About four months ago, I sent in my application for the World Race. Honestly, I was super skeptical. For a long time I’ve been a big skeptic of short term missions, and the voluntourism angle of Adventures in Mission’s marketing had been big turn off for as well. Even the name of the trip “The World Race” left a bad taste in my mouth. Yet somehow I found myself repeatedly coming back to the World Race website, poring over the different routes, and before I knew it I had started filling out an application.
One route called out to me in particular, the expedition route. The others were fine, sure, but none of them seemed to call me out to be better than who I am now; they didn’t seem like a challenge. I knew if I was going to be spending a year with forty other people, I wanted to be with the ones who say yes to the hard stuff. I remember specifically the words in the description for the route were what really drilled into my soul.
“..It will be intentionally challenging and physically demanding, traveling vast distances over land and sea. This route requires a high level of physical endurance, adaptability, leadership, and spiritual maturity.”
This is what I was looking for. These were the things that I’m good at. Somewhere, I suspected that they might just be looking for me. I even began to wonder if it might be God that was calling me out, but I still wasn’t sure yet. So I sent my application in.
I applied, admittedly, as a skeptic. I prayed about it, talked to my friends and family, went through every logical path I could take my mind down, but at the end of the day I was still unsure. I remained unsure and unconvinced as to whether the World Race was the right thing for me all the way up until I got to training camp, where things changed.
Within a day, I knew that the World Race was exactly where God wanted me to be. Beyond that, I felt that I was specifically called to be on the expedition squad. I was absolutely blown away by the caliber of each and every single one of my squad mates; I had wondered what they would be like for so long and was so incredibly relieved to find out that they were all so much cooler, tougher, kinder, and more committed and diverse than I could have imagined.
In addition to that, at training camp I was able to experience personal and spiritual growth that I had long since blocked myself from achieving. It was a space that I could could be vulnerable and act completely without expectations. Additionally, I felt that I finally had arrived at a place where I could grow spiritually and start to learn purposefully how to better communicate with and worship God. I also had the opportunity to start building ties towards a new community that I will be very much a part of in the coming year.
My fears and hesitations were completely destroyed by training camp, and I’m happy to say that I am beyond ecstatic for the coming year. I know God has big plans for me, my squad, and the people we will have the pleasure of interacting with.
