While my squad and I were still in Atlanta Georgia, our squad mentor, Megan, told us about a really amazing opportunity that AIM wanted to test out with our squad through an app called DonorSee. The app was created by an alumni World Racer. The purpose of DonorSee is to be able to raise money for small or large projects straight from the field. Through the app, we as a team would seek the Lord’s direction in seeing where extra financial needs might be needed within that month’s ministry. Our mentor also asked for each team from our squad to have an appoint person, and guess who volunteered??!! Me!!
I was really excited about the idea and concept behind the app. And couldn’t wait to see what the Lord placed in our path to bless our ministries with. My first thoughts were to start small. Maybe raise like a $50 bucks for the boys at Beacon to have new shoes, or backpacks. I was by no means attempting to start off by “going big” by any means. But when you follow the God that I do, going big is sort of his thing. And this year it has really been placed on my heart to pray big prayers, ironic?, I think not!
So within the first few days of being at Beacon, my team and I noticed how leaky the roof of the ministry home was. Actually, leaky is an understatement. It was beyond repair. Every morning we would wake up with puddles on the floor. Pretty much every wall of their home, which is the main place of their ministry would be dripping wet. I will never forget one morning after a hard and long night of constant rain. I was talking with our ministry host, Angie, and the ministry secretary, Alima. And they were explaining to me that Alima just purchased a new notebook for taking office notes and because of the leaky roof the notebook got all wet and was ruined. This seems so simple and they both laughed it off but it really got me thinking.
Shortly after, my team mate Taylor pulled me aside and brought up the idea to raise money to fix the roof. I was all in. We decided to bring it up in our orientation meeting with Angie the next day. She told us that it would be about $3500 to fix the whole roof. This would include materials and the labor. After hearing this, we were still ready to make this our first DonorSee project. She was completely shocked when we presented the idea to her and that we still wanted to go for it. Her excitement and gratitude made me even more thrilled to get to work! My other team mate, Kevin worked to put together a quick video. Then I wrote about the project and posted it to DonorSee. Let the social media sharing begin….
I have to admit, at first I thought “of course we will raise the money, no worries, God’s got this”. Which is a great mentality to starting a project. However, I didn’t even start really praying about it until well after I posted it. This coming from the gal who wanted to pray big prayers this year. At this point, it was probably about 2 weeks in since we started fundraising. And we were doing well, but still had a ways to go.
I was starting to really worry about making the deadline. I also felt very convicted about not having covered the situation with prayer. I thought to myself, I’m the appoint person, I will look like such a failure if we don’t raise all the money within the deadline. That’s when it hit me that I need to make things right before the Lord by praying for this. And also start believing that if we pray for it, He can do it! So I did. And I kid you not…a few days after Angie told us that her home church was going to donate $1000. I was shocked.
Over the course of the next week, donations of all sizes started to show up! It was really amazing to see the Lord working steadily. I was able to start getting portions of the money to Angie while we were still staying with her too. It was happening. We were set to leave for debrief soon but I decided to keep the donations open since we were just a couple hundred dollars short of the goal. Wifi was very slow in South Africa at debrief so I wasn’t able to check the status of the funds often. But one morning, I was able to get a steady connection. And there it was! Someone had donated $450 dollars. Which put us over our total amount needed. I literally refreshed the page a few times. I also want to add, that no one on my team knew who this person was. I thanked the Lord and then ran to gather our teams to share the news with them.
Looking back now, it just brings a smile to my face. I’m still overwhelmed by the way the Lord showed up for this need. It was a huge undertaking especially for our first month on the World Race. But the Lord had his hand in all of it. Every moment I doubted, worried and stressed about making the deadline, the Lord was teaching me to trust him and to see his provision. If we come to Him and ask, He will show up.
Lastly, I just want to thank all those who donated to help raise the roof. We are all truly grateful for the generosity in all your hearts. You were able to be a small part of a huge blessing for Beacon of Hope.
Haley
