I have been getting a lot of questions about why I choose to pursue going on the World Race Gap Year instead of going to college. Even though it’s been fun answering peoples questions, I thought it would also be a super good topic to write about for my FIRST BLOG POST!! 🙂
If you read the About Me section on my blog already, you would know about why I have decided to pursue missions in the first place. If you haven’t read the About Me section, I will do a quick summary! I have been to the Dominican Republic three times during my High School career thus far and each time God has pushed me more and more into pursuing long term missions as my future “career”. Now that you know why I am pursuing missions, let me tell you about how I got to the point where I am now, preparing to spend almost a full year in the missions field.
The minute I felt that calling of wanting to be a full time missionary I went online to find a missionary training program or college. I found a lot of short term training programs and Christian college degree programs that sorta kinda linked up to what I wanted. I didn’t want a regular college experience and I really didn’t want to go to a regular college. I looked a lot into Christian colleges and I even found two I really considered for a year or two… But I felt defeated. I knew God had a better plan for me than just going straight into college after High school. I didn’t want to get a degree in something I wasn’t passionate about and I didn’t want to get a degree that would be put to waste. I didn’t want to waste four years of my life when I could be doing or pursuing something I love. Once I came to terms with what I wanted, I started looking more into gap year programs. The first one that came up was the World Race Gap Year. It was a God thing I didn’t have a heart attack. Just reading about it made me well up with tears. It was everything I had ever hoped to be able to do! The idea of spending 9 months of my life in different countries doing different kinds of missions work and learning hands on from experience about missions made my heart flutter. I knew it was Gods plan for me to go.
Fast forward to where I am right now. Writing this letter. Being ACCEPTED to go on my dream trip. I am not only doing this trip because it is cool, I am doing this trip because it will grow me. Through this trip I will see the good, bad, ugly and glory in semi long term missions. I will experience the rough side of missions and I will be stressed, overwhelmed, over my head, angry, upset, resentful, mad, regretful and sad while on this trip. I may even decide to never do missions again while on this trip. BUT I need to find out if I can handle it. The only way I can truly see if I am capable to do long term missions in the future is to just do it. So here I am preparing to test myself and see if I can handle it. It is going to be the trip of a life time, but it also will be an extremely growing experience… And I couldn’t be more excited and ready to watch God overwhelm me with his amazing power and grace. I may decide to go to college after this trip and get a degree or I may decide to move to a random country and do missions or I may decide to continue working at Runza my entire life! The world may never know! All I am going to do is trust in God and follow him where he leads me, and right now he is leading me on this trip and I couldn’t be more thrilled and over joyed! 🙂
Please be praying for me as I tackle this fundraising journey and prepare mentally, physically, and spiritually for this journey. I love you all so so so much! Stay tuned for more posts and THANK YOU FOR READING MY FIRST BLOG POST!! If you feel led to be apart of my journey and donate a few pennies or dollars to my trip please do so! Everything you may give is a huge blessing! 🙂
May God bless you all! 🙂
