“A call is nothing more nor less than obedience to the will of God, as God presses it home to the soul by whatever means He chooses” -Pete Fleming
“The World Race is a stretching journey to serve “the least of these” while amongst real and raw community. This unique mission trip is a challenging adventure for young adults to abandon worldly possessions and a traditional lifestyle in exchange for an understanding that it’s not about you; it’s about the Kingdom.” I love this description of what this trip is about. What I love even more is that this gives young adults the opportunity to bring back what they have learned/experienced and apply it to their own culture. It’s a beautiful way to continue impacting the Kingdom once people have returned from the World Race.
God has different paths for all of our lives and He has designed unique ways for each of us to continue serving His kingdom. He has placed people in every sector and every part of the world which align with the best ways to use the different gifts He has given them. The path He has laid out for me is also a unique one and I’m very excited about it.
I went on my first mission trip when I was a freshman in high school. We went to Nicaragua. This was my first time going on an airplane, going out of the country, and experiencing a culture different from the one I had spent my whole life in.
When I came home from that trip, there was something in me that said I was going to spend my life living in another country. I could not articulate it, but I knew this was the start of something. I would later find out that was the start of God instilling in my heart His calling to be a missionary. A lot of people told me it was just a “mission trip high”. They said it would go away and I would be back to living my “normal” life. And I wanted to fight that. But I did not have a strong identity in Christ at that point, so I let what they said be the truth.
For many years, I forgot about that desire to be in other countries and engage in relationships there. But then in my junior year of college, I took another mission trip, this time to Kenya, Africa. I took this trip right after I went through a major identity crisis. Through this crisis I came to understand who I was in Christ and the purpose He had created me for. So this time around, when the flame for that desire was reignited, I did not let anyone tell me it was not real. I knew it was my calling and had been all along. And now, this flame was deeper and stronger than ever before.
Reflecting back, I see that ever since I went on that first mission trip, I have had such a deep passion for serving those of other cultures and continuing to learn how uniquely God has created each culture and each person. I believe it is through day to day relationships that we can best learn about people, and then be Christ to them in a way that best serves who they are. This is why becoming a missionary is the only thing that really makes sense for my life and the calling God has placed on it.
It is also a deep passion of my heart to experience as many cultures as I am able to. I believe “we miss the fullness of what God is doing in the world when we limit the cultural identity of those who can speak into our lives” – Austin Channing. I have found it to be an incredible gift to experience and engage in other cultures. It has such a unique way of opening our eyes to things we never even knew existed and reorienting our perspective to something much bigger than ourselves.
Because of all this, I can confidently say that this trip is just the beginning. This is not a break from life for me. This is not something I will do and then come back and pick up where I left off. This is the beginning of the rest of my life. I know so deeply that this is setting the course of my life. The experiences I will have on the World Race will open doors to reveal what my life will look like after this trip. I do not know what those doors will be, but I know God has it planned. And I am so excited to take this first step of going on the World Race with Him.
P.S. I want to deeply thank all who have financially given to my trip so far. God has continued to humble me with the generosity you all have shown. I’m beyond excited that you want to partner with me in this mission to further God’s Kingdom. I also want to thank everyone else who is supporting me through prayers and encouragement. That is just as important/needed as the financial support. All the glory to our Father in heaven.
