If you are new to these updates then welcome I am really appreciative of your support. This Blog is being written at 12:06 Mountain Daylight Time on August 3, 2018. This blog is probably the last blog I will write on US soil until July 2019.
WARNING THIS BLOG IS LONG!!
Isaiah 43:19 states
“See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland”
The in between and waiting is over and today marks a new season for my life, over the next 11 months I will be calling 11 different countries home. I will most likely be on a plane to Atlanta, Ga when you read this post.
I will be leaving my parents for the World Race and my new family in K Squad. I love those 31 individuals with all of my heart and am so excited to share the Kingdom of God along side them over these next 11 months.
My dad and I wrote our thoughts and feelings about me leaving over the course of the last month so here it goes.
All of it. Jesus demands all of it. I have to leave it all on the table. There is much to be left behind I don’t fully understand the ramifications of this decision except it’s the Kingdom work and that is the most important work we can do.
Jesus said ““If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26
I am, with my squad, trying to live that passage out in this season where we are going to the nations. By leaving our home for a year and deciding that things back home are not as important to us as serving and making Christ known.
I have wrote this next part about 3-3 ½ weeks ago when my sister left and I wont see her for a year.
Let me start off by saying I am starting to feel a bit nervous with leaving, tomorrow I take my sister to the airport and I won’t see her again until I get back in June of next year. I am beginning to realize that I am going to miss a lot of stuff. I knew that coming in but I am just now starting to realize the gravity of that. It doesn’t scare me so much. It just is like well shoot thats going to be hard. My birthday is in December so I have had the privilege of celebrating my birthday with my parents every year so this will be new to me.
I am very excited to celebrate my birthday and Christmas in Malawi. I think it will be so cool but I can’t help but think about what I will be missing as well and how hard it will be. I will miss the gifts, the jokes, the giving of School of Rock or Ten Things I Hate about You (inside family joke).
Then I think about Jesus and how he missed a lot. He missed big events like passover with his family, not that he wasn’t there but he was there to fulfill a different purpose in that he needed to be betrayed and arrested and hung on a Cross to die for the sin I commit. I have a hard time believing that he at points didn’t want to just say “I’m done God this is to hard for me to do.” But instead Jesus went to the mount of Olives to pray and plead with the father, he let papa know that he didn’t want to do it but he also said “not my will, but yours be done.” In the midst of the biggest trial of Jesus’s life that would lead to his death he drew close to the father.
So in the the midst of this season where I am being challenged to let go I will hold strong to the Love that was shed for me by Jesus so many years ago. I was loved before I was even known to man. Wrap your mind around that though, You were loved even before you were conceived. So I will sing the praise of the Lord and I will seek him with everything I have. Jesus missed out on things that were important so can I.
This next part was written by my dad who I wanted his thoughts on me leaving for a year to serve.
This is Jim, Zack’s dad. Zack asked me to write about my perspective as a parent on his participation in the World Race.
When I was in college I went on two international mission trips. In 1985 I spent two months in South Africa after my third year of college, and in 1987 I spent two months in Mexico City after my graduation. I would not be who I am today if I had not spent those two summers abroad.
Some of you may remember that by 1985 South Africa was in what amounted to a low-level civil war which eventually culminated in the end of apartheid several years later. While I’m sure that my parents were nervous about me going there, they also saw that God was calling me to go and never tried to talk me out of it or convince me it was too dangerous. Once I was there, of course, the South Africans I was working with made sure to keep me away from any dangerous places! Which brings me to one of the most important parts of that trip. From the moment I got off the plane in Johannesburg I was surrounded by other Christians who felt the same calling to ministry that I did. Even though I had never met them before, we part of the same Christian community, the same Christian family. This made something real to me that before that had only been an intellectual understanding: our Christian faith makes us part of a global family that extends wherever Christians live, worship, and serve together.
The time in Mexico City two years later was very different. My two months there were also the final two months of a total of sixteen months that my wife (then my fiancée) spent in Mexico and Honduras before we were married. I was able to experience firsthand the Latin American culture that my wife already loved deeply and that has continued to shape her life and choices through the past 30 years. For two months, my roommate and I were welcomed into the life of a large Mexican family living in what in the U.S. would be considered a small house. One day my roommate and I counted up at least fourteen people who had spent the previous night there! We never could figure out where everyone could have found a spot to sleep in. Those two months showed me the importance of many of the simple things we often take for granted – having a place to call home, no matter its size, having a loving family that always welcomes you home, and being able to eat, laugh, and enjoy life with that family.
I didn’t become a career missionary and have never gone on any more trips as long as those two summers (I’ve gone on a couple week to ten-day trips), but they have still had a lasting impact. My wife and I have maintained a commitment to supporting missions and missionaries throughout our lives and continue to give both to long-term and short-term missionaries we have known. We were happy to see both of our children go to Mexico or Central America on mission trips with the high school and college groups at our church, and we are excited that Zack has chosen to go on the World Race just after completing college. We are eagerly looking forward to meeting the other young adults he’ll be serving with and the parents. Although we’re sure there will be some moments of nervousness this next year, we also look forward to seeing all the ways Zack will be growing in faith and knowledge through his experiences!
Thank you for reading this long post I hope it makes sense that I take this as an honor and a privilege to go share. Thank you for the incredible support you have given to me thus far. Words don’t describe the emotions that well up inside me when I think about being sent by you all to the nations. Please continue to pray for me and my squad over the next 11 months and if you feel lead to give you can at the top of the page.
