Disclaimer: This blog is the recordings of a young guy, adventuring through what it looks like to have a “Yes” spirit for the Lord. An adventure of witnessing the ways the Lord is working in the lives of fellow Christians around the world, sharing with others the beautiful promise we have in the Lord and the joy we have in knowing Him, and growing in my personal walk with our perfect, loving father throughout the journey. I’m eager to share with you all the things I encounter in these 11 months I’ll be away. However, my forte as a farmer might be more along the lines of feeding cows, driving trucks and tractors, and growing corn than putting together beautifully written blogs. Be prepared for incorrect grammar, run on sentences, and rabbit trails of thoughts! This will be much of a learning experience for me. I may not be packed full of wisdom and well-studied knowledge, but I’m looking forward to sharing the things I learn. I hope to “bring you along” and keep you up to date with these blogs, just don’t mind a run-on sentence here and there!
Walk By Faith
This picture of my nephew Roy and I was taken Saturday night following the big weekend brat fry fundraiser for this world race mission trip. Two full days of grilling, serving, organizing.. I was feeling pretty exhausted. We had everything pretty well cleaned up, but i wanted to squeeze in a little nephew time before my sister, Rachel, had to take him back home. Roy is only 7.5 months old now so he’s got awhile before he’s walking on his own, but he likes when someone helps him out and he can take some wobbly steps around places. At one point, I must have gotten ahead of Roy enough to catch his attention above. He looked up at me with his blue eyes and gave me a big ol smile. That’ll give you some warm fuzzys! (If you can’t foresee this one coming, I already know I’m going to miss both of my little buddy nephews.)
In that moment of Roy looking up and smiling, I felt like I could totally relate. As busy as the weekend was, I was feeling so beyond blessed with so much that I just looked up, smiled, and said thank you so much dear Lord. As I continue to prepare for this trip, I continue to be AMAZED at the amount of support I’ve received from so many people. This past weekend I saw incredible family and friends volunteer lots of time and effort to help me run a successful brat fry. I saw lots and lots of (very tasty looking) homemade baked goods made and donated to be sold and support me. I saw God open doors for faith conversations with customers and grocery store employees. I saw people from the community that I don’t even know put money in my donation pail. I saw people come support me for lunch two days in a row! God. Is. Sooooo. Good. Thank you SO MUCH to all of you who have prayed for me, encouraged me, and supported me in so many ways. God blessed this past weekends fundraiser with a profit of $4,700. That is way more than I was hoping to receive! It leaves me with about $2,500 to go to reach the fully funded number of $19,900. I was not expecting to be this far at this point! I find that quite incredible and so very humbling. I was mentioning in the previous blog about how intimidating this much fundraising seemed, but God continues to assure me that this is His plan for me, He’s with me on this, and that couldn’t be more comforting!
2 Corinthians 5:7 says “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” The NIV actually translates the word “walk” to “live”. I took a leap of faith when I put my initial deposit down for a spot on route 3 of The World Race October 2019 launch, but God continues to show His love and faithfulness to me. He is teaching me to trust in Him and remain faithful. There is no way I could do any of this on my own accord. I don’t know what each day of the race will bring. I’m sure there will be times that I feel intimidated or out of my comfort zone. However, God is teaching me to live with faith in Him. Just like Roy knows I’m above him helping him take those steps, I know our dear Lord is with me every step of the way. And I’m so grateful for that each and every day!
