Hello dear friends and welcome to the first of many blog posts to come from yours truly!
I hope this post finds you well rested and in much joy bringing in our new year! I don’t know about you, but 2014 is going to be quite an eventful year. I will soon be finding myself walking across a platform receiving a college diploma, celebrating one of my best friends wedding, celebrating my own big brothers wedding, and going on what will be one of the craziest adventures of my life, which has led me to write to you today.
Our world has approximately 7 billion people living in it. 7 billion people that are living their lives day by day, just like you and me. It’s funny to think about, but I rarely account myself for part of that number, that I am part of what makes that number what it is. Personally, I think it is because it is just a number and just a thought. I easily forget it. Just like any other number or thought would be easily forgotten in our everyday, hectic, busy, and constantly entertained lives, but what is different in this case, is that we are talking about PEOPLE. People who have souls, who were created, and since the second they were created have NEVER been forgotten.
I can’t even begin to picture or imagine what 7 billion people would look like! It is simply unbelievable to me. These are just some of the thoughts that race through my head and pound at my heart. These people that our perfect God created have not for a second ever been forgotten by Him but are easily forgotten by us.
As a soon to be college graduate, I find myself frequently sitting with my best pals and just talking and pondering about life. Our world, the weird things, the magnificent things, the things that just don’t make sense, and constantly thinking about each of our lives after we walk across that platform and get our diploma. Something incredible happened to me during my years in school and truly changed my life forever. I accepted that I, like everyone in our world, am not forgotten. I realized, that since my creation, my Lord knew. He knows exactly the questions to all those silly thoughts and questions that we have as college students and as human beings. Since then, I have began to remember those 7 billion. Those that still need to hear and fully know what I was so blessed to know at such a young age.
I am currently in the middle of reading an incredible book, Radical by David Platt. This book has showered me with great wisdom and clarity into so much of what I am personally experiencing right now. It has truly continued to stir this heart throb for those 7 billion and I would love to share something that stuck out. In this book Platt talks about how Jesus does not give us a formula to impact this world but instead…
He has given us people, and He has said,
“Live for them, love them, serve them, & lead them.
Lead them to follow me, & lead them to lead others to follow me.
In the process you will multiply the gospel to the ends of the earth”.
Friends, I can tell you that you and I are simply guests in this beautiful world. And I tell you that I have personally been invited. Jesus has called me to go. To go where I will learn more that I could even imagine because all I will have is Him. My eyes will be widened to a God that I only know in a tiny part of this world, but I will have the blessing of seeing the God of the universe, the God of all nations in 11 different nations.
So I am doing this. Jesus has orchestrated a perfect and divine way to call me to be a part of the World Race.
So I will GO! I will go to 11 countries and serve 1 month in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Botswana, Swaziland, South Africa, Turkey, Albania, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica!!! with nothing but a backpack, an incredible community, and an eager heart.
In everything, the bad, the smelly, the uncomfortable, the comfortable, the joy, the sorrow, the magnificent, and the good, I will gain Christ. How could I refuse?
I ask you to join me on this journey of preparation and of action as I leave in September. Join me as I am constantly taught by our Father because I will be so eager to share it with you! Jesus has given me this opportunity to join Him in a journey of nothing but simply spreading His love to all nations by spending my life in those in those 11 incredible countries and to give glory to Him always.
Thank you for all your love and support and I can’t wait to continue to share this excitement with you!
Stay tuned friends!
Love,
Ana Maria
