I have a confession to make.
I have been putting off writing
this blog for a long time.
As most of you know, my camera is
broken and has been since New Year’s Eve.
The absolute worst case scenario I imagined when thinking about coming
on the Race has happened. It was a
complete accident, as these things usually are, but that doesn’t change the
fact that it’s no longer part of my life.
My heart has been broken without it and I feel like my right arm is
missing sometimes. I find myself looking
at people or scenery or situations and almost tearing up because I don’t have
the means to capture it and hold onto it forever. To share it with those of you back home who
are praying for me.
Maybe that sounds dramatic to
you. After all, a camera is just a
material possession and didn’t I come on this trip to learn how to live simply?
But here’s the problem:
For me, photography is the very
best way I know how to worship God.
When I discovered photography in
high school, I was captivated by the darkroom.
By shining light on a sensitive piece of paper and dunking it in
chemicals, a photograph appeared. It was
magic. Even more than that, it was one
of the truest testaments to God’s hand in our lives that I had found yet. Spending hours and hours taking photos and
then developing them in the darkroom, I wondered how anyone could ever deny the
existence of the God I loved so much.
For the past ten years, I’ve had
the opportunity to photograph many incredible places, people and events. And by doing so, my eyes have been opened to
the incredible beauty that surrounds us.
I’m not talking about just fantastic sunsets or white sand beaches. I’m talking about two people looking at each
other when they commit to spend the rest of their days together. I’m talking about the eyes of special needs
orphans in India. I’m talking about the
fact that God loves us so much that He is screaming it from every beautiful
thing we see around us.
I came on the World Race for multiple reasons. One of them was that I wanted to take my
camera around the world and use it to capture the cultures, people and work of
God that I see to show people back in America just how wide and long and deep
and wide the love of God is. I wanted to
give Americans tangible images of the fact that the God we serve in the US is
all over the world, doing incredible things and working through people of every
nation.
What I didn’t expect was the opportunity to use my camera
for ministry here on the field, like I did in Romania and Moldova. What an amazing feeling: knowing that God put
me in a place, with my particular experience and passion and their particular
need, just so I could minister to them in a unique way.
So, now we come to the part about me putting off writing
this blog. I’ve asked so much of you
already, friends, supporters and perfect strangers, but I’d like to ask
something of you again.
Being on the Race, I have no income and no means to purchase
a new camera. My camera, a Canon 5D,
costs about $1000 gently used and $2500 brand new. I don’t have that kind of money at this point
in my life.
But people on the squad have been reminding me that those
amounts of money are really nothing when it comes to God. They’ve been encouraging me to write this to
ask you to step in, ask God if you can help and faithfully answer His nudging
if He is telling you help me.
It’s so uncomfortable doing this, asking you all for
money. But I think what He wants me to
do now is just reach out for help. Just
put this out there, into blogland, and wait for Him to fill in the blanks.
So this is me. A
photographer turned World Racer, who misses her camera so much every day and
who feels like a part of her worship life is lacking as she wanders around the
world, anxious to capture the beauty of it to glorify Him. And this is me, asking for your help to do
that.
How to help
Donate to my mom’s paypal account using her email address:
If you want to help and paypal is not an option, email me at [email protected].
