I am so excited to tell you all that I have decided to do the World Race! As I’m sure you know by now, the World Race is a mission trip for 11 months to 11 different countries. I will be travelling the world with other young adults to spread the good news of Jesus Christ! In each country, my team and I will be partnering with local ministries and churches to serve the community and to demonstrate the love of God. There will be many different things that we will potentially be doing, from construction work to going around whatever area we are in to share the gospel! If I am being honest, I am a little terrified at the idea of travelling the world for a year, way out of my comfort zone, not knowing exactly what will be happening each day, eating strange foods (if you know me well enough then you know this will likely be an issue lol); but, I have faith that God will lead me through this experience and He will teach me so much through it. I am very excited to see how I grow in my faith and my relationship with Jesus this year! Let me tell you a little bit about how I decided to go on the World Race.
It seems like it has all happened so quickly, but when I look back I can see how God has been preparing me for this trip. I am extremely thankful for the family I grew up in and the church I have attended my entire life. I am fortunate to have grow up in such a loving, God-fearing community. I came to Christ at a very early age, and I have been building my relationship with Him ever since.
The most difficult time in my faith came when I was in college. I won’t go into any details here, but my relationship with God had become stagnant. He was pursuing me, but I was not letting Him. I was filling my time with other things that could not satisfy my soul like only He could. I eventually ended up moving back home to Minnesota at the end of 2017 without finishing my degree. I had originally intended to go back to school after taking a semester off, but that was not God’s plan. I didn’t realize at the time that God was leading me to where He wanted me to go; I just thought I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Looking back, I can see so many choices that I made in the past year that I didn’t even know God was leading me to make. As I have been doing the study “Experiencing God” with some friends of mine, I have learned to become more aware of God’s voice. While it is not always a literal voice telling me what to do (in fact it almost never is), God speaks to me in many different ways that I maybe used to think was just my thoughts, or just crazy coincidences.
I first found out about the World Race at the end of November. I was just scrolling down my Facebook feed, when I stumbled upon an advertisement for the World Race. I don’t even know what made me click on it, but I thought it seemed cool, so I did. I spent about an hour on the website, learning more about Adventures in Missions and the World Race. I felt very strongly that I should do it. My heart knew that it was God telling me to go on the Race, but my mind kept saying that I was crazy. I mean, how would I be able to raise $19,000 and then leave my entire life as I knew it in order to travel the unknown for 11 months? I was in tears for no apparent reason as I asked God if it was His will for me to go in this trip. I knew that I needed to go through this, but I was worried I didn’t have the strength to do it.
The next morning I woke up and started to read my Bible. At the time I was reading through the entire Bible in order from start to finish. The passage I happened to be reading that day was Jesus sending out the 72 in Luke 10. God was very much speaking to me that morning. He was sending me out to do the World Race. But still I was unsure. My logic-oriented mind kept telling me how crazy it was. I am the type to get a great idea and get really excited about it but never follow through with it, and I didn’t want this to be one of those things.
That night, I went to the Cru meeting at MSU and I told God that if the message was about a relevant topic, that I would do what I already knew He was telling me to do. I was on the worship team that night, and one of the songs that we sang was Oceans, which is probably as relevant to my situation as you can get with a worship song. After worship, the speaker came up and said the theme for the message was surrendering your will to God. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I almost started crying right there in public (I managed to hold it in lol). Every single thing the speaker said, I felt like it was God speaking directly to me; not only telling me to go on the World Race, but to surrender my entire life to Him. To stop trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and to start having faith that He will lead me to where He wants me.
I was at a point in my life where I felt lost. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All of my friends were in college or already in the workforce. I was a college dropout working at Panera and living with my parents. I felt like I wasn’t living up to my true potential. That is when God came in and showed me that I am exactly where He wants me to be. There is nothing I can do, no choice I can make, to upset God’s sovereignty.
Before I found out about the World Race, I was planning on going on a mission trip with Cru to Peru for a week. One week at Cru, a student was giving the message, and he talked about missions. It was something that he was very passionate about, and what he was saying really spoke to me. One thing that he said was that some people are called to be “senders,” while others were called as “goers.” I was convicted, and I thought about donating to a missionary, since I wasn’t “going” anywhere. I thought about that for a few minutes, until he mentioned some mission trips that Cru was going on soon. He mentioned one to Peru that really stuck out to me. I thought maybe I wasn’t being called to be a sender, maybe I am supposed to be a goer. I really felt called to this trip, so I looked into more details. It made me really excited, but the main thing that I didn’t like is that it was only a week. I figured that I would rather do a longer trip. But I really felt like God was calling me to do this trip. A couple weeks later is when I found out about the World Race. When I was looking through the routes that I could choose from, the first one that came up had Peru as the first country on the list. I knew immediately that this was the route for me. I had no clue that God was leading me to the World Race, but there are so many little things I can look back on that I know were God preparing me.
And that is some insight into why I chose the World Race! I hope I answered all of your questions, but if you have more, please contact me. I would love to share! Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a fantastic day!
