Hello to all!!
You’re reading my very first blog post, it may or may not be long- who knows (not me). I’ve been looking forward to writing this post and you don’t know how many times I’ve begun typing and then deleted it all to start over. I’ll begin this post with a simple answer to What is the World Race?
Great question! Thanks for asking. The World Race Gap Year is a nine month mission trip to four different countries, staying roughly two-ish months in each. The route I have selected is Route 5, which includes the countries of Guatemala, India, Nepal, and Swaziland. I’ll be taking a gap year after I graduate high school and before I go to college. Which has got me ecstatic because I’ve been praying about taking a gap year to travel for years now and boom- THE LORD DELIVERED and even better than I expected, not that I’m surprised- our God just puts me in awe.
I’ll be with about 40-50 other people from the ages of 18-20 who have also selected Route 5. These people will become my family, my always-there, and my partners in Christ. What will I be doing? The most important part of the Race is that we will be pursing God’s kingdom and sharing his Word in parts of the world that may not have even heard the name of Jesus. Dude!! How exciting is that???! I get to be a modern-day missionary to make scripture tangible, to live a life of open hands. I’ll be saying adios to the 18 years of norms that I’ve lived with here in ol’ Catawba, NC and living out of a backpack for this next season of my life! Every day will look different on the race. We will be doing construction work to build schools, churches, greenhouses, etc., preaching, building relationships with others, building our own personal relationship with God, praying over people at hospitals and in communities, cooking, assisting with disaster relief, and offering our love and support and sharing the immense love of Jesus Christ with the “unreachable” parts of the world.
I know it will be hard. It will probably be both the toughest and the best nine months of my life.
If you know me at all, you probably know that I’ve always had a passion for travel. We have an INCREDIBLE Earth here that is ours to see! Learn about! Explore! Meet people, help people, give everything we have to those who have nothing and offer our OPEN HANDS to accept anything God has to present to us. There’s so much more to this life than what we are exposed to in our everyday lives. I’ve lived a very comfortable life and I’m BLESSED to have grown up where I did. But I’m ready to get uncomfortable and be absolutely blown away by what God is going to do in my life. I’ve always felt this way and I knew I was going to make it happen some way. Prayer is what brought me to the World Race.
“Called”
I’ve always been confused when I would hear about people being “called” by God to do things. What was that like? I had no idea what that meant. UNTIL God called ME. ME!! Yee-haw. Like I said before, travel has been on my heart pretty much since I learned that the world was waaaayyyy bigger than what I knew. All throughout high school, I’ve been praying for God to provide me with opportunities to see the Earth that he has created for us and to share his word. Then God placed taking a gap year on my heart junior year of high school. Being “called” by God is a little hard to explain, so here’s a better explanation:
Philippians 4:6-7
“Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts, offer up your prayers and requests to God. Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.”
THIS rocked my world. After I found out about the World Race, prayed about it like it was my second job, and then knew that I was called to go on the race confused me as if I had woken up in Vietnam. But then I read this and it all totally clicked and made sense. God placed these desires on my heart and then gave me total peace over those. PEACE: not just for hippies. God providing me peace is just the tip of the ice-burg of my knowing that I was called. It’s too much to type in a blog post, but feel free to ask me about it. I’ll end this part of the blog with sharing a short story:
Backstory: I knew about the World Race for a while before I started praying about it seriously. I just figured “nine months?? I can’t because I’m going to college”.
A few weeks later, I was speaking to a woman I had just met ten minutes before and she was asking me about plans after high school. I told her I wanted to go to UNC-Wilmington. But then she asked me what I wanted to do. As if those two questions were different and that hit me. “What are your plans vs. what you want to do?” I told her about the World Race. She was very encouraging and told me exactly what I needed to hear: “Step out in faith”. OKAY!! After that, I was like yeaahh!! Let’s do it!! I got in my car to head home and I prayed with so much meaning and emotion asking God to please tell me what to do. After that prayer, I was ECSTATIC. Never been in a better mood! I could actually hear the words in my head saying “Go!! Step out in faith!! Have no worry, I got you no matter what!”. I sped home and began my World Race application that night. That verse I posted above is the only way I can explain that feeling. It was like no other and I knew I wasn’t mistaken. SWEET.
I’m not usually super open about my personal life, but throughout this journey with Jesus, I want to be as transparent as possible. I’m going on this mission trip to share the Word and love of God, so I should share that with those that are reading this right now.
Fundraising
In order to be sent on the World Race, I have to fundraise $15,800. It sounds like a lot, but God ALWAYS provides. With hard work and total trust in God, I couldn’t be more confident that it will happen. If you feel led to donate to help send me to be a missionary, please feel free to. If you would like to help in other ways other than financial:
-Pray for me during this fundraising process and ask God to prepare my heart and mind for this journey
-You can tell your friends and family- that would be greatly appreciated too!
To stay up to date on how fundraising is going and see how you can be apart of my journey, you can follow my instagram account @fundandsendcapp
Please tell your friends and family. Any donation amount, small or large, monthly or one-time, is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you SO MUCH for reading and subscribe to my blog to read more in the future!
XX-Clarissa Cappadona
