I am currently in the middle of my final semester at West Chester University. I am consistently asked if I have an internship or a job lined up for after I graduate. When I answer saying that I am going on the World Race. I get a lot of responses like “That’s amazing!”, “Where are you going!”, of course “How much is that going to cost?”, but one I got just last night for the first time was, “Isn’t that going to make it a lot harder to find a job when you get back?” Though this may be historically true I am not the slightest bit concerned because I know this is what God wants me to do. My first mission’s trip to Nicaragua was when God first revealed to me my heart for others and for missions. We were helping renovate a local church in the area and they told us to not offer water or food to people outside of the church. It was a very unfortunate reality. Even though they wanted to help they could not support anyone with the funds they had. One day when we were working a man was stumbling by on the sidewalk across the street. I asked those in charge if I could give the man some water despite them telling us we shouldn’t. They said yes and I took the man a cup of water. When I gave it to him it was evident there was something wrong with him. Whether he had some sort of mental handicap, he was drunk, or he was on some sort of drugs, it broke my heart. I wanted to help him more but I couldn’t. Sure enough he later came back to the church looking for food or water still mentally out of it. My heart continued to break for him and I couldn’t keep it in and just started bawling. One of my leaders on the trip tried comforting me by telling me a story I will never forget. It’s called “The Starfish Story” and it goes as follows…
“One morning this man was walking on a beach the day after a huge storm. There were hundreds of thousands of starfish washed up on the beach, surely they would die with no way to get back into the water. But then this man comes across a boy. This boy was picking up the star fish one by one and throwing them back into the water. The man asks the boy, “What are you doing? You cannot possibly save all of these starfish, there are simply too many. Why are you even trying?” The boy doesn’t say anything, he just bends down, picks up a starfish and throws it back into the ocean. Then he responds saying “I just made difference in that one’s life, I saved them.” The man then joins the boy saving the starfish one by one, doing what they can to make a difference.”
It was from this experience during the summer going into my 10th grade year when I knew I wanted to do some sort of missions work with my life. I first heard about the World Race in 12th grade and from there I just kept hearing about it everywhere I went. I have no doubt that it was God at work consistently directing me to go on the trip myself. As someone who wants to do missions work with their life, the World Race is a great opportunity that I have been blessed with to go on this October. God has given me so many blessings, but these blessings are not mine to hoard onto. It is time to answer the call I believe God has for my life, for me to pay it forward and help those who are less fortunate.
