WELCOME one and all to my first blog! I have no idea how to even begin describing what I will be doing next year, let alone how I feel about it, so bear with me.
A few months back (September 30th, to be exact), while in the process of applying to colleges, trying to find what major to choose, and looking into gap year programs, I was reading Oswald Chamber’s “Utmost for His Highest” when the whirlwind of senior year sort of just halted. On this date, the “Utmost” reading was about the assigning of the call in Isaiah 6. Oswald Chambers says this: “This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed—you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.”
My wrestling with God finally stopped and I submitted to the fingers he chose to crush me: World Race Gap Year. So I applied.
If that passage wasn’t enough (which it wasn’t for me as I still doubted that God would provide for me to go on this journey and that I should maybe still go to college straight out of high school), a couple days before I got the call of acceptance (a couple weeks ago) from World Race, the “Utmost for His Highest” was once again about Isaiah 6:8.
When Isaiah said, “Here I am! Send me,” it was a direct answer to God’s question of, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” God was asking a question and, because of faith and obedience, Isaiah answered to the call and went. Just like everyone else in Isaiah 6, we are all called to “go”, and just like Isaiah, we all need to passionately respond to God’s call with a yes.
So, this year I am “going” and becoming made “broken bread and poured-out wine”!!! I am OVERJOYED to be doing World Race Gap Year. In September I will be embarking on a 9 month mission trip to 5 countries— Dominican Republic, Haiti, Botswana, South Africa and the Philippines— where I will be serving the “least of these”. What we will be doing will depend on the day and country, but we will be doing so much— from loving on children in orphanages, building churches and schools, working with prostitution and human trafficking victims— all in the sweet, sweet name of Jesus.
As I write this, sitting in rainy Oxford, Mississippi, I am excitedly anxious about what this next year will bring just trying to dream about what is to come, but I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that this is real. IT’S HAPPENING, PEOPLE!!!
THANK YOU so much for taking up a part of this precious day to read this. Hopefully I will be blogging at least once a month leading up to my departure and while on the field, so stay tuned. Donations/prayers/encouragement/conversations are all so greatly appreciated!!
