My journey to the world race started about four plus years ago. I went into the United States Coast Guard, and on day two of Basic Training they discharged me for dental issues. So over the next two weeks following that I was placed in the DHE (Discharge Hold Element). What this was for is usually for people who quit and want to go home, they get sick and have to leave, or injured etc. etc. I was the only person in there who wanted desperately to stay and yet I was the only one who was being forced to leave.
Over those two weeks the drill instructors would use us as an example whenever we were out marching around using phrases such as “You better straighten up or you’ll go home like those “Failures””. They all had pretty colorful language as to what they called us to try to motivate their company from becoming one of “Us”. Consequently for those two weeks I was treated as an undesirable, a failure, good for nothing which lead to me shutting off all emotions for the next year while I tried to sort out what exactly I had just gone through and try to figure out what was next in my life. At that point I had no more dream for what the rest of my life should look like. It broke me.
When I finally made it home I had no place to live, because since I was planning on not coming back home for years. My brother, his wife, and their two kids moved into my parents basement where I had been living, so I couldn’t go back there. We had a spare bedroom upstairs but either right before or right after I left, I can’t really remember, my grandpa on my moms side moved in. There was no place for me to stay so I slept on the back porch in a hammock for a couple days trying to figure out what to do. It was at that point that my now best friend, Tracy and his wife told me that I could live in the back of their barn until I could figure something else out. Now before you get carried away it was more of a garage than a barn, and the room back there was pretty big. I got lucky.
After that I proceeded to bounce from job to job, never staying more than a year and half, for the next three and a half to four years give or take. I finally being to get back on track and everything was going “normal” when I started doing Cross Fit right around October last year. My coach and the owner of the gym, Kali, is amazing and she was able to put me in check when I got a little too crazy. What I mean by that is she finally sat me down around March and said that I needed to slow down. I was confused and she told me that I had changed my career choice about six different times since I had started working out there. She told me “Worry about you, be the best you that you can be today, be the best you that you can be tomorrow, and let God handle the future and the rest.” At which point I felt like a little child who got scolded and shrunk back into their chair. And yet it was so simple that I was over looking it.
For the past four years I was trying to control where I went, what I did with my life etc. etc. and for the first time I began to ask God what he wanted me to do instead of what I wanted to do. That’s a dangerous question. About a week and a half later I had felt that I needed to get out and go on a mission trip. So I googled Adventures in Missions, which was not actually what I was looking for. I am the youngest of four and all my siblings went on mission trips through the organization New Adventures In Missions. Which is what I thought I was looking up. I got to the page and found the World Race and decided that it was what I wanted to do since I am an Eagle Scout and thought living out of a backpack for a year sounded fun. After I applied I talked to my oldest sister and she said that she went through New Adventures In Missions. So I googled the wrong thing. After applying and getting accepted I had about a month and a half before the first deadline was due for fundraising. I had to raise a total of $18,017 and I had to get $5,000 in less than two months. So naturally I told my church and they had not managed to let me know what they were going to do for me if anything. The money had to be sent in on a Monday and that Saturday before I only had $2,000. I was sweating a little bit. I prayed, “Okay God, I know I’m supposed to be going, therefore I need more money, but if i’m wrong then don’t let the money be there.” the next day I talked to my church and just told them that I needed them to at least tell me what they would be willing to commit even if I couldn’t get it now. My church is a little country Church in Martinsville Ohio and averages between 40-50 people on a weekly basis. To date they have given over $8,000 for my trip!! God is so good!! Whats more is that I have almost all of the $18,017 spoken for. I don’t know why God wants me on this trip but it is obvious that he does.
