Hey everyone! My last blog post was a little over two months ago. Wow! Where did all that time go? It may seem like I shared big, life-changing news in my last blog post and then disappeared. I did not. So, like the title says, let’s catch up. I want to share with you a little bit about what I’ve been up to the past couple of months, how fundraising is going, and some ways you can get involved. Let’s jump in.
September was full of starting senior year of high school and a college class, A.T. hiker ministry with my church, speaking in churches, finding out my route (yay!), touring another college, visiting World Race headquarters in Georgia with my mom (which included meeting a sweet squadmate that I will be traveling the world with next year), and rolling out my first fundraiser! (I’ll fill you in below.)
October was filled with much of the same. I spent time with family and friends while 4-wheel driving in the Maine woods, was a part of a Work & Witness project at my church, spoke at a couple more churches, and didn’t drop out of school, so I continued to be busy with that. I also stayed pretty busy fundraising!
This was all fun stuff that was also very time consuming. In the past two months I’ve watched God start to open some pretty cool doors as I started telling people about the World Race and subsequent fundraising.
Fundraising! That word that seems long on its own and can feel like an even longer process sometimes. The fundraiser that I rolled out in September is called an Adopt-a-Box. You can see what it looks like in the picture below. I started with boxes 1-100 and a bonus 500 square. An Adopt-a-Box is when someone picks a number and “adopts” it by giving me the same amount of money as the number on the box. The incentive? I told everyone that I knew where I was going and that it was written under the boxes, so the only way to find out was by adopting all the boxes. You guys are so close to finding out the first and last countries I am going to! With this fundraiser and love offerings from the churches I spoke in, we’ve raised $3,111! Woah! That’s crazy! I mean that in the ONE MONTH I’ve been fundraising over 100 people have become donors and have supported me in what I am doing and we’ve raised over THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS! Blows my mind so big THANK YOU if you were one of those people!
The other day I was talking to someone and telling them about how I had to raise $23,000 for this trip. When I was first figuring out that if World Race requires $16,000 and it doesn’t cover flights back and forth to Georgia, gear, and spending money on the Race, so I would have to raise $23,000, I thought that $20,000 is a lot and I have to raise over that, and that seemed a little impossible and scary at the time. I am totally amazed that because of people’s generosity my fundraising goal is back under $20,000.
I don’t give you all these numbers to scare you because as my dad keeps saying, “Emma, that is a lot of money and you’ve only just started.” I tell you so that you can share in my awe and wonder that we serve such an awesome God who calls us to things that may scare us, and then immediately shows up and starts providing in big ways. I am amazed at how He has shown up already in this fundraising process and excited to see how He continues to show up.
You can get involved with the big things God is doing in my life and around the world in a couple of different ways:
1.) You can pray for me; this is a big undertaking.
