Hello Friends!!
I am beyond excited and blessed to be starting this journey on the World Race. I will forever be baffled by the fact that God chooses to use people like me to carry out His work. So here’s a little bit about me, how this missions thing all started in my life, and how I made the decision to do the World Race.
Ever since I was little I had always planned on going to college, getting a degree in something medical, and then living a comfortable life while bringing in the big bucks, but somewhere along the way God flipped that plan upside down, without me really noticing it. When I was younger I heard about how my church took missions trips to Guatemala and I was very intrigued. I don’t know what exactly drew me in, but I do know that I could not drop the idea of going. I begged my parents for years. It was all such a God thing and looking back now I see these times in my life as a beautiful reminder that God really is in control and He really does have a plan for my life. My parents finally let me go and I ended up falling in love with the people, falling in love with the culture, and falling more in love with my creator and how He was reaching these people. I wound up returning to Guatemala the following year, only increasing this love. The third year of my mission trip endeavors, the Lord sent me to the Dominican Republic, exposing me to a new culture and set of people to love and minister to. Throughout these trips and these years, the Lord began stirring in my heart in a new way, He continued to stretch me in new areas, and He started molding me into a person not always cut out for long term missions but passionate enough about Him that it didn’t matter. Summer of 2015 I didn’t go on any missions trips and It was weird and kind of discouraging. Although, I did attend summer camp with my church. One of those nights during the service one of the pastors was talking about how some of the people in that room were called to full time ministry, including missions, and I just knew I was one of those people. He asked for us to stop running from that call and to accept what the Lord was asking us to do. So with shaking hands and a pounding heart, I stood up and walked to the front of the auditorium. During this time I had been struggling with anxiety and it had crippled me all week. However, after I accepted God’s calling on my life, the Lord filled me with a peace that I had never experienced before. This is not to say that if you just tell God you are willing to go into ministry that He will fix everything for you because believe me, I faced a lot of spiritual warfare after that week, but if you put aside whatever is holding you back from the Lord, He will give you immeasurable peace. (Phil. 4:6-7) God is so cool!
Anyways, I’ve not been confident about a lot of things in my life, but I am confident about the fact that the Lord has called me to live a life dedicated to proclaiming his name no matter the distance I must go, no matter the risk I must take. Through the years, I have continued to go on missions trips to Guatemala, doing an internship there, and overall growing my love for the Lord and increasing my understanding of the worlds need for Him. Here is where the World Race came into the picture. I started stressing about college beginning of senior year. I began feeling very confused about where God wanted me to go to school and what He wanted me to major in. Honestly, everything just became a blur, as if He froze it, like we won’t worry about these things til later. Meanwhile, I kept hearing about the World Race. I had a new leader who had gone and would always talk about it, I had an old leader that was on it and I was seeing all her pictures, and I had a friend who wouldn’t stop talking about it. So I decided I would take some time and pray about if this was something the Lord wanted me to do. Everything started pointing towards me going, every devotion I read, every sermon I listened to, and just little things I would encounter throughout my day. Again, God IS SO COOL!
So that brings us to where I am now…about to go on an adventure of a lifetime. It’s crazy to look back and see everything that has brought me to this point. I am incredibly grateful for it all. Thanks for reading all about it! I hope you will tune into my next blogs. Also, this endeavor is an expensive one so if you can give in any way that would mean the world to me! I need all the help I can get. Just click the “donate” button on the home screen of my blog.
Until next time–Kenni
