So get this: I’m FULLY FUNDED! It’s crazy how it happened. How did that EVER manage to happen?! $15,800 is a TON of money, more than I can comprehend a lot of the time. Our funding deadline was set for January 15th, which honestly I wasn’t at all confident in achieving. It even got to the point where I considered just giving up and going home, and using my lack of funds as an easy way out (on my end of it though, I wasn’t putting in the effort to reach my goal = discouraged, and ready to hop on a plane home). With just two days before our deadline, I finally decided that this was it, and this was something I was going to fight for. Ultimately, I’d rather obey what God had called me to, then choose whatever my flesh desires in the moment (going home). It wasn’t easy, and finishing out the rest of the race itself wasn’t going to be easy either. But, I still knew in my heart that this was the place God had called me to for this season. He had already confirmed that in my life multiple times before, I had just forgotten.
On the night of the 15th, I went to bed with $3,865 left to fundraise. I had no clue what I was about to do about that, but I put my trust in the Lord as much as I could, and did as much as I could myself, and waited. The next morning when I woke up, my inbox was overflowing with email after email of donation notifications. I recognized some of the last names of my new donors, those of which are parents of some of my squadmates. The rest where names of people I’d never met/heard of. I couldn’t believe it! I calculated everything up to see how much I still had left over to raise. Only $1,365! It was incredible. I started telling everyone about my update, in which several people used that to update their own families about where I was at now. I was ecstatic. It was unbelievable! One of my squadmates Liz came over so excited for me too, and prayed a bold prayer over me that I’d be fully funded by noon that day. I mean, naturally I shook my head and came up with every reason possible why that wouldn’t happen, but still let her pray for me. Personally, I was shooting for the end of the week to become fully funded, and that alone would rock my world. Still though, it was only a little after 8am here in India, so we did what we could and waited. About 20 minutes later another squadmate of mine, Lucy, came over telling me that I was fully funded. I sat there and looked at her like she was crazy. I still had over a thousand dollars to raise, that couldn’t be possible! Sure enough though, her mom had finished up that last bit I needed in order to stay on the field. I had no clue what to do or how to react. Technically, it was still the 15th in the U.S. due to the time difference, and I had just made the deadline with only a few short hours to spare.
I’ve come to realise two major things about all this craziness: 1. My lack of faith is terrifyingly low, and 2. God uses that fault in myself to prove me wrong over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over AND OVER again.
The moment Lucy told me the good news, I instantly thought to the parable of faith like a mustard seed (Matthew 17:14-20). Jesus says that if we had faith even only the size of a mustard seed that it’d be strong enough to move mountains and do the impossible. Personally, my faith is probably about the size of the speck from Horton Hears a Who, likely even smaller. And a lot of the time, it’s hard to trust that God could do something so radical, especially in my own life. It’s hard to rely so much on something we can’t see, but that’s essentially the definition of faith, isn’t it? That’s something I’ve been trying to work on lately, growing my seed of faith into mustard size. Trusting the Lord and His plans, how He moves, His timing, everything.
We’re officially halfway done with the race! It’s so wild to think that the amount of time I’ve been on the field is the same amount of time I have left here. We’ve been in India for about 2 weeks now, and it’s definitely been interesting. But, trusting that something beautiful will come from it (cause ya know, working on that). I hope everyone has been able to enjoy the New Year so far! I miss you all!
