Hi friends, I know I’ve done a pretty bad job of keeping you updated on this World Race journey and I’m really sorry about that. So much has happened over the past eight months and I want to share that with you. I know many of the photos I post and am tagged in are from coffee shops, tourist attractions, beaches, etc. and I would hate for anyone to get the impression that I am on a vacation disguised as a mission trip. While this trip has been full of fun, it has been so much more than the sightseeing, strange foods, and late nights with friends.
Over the past eight months, my teams and I have partnered with various ministries, organizations, and churches to meet the needs of each community we have been part of. We have been learning how to love people in every circumstance the way Jesus loved them. Whether we are tilling a field, preaching a sermon, teaching English, or working with special needs children, we want to bring Christ’s light with us. God called each of us on this journey with Him to love His people and it has been really awesome to walk alongside Him in this. We have gotten to partner with God in what He is doing overseas by preaching in Uganda, visiting HIV+ Ethiopians on Mt. Entoto, playing with special needs children in India, sharing the gospel with villagers in Nepal, and following the Holy Spirit’s guidance to spend time with the homeless in Malaysia. One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that it’s really not about what my squad mates and I are doing over here, it’s about what the Lord is doing. I learned early on that I can’t do anything to help people or save people, only God can. And because of this realization, I’ve also learned that dependency on God is the only way I can live. My team and I had to trust that He would bring healing to the sick and dying. We had to depend on Him to give us the strength to walk through the streets of Addis Ababa and see the poverty, disease, and disfiguration. We had to trust Him to continue to pursue the people in Nepal who we shared the gospel with for the first time. Today, I had to trust that He would heal Augustine, the terribly injured homeless man we met in Malaysia who refused to let us take him to the hospital and told us to leave him alone on the street to die. I have to trust that God will restore Augustine’s hope in a life of abundance in Christ. We have been met with seemingly hopeless situations, like the one with Augustine, but I have learned to trust that God will keep His promises of redemption, salvation, healing, peace, and joy.
More than anything, these past eight months have been about discipleship. He has stripped me of much of my pride and self-righteousness. He has made me more patient and less defensive. He has given me a better understanding of who He is and who He says I am. He has shattered lies I have believed about both Him and myself. God has shown me my strengths and gifts and has given me the space to utilize them for His glory. The Lord has loved me through those around me and has used me to show His love to people. He has used my squad mates to speak His truth to me. They have pointed me to toward Christ time and time again and have patiently walked with me through the hard things I’ve wrestled with. God has taken me to greater depths with Him than I have ever known and has shown me that He is only taking me deeper. He has broken my refusal to forgive and has given me a desire to truly love those who are hard to love.
God is doing amazing things in the nations. He always has been. And He is doing great things in my heart. I am grateful that He has invited me to partner with Him in His pursuit of people. He is turning people’s feet toward home, including mine. God has used this journey to change me and make me more like Him and I’m grateful for it. But at the end of the day, the World Race is simply a conduit. This trip itself is not the answer to anything. But God has used everything about my World Race experience—the ministries I have been part of, the friends I’ve made, the stories I’ve heard, the whisper of the Holy Spirit—to make a disciple out of me. I’m not the same as I was eight months ago, not because of this trip, but because of the God who has intentionally, constantly, and sweetly pursued me all my life.
