tale of God’s provision.
Rewind back to December 6th, 2016, my birthday and the date I received a phone call congratulating me on being accepted for the World Race! A few days later at our Calo company Christmas party, my jaw-dropped and I started sobbing/hyperventilating when I found out I received the Calo Star Award. The award is presented to one employee each year who embodies all of our Calo core values and comes complete with a $2,000 vacation! In all honesty, I tear up anytime I remember I was presented this inconceivable honor.
Immediately after winning the wheels began turning. Where could I go on my vacation? Who would I go with? If I’m doing the World Race, how will that work? What if I could put that money towards my trip? Anyone who knows me, knows my intense love of travel, adventure, and cultural immersion. I could do this AND the World Race! But the more I looked up flights and brainstormed where I could go, I just didn’t feel at peace about it. I felt like I needed to ask if the money could be donated towards my race. And to be clear, asking for this meant I was telling my employer I had intentions of leaving the company in 10 months right after I was presented the highest award within Calo. It made it a little awkward and nerve-wracking, but it was a success! My Calo Star trip money was donated to my World Race! I’d raised my first $2,000 in the first month of fundraising. It felt like a sacrifice, losing out on my trip, but I knew I had my 11 months of traveling to look forward to!
Support letter.
Through January I worked on my fundraising letter. I found this to be my best hope and was very intentional as I put it together. I crafted a letter that expressed my background and heart stemming from my work at Calo. I bought special colored and textured paper. Doodled the countries on the edge of the paper. Spent hours with the copier getting it just the way I wanted. After a good deal of time spent Facebooking people asking for their address, folding, addressing, personalizing, and stamping, they were mailed off!
Slowly money started coming in! Not pouring in, but trickling in. And many people reached out stating their intentions of giving to me. It gave me so much hope! People cared and were going to help!
Although I believed God would provide, I felt to a certain degree like I needed to work and earn this provision. I immediately began setting aside money into a separate bank account. Even if I didn’t officially put it towards my race, I could use the money towards the gear I would need. I began to put any extra money I earned or received in there and it slowly started growing.
One day at work I was checking my WR fundraising page and saw a huge jump in the amount. Upon further investigation it was a $1,800 jump! WHAT?! Tears flooded my eyes and my chest tightened with a wheeze. I pushed my chair away from my desk and walked outside and paced the parking lot with my hands behind my head, completely overwhelmed! It turned out to be from a high school friend’s family, not someone who I would have expected to give such a generous amount! It seriously blew me away. I reached out expressed my intense gratitude, but I couldn’t get over how a family could believe in me and my mission that much to give such an amount.
It immediately made me want to have an opportunity to bless someone like that extravagant gift blessed me. It’s always helpful to give $100 or so to a good cause, but to save up and give an amount over $1000. Phew, that would be amazing! And as my World Race savings account begins to near $1,200 (after adding my tax-return), the Lord begins planting these seeds of giving a similar extravagant gift to someone. But God, I meant I wanted to do that maybe next year! I can’t give away this money now. I need it for my trip! And for two weeks I continued to have little nudges from God telling me to give it away. Little moments or comments kept occurring that officially confirmed God was asking me to trust Him, especially with my finances.
Giving it away.
I felt specifically led to give $1,500 to another racer’s fund. And that’s exactly what I did! How do we get so attached to money? I felt such trepidation as I typed out the amount. I was confident it’s what I was supposed to do, but goodness, how uncomfortable it is to give away something you feel like you worked towards! It’s too easy to believe it belongs solely to me and that I “earned” it. Ha! Every good gift comes from God and I’m merely a steward of it. Overall it felt good to actually walk in that belief because it’s not always my instinct reaction to giving.
Again I restarted my World Race savings account. Always working overtime on the floor at Calo and putting extra bits of money into the separate account whenever I could. Slowly it started to grow again. And donors for my World Race fundraising page continued to come out of the woodwork. The people who committed to give to me monthly were some who I would NEVER have guessed would donate at all or amounts that surprised me. It made it all the more overwhelming and amazing.
God’s insane grace.
I was all worked up, realizing I needed to develop the courage to speak with the pastors of the local church I grew up in, Heartland Worship Center, and the church I currently attend, Calvary Chapel. The only thing is, asking for money is REALLY difficult, especially face to face. So I’m one of those people who puts a ton of work in figuring out a way to get out of doing work. In fact, I sent my fundraising support letter to numerous families at Heartland without sending one to the lead pastor’s family. In my head I needed to come up with a different way to request a meeting with Pastor Jerry to officially ask if Heartland could support me in any way. While I was avoiding, ahem, I mean planning how to ask, I received a text from an elder of the church. He told me he had received my support letter and shared it in a church leadership meeting. They were moved by my calling and wanted to make a large contribution towards my race! Say what?!
Tears welled and my chest tightened again. How is this happening?! I didn’t even do the hard thing of calling Pastor Jerry to ask for a meeting. God just did it! I didn’t do anything to earn it. What is this?!?! Such overwhelming feelings.
