So How Did I Get Here?

I know many of my family and friends are wondering how I got to this point, so it was only fitting to write a blog about it.

I don’t know exactly where the beginning is but I do know that when I came home from South Africa last summer I immediately wanted to go back. Actually I didn’t want to leave. The opportunity to go there literally fell out of the sky. I was standing with some friends after our college service on Wednesday night and our associate college pastor Amber came up to us and was like here is an opportunity to go serve people in Cape Town this summer for 6 weeks. It was with a non-profit over there called Living Hope. I will be forever grateful to them and their ministries because it ignited a passion in me to love on people in a different country. I formed friendships that I never imagined would be possible. Friendships that felt like family. Another big thing that serving there gave me was healing. I don’t really know if I can explain it, but the joy of the kids that I came in contact with showed me that even though I’m not happy with my circumstances that I can still be joyful. And that joy only comes from the Lord. I started to accept that I cannot change my past, just like the kids can’t change theirs. But with the joy of the Lord we have hope that our Father will redeem our past. That is what I wanted to bring to them but isn’t it funny that they actually taught me that. They taught me to embrace who I am, my identity. In my interview to be accepted for that program, they told me that I would sometimes feel like they were ministering to me more than I was ministering to them. so true. Needless to say they forever have a piece of my heart.

After being back in America for about 5 months, I was sure I wanted to go back or go somewhere else. I emailed them to see about the next summer opportunities, but the dates wouldn’t work out. I have to take summer classes this summer because I skipped them last summer to go. I couldn’t do that again if I wanted to graduate, so there was a closed door. I continued to search for opportunities to go somewhere, hopefully somewhere that would include South Africa. Nothing was really clicking or gave me the feeling of oh this is it, so I decided to stop searching. Then one night in February, I was hanging out with some friends and a girl came who is a good friend of one of my friends. Her name is Chelsey and she is leaving on the World Race in September! (check out her amazing blog http://chelseymurphree.theworldrace.org) She had just been accepted, so I started asking her all these questions about it. I had heard of it before but didn’t really know what it was and suddenly I wanted to know everything about it. When I left that night, I couldn’t get the world race out of my head and started reading blogs and watching videos about it. I began praying about it and started the application process. I told my community about it and they affirmed my decision and were just as excited about it as I was. A few weeks later I had been accepted!! An opportunity that once again fell out of the sky. Thank you Lord! Of course I was still a little nervous about it and unsure if this was right. The new Passion 2013 CD “Let the Future Begin” had recently come out and after listening to it I immediately had a favorite song called “Burning in My Soul”. It’s my favorite because of these lyrics: