Hi! My name is Jesse Morris! I'm a 26-year old from living in Arlington Heigts IL, about 25 minutes outside of Chicago. I launched on the World Race on January 14th from Miami FL, headed to the Dominican Republic and I finished teh World Race on December 2nd, with the Philippines being my last country. I'm telling you-the trip blew me away! Never have I been exposed to poverty like I've seen across the world. Never have I met so many people that both inspired me and strengthened me to persevere through the the trials and struggles I would consider "difficult." The trip changed me in more ways that I can come up with right now and it opened so many doors.
A bit about me:
In 2008 my Dad died. It was sudden and unexpected and extremely difficult for me, as I was away from home and had nobody to help me deal with the death. I wasn't able to go to the funeral which made it worse. At that point, I did lose hope. I forgot God. I forgot who I was. I doubted God and I doubted myself and what I believed. In the two weeks following the death of my Dad, I had the hardest spiritual battle I've ever had to deal with. I felt like I had God on one side and satan on other other and I was in a tug-of-war. It was very difficult, but I turned to God as best I could and He stayed by my side the whole time.
Regardless of what God had brought me through, I stopped going to church late 2008 and ran from Him. I turned to the bar scene for quite awhile, but in late 2009, God began convicting me and I knew I really needed Him in my life again. I knew I couldn't keep going on with what I had been doing. I knew this was not the life I wanted. I needed something more. i needed a base; a foundation. In February of 2010 I began going to church again. I accepted Christ back into my life and immediately I began to realize that God was still there and had been there the whole time, just waiting for me to realize I had played the part of the fool.
In May of 2011, I heard about the World Race from a friend and immediately it stuck out to me as a unique opportunity to do something that matters. I was tired of living every day over and over again and never feeling like I was benefiting anyone or getting anywhere in life. I went home and prayed about it for a couple of days and then applied for it. And as they say-the rest is history 🙂
One of my biggest dreams is to be able to become a photojournalist. From before I could remember, I was a huge national geographic fan and I loved the stories of photojournalists integrating themselves with a tribe in the Amazon, or a people's group in China and it's something I became very passionate about pursuing. Over the years, that passion has developed into the desire to photograph and write about issues in our world today that the world does not necessarily know about or pay attention to. On the WR, i met so many amazing people with amazing stories.
My passion is to photograph and document those stories…
And that's all I have to say about myself 🙂