Yet I still avoided again with Pastor Cliff at Calvary. Why couldn’t I just call or ask in person to set up a meeting to talk about my World Race? Regardless, I didn’t do it. I sent an email, which I don’t know if it was ever even received and I sent a separate fundraising letter which got returned to me in the mail. Yet God works in my favor again and Pastor Cliff approaches me, telling me Calvary wants to create a video about my mission trip. An opportunity to share with the church what I’m doing– but it’s not me standing up in front of the church (another fear I had). What a win-win-win! How does this keep happening?!
Just as my WR savings account began to grow again, God revealed a large need for a family in my community. And taking the cue, I knew God was asking me to help. Being obedient and trusting God, I gave out another $500.
At this point I still had not even organized a fundraiser. I tried to jumpstart monthly donors with a “Sponsor a Country” incentive–but not a single person expressed interest in sponsoring a country… However, I couldn’t complain because money was coming in and I even had several monthly donors! I also didn’t feel like it was within my personality and desires to make a shirt or sell something to receive partial profits. Would someone really want a shirt with countries I’m going to? Is buying something really going to motivate someone to give towards my race? I just couldn’t develop any passion or enthusiasm for that type of fundraiser.
I was blessed to have a video made including a brief testimony on why I’m doing the World Race be filmed, edited and played at Calvary. Such a blessing! And God used it to stir people’s hearts. In the next couple of weeks after it aired, I had members of the church walk up and hand me amounts ranging from $1,000-$1,500 in cash. WOWZA!!! How does this happen?! I just couldn’t even fathom or imagine this.
I had already met and exceeded fundraising deadlines the World Race had set. No need to panic or worry, God had provided in abundance. Part of me wanted to fret that eventually people’s generosity would run out and what was I actually doing to raise this support? Yet I continued to feel the Lord’s peace and walked in His favor. In correlation with every mini goal and request I put out on Facebook, people gave generously and exceeded each goal.
The final stretch.
After training camp came to an end and my whole world had been rocked, I set a new goal and plea to Facebook to leave for my World Race fully funded when I launched in October. I was roughly $4,000 away from my final goal and itched for the full peace and security of not having to be concerned about fundraising while on my trip. I still hadn’t received donations from a number of people who gave assured intentions of donating so I was hopeful some of those donations would come in now.
As I was driving from Atlanta to Birmingham in my hopeless addiction to the dopamine-hits of satisfaction found in checking my phone, I glanced down at my inbox on my phone and gasped! In typical easily over-stimulated Cassie fashion, I immediately locked my phone and set it down. Did I just see what I thought I saw? No. Surely not. I unlocked my phone again and looked at my inbox. Sure enough, an email from [email protected] informing me a donation had been made towards my race. The amount was over $3,800. I quickly deduced that the donor had just given the exact difference I needed to become fully funded for my race. Just like that I had reached my final goal of $18,017. WHAT IS THIS LIFE?! Who does that?! I can’t get over that overwhelming feeling of what it’s like to have people believe in you so much that they give in extravagance towards your mission! It’s unreal.
Fully funded!
A family within Calo leadership wanted to lift the burden of worrying about fundraising and redirect my focus to the mission of my World Race therefore paying the exact difference I needed. Gah! There are no words. Such a beautiful culmination of generosity in abundance, loving, supportive, and encouraging words, acts of service and people sharing on my behalf about my trip, and powerful, faithful prayers guided me to becoming fully funded. I’m so immensely grateful and I don’t even know how to start expressing it! What a stunning end to a long fundraising journey.
I truly feel unworthy when I reflect and look back at how simply and easily God provided. Why was God so gracious to me? I met my goal without facilitating a single fundraiser. If that’s not God, I don’t know what is! There are parts of me that want to find a specific reason or understanding of how it could happen. How I could deserve to have it come so easily to me? Parts of me feels sick to my stomach knowing how many other squadmates are profoundly struggling to meet their fundraising goal of $10,000. Yet here I am, completely done.
I truly believe in God’s economy. He doesn’t work with money like we do on Earth. It’s not rational to give away your money when you’re trying to raise a significant amount yourself. But that’s what God asked me to do! When you’re faithful with a few things, God places you over many things! (Matthew 25:23) Do I think this is how I met my fundraising goal? I’m not sure. However, finances are the one area where God asks us to test Him! “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it” (Malachi 3:10).
Thirty-five.
35 people/organizations each gave what they could to make this dream a reality. Out of these 35 people I don’t know who all of them are and even most of the ones I do know are a huge surprise! And some of the people I did expect to donate didn’t make the list. To each and every one of you I am unbelievably grateful! This list includes anonymous strangers, close friends, long lost friends, church family, colleagues, and acquaintances. Who would have thought such a large amount of money would come from such a small list of people?
From the $5 donation to the $3,800 one, you each took time to respond to the need and give what you could. I pray earnestly that God bless each and every one of you tenfold to what you’ve given to me! Even if you didn’t donate, but you prayed or shared my story with other, you are a part of this journey and I’m extremely appreciative. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Truly all glory goes to my heavenly Father! Why He chose to make fundraising such a breeze, I may never know! But I can definitely assure you He is one good, good Father.
