What are your plans for next year? As a just graduated senior from high school, I’ve probably been asked this question a million times. It’s pretty much inevitable that once you tell someone you’re a senior they will ask what your college plans are. And I’ll be honest, I hated this question for a long time. Even way back in October, I knew college wasn’t the right plan for me, at least not right away. I would be at school and everyone would talk about the colleges they were applying too, the visits they had been on, and the acceptance letters they got. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to get excited about any of it. I applied to a few places, mostly just to get my parents to stop nagging me about it, but I think I knew that I wouldn’t end up at college in the fall. For starters, I had no clue what I wanted to study in college, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it. And also, I really really wanted to go out and DO something, not just sit in a classroom for another year.
Thinking about these things, you can imagine how excited I am to be going out and doing mission work next year instead of heading off to college right away! Getting accepted into World Race was one of the best things ever, and it just feels so right! I can’t wait to leave and meet my squad, see new places, try new things, and show God’s love to those who have never know it! Now answering the question “what are your plans for next year?” is one of my favorite things to do!
You might be wondering how I got from not wanting to go to college to deciding on the World Race. The simple answer is: God told me to, but I’ll give you a few more details.
Around the same time that I had made the final decision to take a gap year next year, even though I didn’t know what I was going to do during it, our youth group leaders had challenged us to spend 30 minutes a day deliberately seeking God, listening to his voice, and just spending time with him. I would journal during this time and write down what I felt God was saying to me. Reading back through my journal, I see God kept asking me to put it all at his feet. He was telling me that he had a plan, and that I couldn’t figure it out on my own, that I was gonna have to figure it out with God. During these 30 minutes, sometimes I would flip open to random passages in the bible. A lot of them were about listening to what the Lord had to say to me, drawing near to him, and being completely devoted to him.
A lot of them were also about peace. Peace has been a pretty big word for me this year. At the beginning of the school year, in my english class, we wrote a manifesto for what we wanted our lives to be like this year. I wrote that all I really wanted was peace. I felt like life was pretty chaotic and crazy and all I wanted was something to ground myself. In bible study we focused a lot on Romans 5 which talks about peace and hope. We can have the peace, we can have the grace, we can be made right in God’s sight, we can have it all because we have faith in Jesus Christ. It got me thinking that maybe I didn’t feel at peace because I didn’t have enough faith in God’s plan. I was trying to make my own plan for my life.
Around the time I realized this, a family friend brought up World Race. I had only heard of it once before, but I decided to look it up. Once I learned more about it, I fell in love with their mission and wanted to start my application right away. But when I prayed about it, I felt like God was telling me to wait. This was really frustrating for me, because I felt like World Race was the right plan, it felt like God had pointed me to it. Over time I realized that God was trying to make me trust him more during this time of waiting before I moved forward with applying. Over and over again I would hear God say to just be still and trust his plan. To trust in him until I had complete faith that his plan would give me peace. Paging through my journal I see the words “be still” written over and over. God was teaching me to abide with him, spending more time each day in his presence. Sometimes I feel like I would banter back and forth with God during this time, I even have little conversations written down in my journal. I would say I don’t think I can do this, and God would say I could, I would ask how, he would say I had to trust him, I would ask how, he would say to spend more time with him. Basically, God was taking the time to help me understand how much he loves me as his daughter, making me more confident in my faith, and preparing me to go forward with his plan, not my own.
Once I understood this, signs pointing me toward the world race started showing up everywhere I looked. I first realized God was doing something big in my life when I went back to the front of my journal. The journal I use was given to me by my youth group leader a little over a year ago, and she had written something to me on the first page. She wrote that she prayed this journal would help to me to dive deeper in my faith and to discover peace from the Lord, to understand that he is always with me, that he delights in how faithful I am, and that he wants to know me more. She prayed that this journal would be used to draw near to God and to find out what his plans are for me. You can imagine I was surprised to read words from over a year ago that were the exact same things the Lord was speaking to me now! I was like, okay God you are obviously working here, so I’m going to watch for you. One day we were praying for each other at bible study and my youth leaders said they saw me backpacking through mountains preaching to people groups who had never heard the gospel before. I was like, this sounds like something I would be doing with the World Race, even though I hadn’t mentioned to them yet that I was thinking about it. Then one morning, sitting in my 1st period at school, I felt like I heard God whisper “go”, over and over again “go”. I was a little confused, but felt like God was telling me to go finish applying for the World Race. Right after that class we went to chapel and sang Lead Me To The Cross and Oceans by Hillsong Worship. One talked about leading me to God’s heart, the other about leading me to where my trust is without borders. I was like, okay God if you’re telling me to go I’m going to go.
I got to my study hall that day and met with one of my teachers. I told her my story and how I got to this point and she was really excited for me, which made me even more excited. Then I set up a meeting with my youth leader and shared my story with her, and she was super excited for me too. After that, everything started to fall into place and I worked on finishing my application. One of the application questions asked about a defining moment that impacted me. To answer this question, I used some of a draft I had written for for my common app essay earlier in the fall. It was a draft that my teacher had actually told me to change because it didn’t fit what the common app was looking for, but I never could bring myself to change it. I think it was God keeping me from changing it, because it worked perfect for my World Race application! I would find pieces of paper in my Bible that I had written, some from a year ago, some from a few months ago, that talked about trusting God’s plan. In my discipleship class we talked about following God’s calling for our lives. In bible study we had focused on what it meant to be a disciple and share God’s story with those around us. I found old sheets of paper with words that my youth group had prayed over me, two different prayers almost a year apart, and both papers said they saw me growing in confidence with God and his plan for me. They said words like “overwhelming peace” “opportunity” “pursuing your dreams” “follow God’s plan” and “staying grounded in God’s word”. The World Race kept popping up on my facebook and instagram pages. People currently on the World Race would post things about passages that I had read the same day, or books they were reading that I had just read too. I set up my phone interview, and when I started to feel nervous I happened to flip to a passage about not worrying about tomorrow. It felt like everything in my life was pointing toward going on the World Race next year!
Turns out my phone interview went great, and they called me back way sooner than they said they would. I got my acceptance call while I was at school and my teacher let me go out to the hall to take it. I came back in basically speechless, overwhelmed with excitement, so ready to head out on the race! After school that day I ran around screaming with my friends in the hallway, I was going on the World Race!
So that’s how my story with the World Race began, and this is the blog I’ll use to continue sharing my story throughout the race, all I have to say right now is wow, God’s pretty AWESOME!
