Here’s something I genuinely never imagined myself saying:
I AM FULLY FUNDED FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD RACE.
Yes, you read that correctly. $18,200 in full. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered anything in my life without the full extent of my emotions, but I’m particularly emotional about this one.
There are so very many things I have to say that make this present fact significant, so I decided to write a whole blog post on fundraising. Whether you’re simply following my journey, considering the World Race yourself, or interested in learning how the heck the Lord provided me, Mallory Price, certified Nobody™ from Goshen, Kentucky with $18,200; this one’s for you.
When it comes to fundraising, I have always done my best to be as candid as possible. There are many missionaries out there who raise crazy amounts of money and when you ask how, simply smile and assure you “God provides!” Yes, He does. But my story isn’t quite as innocent and simple. I never want to be that person who becomes desensitized to the everyday miracles, or reaches the end goal and sugarcoats the learning process and struggle of the journey getting there.
(I’ll give you one guess as to what song/movie scene was playing in my head as I typed that last sentence…)
God is SO very good and provided me with $18,200 so that I am now able to travel the world for eleven months and be His hands and feet. But that’s not the end of the story. That’s not even the real story. This is: (…ready for it?)
In September of 2017, the Lord called me to the World Race. (More on that specific story here.) Everything logical in me screamed “DON’T DO IT MAL!” The idea of the Race is an easy yes, but the idea of fundraising so much money still makes my head spin. I went to cosmetology school from March 2016-April 2017. Guess how much my tuition was for school, and how much debt I am still in due to student loans? $18,000.
That’s not to even mention the fact that going on the Race means I’m giving up eleven months of my life making zero income when I could be working to pay off said student loans. Still, I said yes to the Lord with a lot of fear and anxiety in my heart. Even then, I jumped into the deep trusting Him, but if I’m being honest it was so much easier to accept that the Race is what He wanted me to pursue “for now.” Meaning, it probably won’t ever happen. Let’s be real, there’s no way I will actually raise $18,200.
AIM does a terrific job of giving Racers every resource they could possibly need for fundraising, as well as breaking down the terrifying grand total into deadlines that make it all a little easier to swallow. By July of 2018, I needed $5,000. By June, I had it.
But the real story there is that nearly all of my close friends and family had donated by then. I sold t-shirts and knitted scarves until my fingers ached, my family had a yard sale, I sent out support letters, I started an adopt-a-box campaign, I blew up Facebook and Instagram and made sure everyone and their mother knew I was fundraising and needed all the support I could get. For Christmas, I asked only for donations to the Race. All of those things, plus some of my own income from working, produced $5,000. This was a giant hurdle. And it took me nine months to jump it. I was praising Jesus in this time for the provision of my first deadline met. But it also felt like the well of my own labor had run dry. In this time, it was of course Him providing with every dollar donated. But this $5,000 wasn’t exactly what I would consider a product of faith. More of a product of me trying to do this on my own because I was still so terrified to fully close my eyes and jump into the yes of trusting I could really reach the end total.
By the end of September, in order to Launch on the Race, I needed $10,000. So what just took me nine months to raise, I needed to double in only three. I will freely and confidently call this next $5,000 completely a God thing. I still don’t even fully know where it all came from.
(how I felt those entire three months watching the Lord provide)
Back in the spring, I joined a Facebook group for a Grey’s Anatomy podcast hosted by a former contestant on the Bachelor. (Scrubbing In With Becca Tilley and Tanya Rad, go listen!!) I felt led to specifically seek support from the then 15,000+ people in this Facebook group. To my complete and utter surprise even today, it worked. I suddenly received hundreds of donations from random strangers all over the world who just really love Grey’s Anatomy (much like me), and were willing to so generously give anywhere from $1-$50 to support me. Most of these people aren’t even believers, and so many are still following my journey and probably reading this post right now. This story still gives me goosebumps!!!
Thanks to the Scrubbing In group, so many more friends and family, random strangers, and the guy who bought my car, I had roughly $13,000 in my account with AIM by October, so I was able to Launch on the Race. Now, the biggest jumps had been made at this point. But I still had $5,000 to go. And this time, I had to raise it from the field. That’s a whole different ball game. My parents and family have been so supportive and wonderful from the start, but when it came time to Launch, and I still had so much money to somehow raise from outside the country and with limited WiFi, they had a lot of questions. I don’t blame them, I did too. But then, miraculously, unbelievably, it all came.
My deadline to be fully funded was yesterday, January 31st, 2019. I literally received the final donation that put my total at $18,200, just yesterday morning, the very final hour. He provides. It’s almost never in the timing we expect, or in the ways we expect, but He is a God of miracles and promises fulfilled. He asked me to do the World Race, and the craziest part is that it’s real, I’m here living this extraordinary life that always felt like an impossible pipe dream.
So, I’ve just given you the real story of how I received $18,200. But what I still left out were how many nights I spent in tears, terrified and in disbelief I would actually meet my deadlines. I left out the fact that from the time I launched on the Race (October 10th) until December 1st, my first two months, I didn’t receive any donations at all and began seriously questioning if I was even supposed to be here. I left out all the sleep I’ve lost in the last 16 months, how many times I’ve physically stressed myself sick over fundraising, how many times I doubted myself and even more so, doubted the Lord’s goodness to fulfill something so crazy to begin with. How many times I nearly quit, how many times I starfished on my bed at home in Memphis and cried out to the Lord, “I can’t do this anymore!” How many times I wished away my own dream and the deepest desire of my heart to go and serve on the World Race, on account of the difficult financial journey to get here.
I don’t have words because it still doesn’t feel real that I’m here, that I have $18,200 to my name that I get to put towards glorifying His name. I can’t say thank you enough. Whatever you gave financially, whether $1 or $1,000, however you prayed or sent well wishes and blessings over my journey, whether you simply followed and supported me from afar through my blog or social media, or you were one of my many friends and family who linked arms and walked through this with me every step of the way, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
I hope my story sparks hope and trust in you that He can and will do the impossible, with the most unlikely of us. Thank you, Jesus. That’s all I can say, a humble, sincere, with everything that I am, thank you.
