Oh my goodness!! Hello!! This is absolutely crazy writing my first blog for World Race Gap Year. My name is Anna, and I am from Knoxville, Tennessee! Right now I am a senior in high school, and I will graduate this May!!
First, I would like to start off by restating, this is ABSOLUTELY crazy writing my first blog for World Race. The opportunity to serve God for 9 months out in the mission field is all the emotions: happy, scared, excited, amused, and confused, all wrapped up in a pretty little bow of unknown and faith that this is what God has planned for me.
To know a little about me you must know I have always had this urge in me to go…
Whether it be running into the waves headfirst from the moment I could walk, to being the kid at camp who never got homesick, and even something little like staying at my Grandma’s house for wayyyy too many nights, or even something bigger like flying across the country to work in Oregon for Young Life. No matter what it is, I have always wanted to go.
For around 2 years I have wanted to do World Race Gap Year, but never believed it could happen. I always asked about it or brought it up, but it was never a real option until I went to Work Crew in Oregon at Washington Family Ranch. When I went on Work Crew it was the first time I really stepped out on the line for my faith, going someplace where I knew no one, in such a different place from Knoxville, a place where I got a chance to be fully me no baggage or predestined thoughts. It showed me the kind of unconditional love God has for all of us.
When I got home all I wanted was to go back to the place where I believed my faith was, Oregon. I only believed I could be close to God if I was there. Until December 30th, the last Sunday of 2018. I went to church where they had planned a guest speaker. He talked about how we all have our secret place with God, but our faith has to be stretched into our everyday lives, that we cannot limit it to that one place. That if you are called to go then go and bring your faith with you. Do not leave it at the door. Run with it and dig deep.
That day after church I felt convicted so I went and sat at a park nearby and read the bible and just prayed, something was heavy on my heart, but I could not reach what it was. I wrote and wrote and wrote for an answer about my future. Begging God to show me what I wanted, an easy life where it was comfortable, where I got to go back to Oregon, my secret place. Yet when I stopped writing new words on pages out of my will, and instead read my old entries out of obedience of the Lord I found what my next step was, where he had been pointing me. World Race Gap Year.
“9-02-16 11:30 Home
I dreamed about dancing with little kids, it reminds me of Heaven. It was in Ecuador. Where even is that?
The kids had NO money, they did not have anything. They lived on the streets, but dancing with them showed them the Lords love.”
“10-10-17 20:23 Home
I am going to Cambodia and South Africa someday. I know it. I will get to proclaim Jesus’ name loud with a lot of cool people. Bye.”
Two of the shortest journal entries I have ever written, two things so small that I flipped directly to. Two 1 minute writing sessions that pointed me to my future. Sitting there in that park reading these I looked back over my life the past 6 months since I had gotten back from Oregon. I had not been pursuing God, at all, the way I claimed or am called to. I left Work Crew with the idea Oregon was my relationship with God. That is it. Though I am learning that Work Crew was a tool that God used to equip me with the idea that love has no borders and neither does faith. That he has equipped me for the next year of my life to step out of my comfort zone and pursue God in a way that I had denied for so long. That he showed me that I would be traveling and living in Cambodia, South Africa, and Ecuador. I just had to open my eyes and realize that God is with me everywhere, I just have to be ready to listen.
Reading off my journal entries about Cambodia, South Africa, and Ecuador, then finding out that was a route for World Race was the most surreal feeling. That God had made my dream a reality, and that my fear that my faith had been left behind in Oregon transferred into a sense of hope that no matter where I am my faith will dig deeper in the Lord and my relationship with Him will grow stronger.
So yeah, that is a little about me and how I began to get involved with the World Race:))
