For better or for worse, journeys will change you. Our lives have different seasons full of stories from many journeys. High school is a journey. College is an adventure. Dating has its highs and lows. Grief is both an unpredictable and unexplainable season. I have not been married, but I hear it’s pretty fun, packed full of unique seasons within itself. To have a child of your own I can only imagine, is a wild adventure. Throughout life, the choices made within one journey often effect the next one.
January 2016 began my last journey before I ever thought about the World Race . It was my first year of graduate school(Master’s in Teaching) and I was throwing a New Year’s Eve party and making a New Year’s resolutions to keep it classy and date more. Ambitious, right? By the end of 2016 God had turned my life in a different direction and whispered into my ear something new, “international missions.” My reaction was something I often say, “Wait…what?!” At that time, I truly believed that my future classroom and serving the church were the only mission fields I would ever be called to. The decision to commit to the World Race at the end of December 2016 would launch me into a completely new adventure and season of life.
January 2017-Present. I am over halfway through the World Race. This has been a year of many tears and facing many fears. Nonetheless, I have done a crazy amount of new things, and been places I never thought I’d be. Here’s just a few.
1. I left America for the first time.
2. Fundraised over $18,000! ALL GLORY TO GOD!
3. I’ve been to eight countries!
4. Used a very sketchy squatty-potty (Google it.)
5. Eaten on $5 USD or less a day for 6 months!
6. I’ve shared the gospel using broken English, hand motions, the Jesus film, and Google translate!
7. Slept in a room that was at least 80 degrees…for a month.
8. Slept in a room that was at most 50 degrees…for a month.
9. Worked on the construction of a church.
10. Been cursed-out in Greek. (I don’t speak Greek, but I’m pretty sure!)
11. I’ve learned what poverty really looks like.
12. I’ve seen human trafficking perceived as normal.
That is just a small snapshot of this adventure. This journey has been difficult and I’ve had to persevere. I’ve said I want to quit before. I’ve also said I don’t want to go home. I’ve questioned God more than ever, but I’ve also never been more sure of His sovereignty and faithfulness. Every hard decision. Every easy decision. Every step of obedience. It’s led to this moment in my journey, in my adventure. I believe God calls all of us to adventure. God did not give you your salvation to live a boring life, and Jesus did not call us to be sedentary. At a church in Myanmar, I received from the Lord, a verse for 2018. Psalm 2:8, “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.”
Adventure doesn’t have to mean traveling the world. Adventure defined means, “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous activity or experience,”. So what is God’s next adventure for you? A new job? New career? A degree? A new relationship? Joining a church? Full-time missions? The World Race is the epitome of adventure for me. Unusual for sure, and completely hazardous to the comfortable lifestyle I lived at home. God has blessed me to make it halfway through this journey. And of the many things I’ve learned, it’s to always surrender to the call of God. Say YES to new seasons, new journeys, and new adventures both big and small.
“Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.”
Isaiah 43:19, MSG
“But thanks be to God, who always puts us on display in Christ and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.”
2 Corinthians 2:14,
Keep adventuring, wherever you are…
With Love from Myanmar,
Talya
