For those of you that know me, you know that I’m not good with words.  I’m not the most eloquent speaker or the person to look to if there is a lull in the conversation, so this whole “having a blog that people actually read” thing is pretty intimidating, so just bear with me please =)

I am so, so, SO excited about doing the World Race and I cannot WAIT to meet my team and dive into everything, but at the same time I am also super nervous about it all.  I think that my mom’s reaction to me wanting to tackle this adventure pretty much sums up my feelings: “You want to do this, but you refuse to touch raw meat when you cook? I just don’t understand.”  I don’t really understand either I guess, but I’m excited and ready to see what God has planned for me.  I never, in a million years, thought that I would be doing something like this (and I'm pretty sure a lot of you who know me got a good laugh as well when I told you my plans =p). 

If you don't know what the World Race is, it's an 11 month long trip to 11 different countries and you stay in each country for 1 month and do whatever work you can.  The countries I will be going to are Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Ukraine, Romania, South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Thailiand, Cambodia, and Malaysia.  You can check out www.theworldrace.org for more details about it as well. 

I play it safe in life.  I’m not a “risk-taker” by nature so this is a huge, GIANT step for me and I’m interested to see what happens.  I’m sure that I will encounter things a lot further out of my comfort zone than touching raw meat on this journey, but at this point, I’m ready for anything and I’m working on trying new things.  One of my roommates inspired me this semester by telling me about how she has made it her mission to do one thing every single day that scares her and I’ve tried to follow in her footsteps.  Can you guess what my first decision was?  THIS! What better way to face my fears in life than to do it half-way around the world, right?!  Even though a lot of you think I’m crazy for doing this, I’m so excited and I’m sure that this is what God has planned for my life and I’m ready! 

Please keep me in your prayers as I prepare for this and try to raise my necessary funding of $15,500 as I go, I would really appreciate it!  If you are interested in donating (yes, I'm shamelessly soliciting money in my very first blog post), there's a button on the side of this blog that says "Support Me" and you can donate electronically through that or you can get in touch with me if you're more comfortable donating directly to me.  Thanks so much!