So it’s taken me a while to get over the initial shock of being accepted on the race. I mean, I am a college student and I wasn't really expecting this. When I applied to the race, I knew a couple of things:
First, I knew I felt called to be a missionary.
Second, I knew I didn't feel like college was right for me at the time.
Third, I knew I was super unworthy of going on this trip, but I wanted to take the college/missionary situation out of my hands.
I had to put it in God's hands. Every time I would debate leaving school for missions, I would settle on doing the easy, widely-accepted, traditional, worldly thing: stay in school. For me, applying to the race was allowing God full control over the situation. After I sent in my application, all I could do was pray that Daddy would do what He wanted.
But I never actually expected to make it.
When I got the acceptance call, I was in a surreal world for about a week. But recently I came back to reality. I realize now how much work this is going to be. I have so much to do, and I am so excited. I mean, I truly believe that if God has provided me with this opportunity, he will see me through it, but that doesn't excuse me from doing what I can do to make this happen as well.
Today, I am beginning a long journey. Today I will start the preparations. I will start collecting the items I need for the race. I will begin seeking support. I will begin getting shots (and that is a huge deal…I hate needles and rebuke them in Jesus name). My documents will have to be collected and updated. I have a long road ahead before I even set foot on the race.
And this preparation is incredibly important. It is the groundwork–the foundation–of all the lives God is preparing to change on this race (including my own).
All that being said, I am asking you all for support.
The most important support you could offer me is prayer support, but lets be real here: I need a lot of financial support as well.
For those of you who can offer only prayer, please pray for my heart to be shaped in preparation for the race. Ask that God uses this time to check my heart, mind, and attitude to be submissive to Him, loving and servant-like at all times. Pray for the U squad. Ask God's blessing on them each–that his spirit is now teaching them, filling them, leading them, so that when we all get into the field, we follow Him explicitly. Rebuke team and squad strife from us and bind it in His name so we will be most effective for the kingdom. Talk to Him about the people with whom we will come into contact, and with whom we will build relationships. Ask that we demonstrate His love to them. And please, please, please ask Him to send His spirit to convict hearts to support my ministry. Ask him to show people the part they could play in the Kingdom's work by sending me. And ask Him to show you if he is asking you to give.
Thank you all so incredibly much for your prayers. If there is anything I have learned in my years of ministry so far, it is that exceptional moves of God are most often preceded my exceptional prayers of men.
