“Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” – 1 Corinthians 10:31
I am so excited to have the opportunity to be the hands and feet of God for 11 months. I cannot wait to touch the lives of people in 11 different countries. I wanted to write a post telling a little about my faith and what has lead me to go on the world race.
I grew up in a house that was spiritual but not religious. What in the world does that mean? I don’t really know either. What I know is that my parents know God, but I did not know this until much after I decided to follow Jesus. We did not pray together or talk about God as a family. We went to church sporadically for things such as VBS and the occasional Sunday morning. We stopped going to church all together a little bit after we moved from California to Georgia. I started to go to church with a friend of mine in middle school. I attended a very small church where there were less than 100 kids in all of the youth group. I loved this church’s youth. They were the kind where if I did not come to church they called just to make sure I was okay. This church got me hooked on church. My faith then slowly grew through this group of new best friends that I had made. By high school I was very involved in the church and attended very regularly.One summer at Montreat Conference Center I realized what all God had done in my life and accepted the sacrifice of Jesus as true. This was the moment I stopped criticizing and began believing.
I was baptized soon after that at the small Presbyterian church I attended. This was a defining moment in my faith. No one told me I had to get baptized. It was my expression of my whole-hearted belief in Jesus as my lord and savior. I served in this church on many local missions and grew my faith greatly here. After leaving for college, like many do, I put my faith on a back burner. I attended church when I felt like it and worshiped through my sorority.
After graduating from college it became abundantly clear how skewed my priorities were. I knew that I needed to get back into the habit of looking to God. I began attending Woodstock City Church with a friend of mine. This was good. I was getting closer to God through teaching and scripture. Woodstock city is a big church and the preacher always talks about how circles are better than row. He talks about how coming to church is a great thing but that we are designed to talk about and share our faith with others. This lead me to joining a women’s bible study.
The bible study that I joined was a formative group meaning that there was no designated leader. We went through a study all about leading and at the end the group voted on leaders. I was told by a few members of the group that they were voting for me. I began praying about this opportunity. I heard God telling me that this opportunity did not come at me for no reason. I decided to see how the votes played out. I was voted as a leader and accepted. It was a member of this group that first mentioned the World Race to me. She mentioned it in passing in reference to travel. I looked it up and took the “is the race right for me” quiz. This signed me up for emails but I didn’t think much past this. I moved on with my life and dove even more into church and my new career as a teacher.
I felt a calling to serve others and to spread the word. I found an outlet for this by volunteering to lead a group of middle school girls. These girls… WOW! They are amazing. I have been leading them for a year now and they have changed my life in so many ways. Leading them is great but it reminded me that I wanted to spread the great news and hope of God. I continued to be drawn to the World Race site. After many extensive deep dives on the internet of blogs and webpages, I could not shake the idea that the World Race was for me. I prayed about it and prayed about it until the answer was so radically clear. GOOOOO!!!! So I asked my parents if they would support me on this. They, of course. said they would and now here I am.
I could not be more grateful for this opportunity. If you have made it to this point thank you for reading and supporting me in any way on this journey!
