Tomorrow begins the final two weeks of fall semester in my last year in college.
Well, my last year for now, grad school may be in the future but I’m not too worried about that right now.
If you’d asked me two months ago about grad school I probably would’ve told you I wasn’t sure what I wanted and that I didn’t know what to do. Despite God’s guidance throughout my life, I knew He was letting me decide between grad school or something else, whatever that happened to be. Eventually I decided to take a gap year between undergrad and (potential) grad school, and while I still have the desire to attend higher education, I’ve learned that my timing is not God’s timing.
After deciding against grad school right away, I wasn’t sure what I should do, or even what I wanted to do after graduation. This spring I will graduate with a B.S in psychology, but I’m only nineteen years old. I took a lot of college credit in high school which helped me in the long run, but now that I’ll be out two years early, what do I do? Currently I work at a local bakery, and while I love my job, I know it’s not what I’m called to long-term. Finding a job in my field at only an undergrad level is also a difficult thing to do, and I wasn’t super enthused to take a gap year and only spend it working. So I started exploring some different options and different callings God had placed on my life earlier this year.
I first felt God’s mission call last January at my campus ministry’s winter retreat. Pushing further into the call, I started Googling mission trips for the summer of 2017, and ended up spending a month in Greece with the missions organization, Royal Servants. One of the girls on my team (special shoutout to Emma Rogers!) told me about the World Race Gap Year, and I asked God to give me an opportunity to serve His international kingdom through the World Race.
Flash forward only four months, and I’m actually going!
I will be flying to Guatemala, Thailand, Malaysia, and Swaziland over nine months with all my belongings in a backpack, a team of about 40, and a heart that is overwhelmed with the incredible amount of love and faithfulness God has shown me in such a short time.
I am overwhelmed with excitement, adventure, and emotion, but also uncertainty.
Uncertain because I really don’t know how God is going to bring in roughly 16k + supplies & gear I will need to raise by next December. Uncertain about how I will fit into all the expectations and guidelines I will live under for nine months overseas. Uncertain of how I will begin to pay off my student loans while I’m overseas. Uncertain about how I pack nine months into one backpack. And uncertain of the unfamiliar and stretching situations God will put me though.
But I know He is faithful when we are faithless, He provides when we’re underserving, and that He intentionally did not create us to understand everything He has laid out for our lives.
The one thing I’m certain of is that I’m utterly overwhelmed with how incredible our God is, and how He moves in the little things which matter the most.
Please pray for me and my team!
much love, e
“The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established…Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Proverbs 16:1-4, 8-9
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