FACT: I am leaving for Atlanta today! Today!
FACT: I wouldn’t be anywhere close to leaving if it weren’t for YOU!
We’ll be heading to Atlanta for a few days before all for of us on the squad fly out to Panama City (not beach)! I’m taking a 65 L backing backpack, a normal school-sized backpack and they’re both filled to the brim, let me tell you. I’m also currently 85% funded and I could have never gotten to this point without some serious help—so let the thank you’s commence!
First, for everyone who I talked to and prayed with while I was making the decision to go on the race. It was such a long, long process and there were so many, millions of times that it seemed at best improbable and at worst impossible. Thank you for your patience and faithful prayers!
Thank you for to my pastors for meeting with me and speaking wisdom into my life and situation, and thanks to my parents for being so courageous in accepting my decision to go and for everyone who sat down to meet with me and encouraged me throughout the process of applying. A big thank you to Melody and Carolyn and Emmee, some of the greatest friends a girl could ask for, for walking through this whole process with me and for praying for me and just being constant lights in my life. Another big thank you to my roommate Amanda for not thinking I was insane and for always giving me the perspective I needed!
Another giant thank you to my IC3 small group for all of the loving words and deep discussions and prayers and games of telephone pictionary. You all have empowered me to go and to say yes, even when I didn’t know if I could. You’ve given me the courage to live out my faith in this new season of life, and I can’t thank you enough! I love you all the most, and wouldn’t be going without you. Thank you for your generous hearts!
Special shout out/thank you to Brendon and Jen, Jordan and Lindsey, Julie and Thomas, Eric and Nicole (aka my parents), Susan, Emmee and my aunt Michelle for helping equip me (literally) with the things I needed for the race!
Thank you to all my friends in Iowa City that made my three years there so amazing, and that made it so incredibly hard to leave. Grad school was rough but it would have been impossible without all of you. Thanks for supporting me even when I had to leave, and for making me feel like I wasn’t insane for doing what I did.
Another special shout out to the Risma’s for letting me stay at their house (love you guys!), to all of my beautiful friends in Carbondale that make it so great to come home (and so hard to leave again), to everyone who has taken the time to say goodbye to me in the last few weeks, to my family for graciously holding all of my possessions while I’m gone this year, and to all the great people at IC3 church who’ve loved me so well these past three years. I know I’m probably forgetting people but know that I love and appreciate you, too!
And of course, a HUGE thank you to everyone who donated and has helped support me financially throughout this process. I absolutely would not be going without you, and, let me tell you, I’m really ready to go. Thank you for stretching your wallets and for making me feel so helplessly and graciously loved. I’m so humbled by your generosity, and I hope that God blesses you in crazy ways for what you’ve done.
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ “—Acts 20:35
Lastly, a thank you to everyone on my squad and everyone on the AIM staff who’ve made me so confident that this next year is going to be amazing and full of seeking after the will of the father. Thank you for serving us so faithfully in preparing us for this mission, and thank you to my squad for courageously saying yes to God even when it would have been so much easier to say no. This transition is going to be a lot easier knowing that I’m not leaving everyone—that you’re all coming with me.
And with that, I think I’m finally and fully ready to go. Let’s do this!
Hugs and Kisses and Love
Bree(!)
