So a quick recap on what I am up to this year and why.
So right now I am on a missions trip called The World Race Gap Year which is a 9 month missions trip program, I will be traveling to 4 countries total, (in this order) Swaziland, Nepal, India, and Guatemala. Right now, I am just over one month in! So right now I am in Nsoko, Swaziland (which is a tiny little country totally land locked inside of South Africa).
So I will finally answer the question I have been asked soooo many times! “Why the World Race?!” Looking back there are a lot of small hints that the Lord dropped and ways that he brought up this program. The first time I can remember hearing about the World Race was at summer camp when I was 15. A girl on staff at the camp mentioned that she had just gotten back from an 11 month missions trip where each month she traveled to a new country, so 11 total. When I heard that a program like that existed my mind was blown! I wanted to know more about it and the places that she went but I was too shy to go up to her and ask her at the time. So that was kind of pushed out of my mind until I was in high school, my sophomore year a girl that I knew decided, to instead of going to college right away go on this program called Gap Year and I saw some of her pictures of her playing soccer with kids somewhere in Africa and I was thought to myself, “Woah look at her, she looks like she is having so much fun!” Not thinking that I could do that too. Then junior year for a class we were supposed to create a resume for a job or something we wanted to do in the future. That “something” for me was a gap year program. At this point I knew I liked to do a lot of things, I was involved in sports and theater, band and chorus, and taking AP and duel enrollment courses, I was all over the board in regards to what I liked to do. I wanted a gap year to figure out what I was passionate about. So I researched different programs some secular, just to travel (traveling is one thing I knew I was passionate about haha), some mission trips near home, like Habitat for Humanity, and some longer term, like YWAM, and this program Gap Year, and their Passport trips. For the project I just chose to do it for any abroad missions trip because I couldn’t decide which one at the time. So that led me to continue researching throughout the year different gap year programs and colleges simultaneously. My parents understood that I wanted to take a gap year between high school and college and thankfully they fully supported me and helped me with every step along the way. Their one condition was that I do everything necessary to be as prepared for college as I could. So I researched colleges, visited, talked to professors, applied for financial aid, scholarships, and took the SAT and… researched gap year programs, talked to people that had gone on those programs, and the pros and cons they discovered.
By Christmas I had gotten back all of my college acceptances and had to start making a decision which college I was going to defer enrollment to, and what I was going to do that year instead. So I decided on Grove City College, a small private Christian college near Lake Erie in PA, for Early Childhood education.
Now I could apply for a gap year program! By now I had looked at so many programs people! But the only one that still gave me a fire in my soul was the World Race Gap Year. Every time I would read a story from someone on the field I wanted to be there, my heart ached for God to use me in a way like that. Over break I begged my mom to let me apply for the program that I had been talking about for months now and she finally did! I applied and was accepted within 2 weeks, then chose which route I wanted to be on, route 5, U squad, and I was in! But really I had a long way to go if I was going to be ready to go.
The aching of my soul to be used by God for something greater than myself was a new feeling that I had discovered throughout the last few years of high school as I started to look beyond high school and my little town. I would pray that God would send me out and use me, but as much as I prayed that prayer and wanted him to use me I was scared to death of what that would make my life actually look like. So, I would pray that prayer to be stretched and used, but then not read my bible to learn what he actually promises us about that type of life.
The whole fundraising process for me was a confirmation from God that this is the next step that he has planned for me. I was fully funded within 6 months! Thanks to so many supporters, my family, and friends and the grace of God. Finally being on the field God is showing me that this is where I am supposed to be for this season. God gave me a hunger for his word, to dig deep into his true character, a community of people my age who are striving towards the same thing of spreading God’s love. Although I have sacrificed being with my family and friends God has given me more brothers and sisters, friends and family than I left behind.
