Growing up, I suffered from major abdominal pain for years. This escalated to the point where I did not venture out of the house much, and spent most of my time in my room. This time in my life created many trials in which I had to overcome. I became stronger and started living life as a teenager, but a new obstacle arose. I started suffering from anxiety and became enveloped with the constant feeling of worry and stress. The anxiety placed a damper on my social life, making it difficult to even venture to church without becoming sick with worrisome thoughts. During this time, I was given the opportunity to travel to Spain and Morocco on a mission trip. Based on my mental health and my previous circumstance, I felt this would be too much for me to handle. During that trip I experienced the amazing culture of the people of Spain and Morocco, and witnessed the overwhelmingly large population of those who do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. This mission trip was an amazing and eye-opening experience.
After this experience, I began traveling more and have been to India on a mission trip in February of 2019, and have plans to travel back in February of this coming year. This trip created the start of the Lord’s work in my heart to take the gospel “to the ends of the earth”. I started relying on the Lord to give me strength and peace, fighting to make my anxiety something that does not defeat me, for my God is bigger than any amount of anxiety.
The World Race is something I never would have imagined I would be capable of doing, but the Lord works in marvelous ways, and takes what I thought was just an incapable dream, into reality.
