At twenty four, I’m chasing challenges that have pushed me outside my comfort zone. I’m currently an alternative education teacher at a high school in Lititz, Pennsylvania where I am also a head track and field coach and an assistant girls’ varsity soccer coach.
I love teaching, I love coaching, and I love “my kids”. In my classroom, I work with struggling students who are suffering through a wide range of problems including homelessness, hunger, drug addiction, and even rape.
My work is hard, frustrating, and heartbreaking. But I love it. My classroom is a mission field and I truly believe that every teacher has been called to that field. Becoming a teacher is often choosing a career of serving “the least of these”.
Over the past two years I have felt a need to go beyond the walls of my classroom. Recently, I went on a mission trip where I met Ellen, a young Haitian girl my age. I connected with Ellen like I do many of my students over a love of books. Ellen, like many other teenage girls and young adults, loved Twilight. However, despite our connections, Ellen and I lived very different lives for being the same age. I worked in a tough classroom with little pay, no benefits, and no guarantee of a position for the next year, but in a nice area with a home and food on my table. Ellen was a stripper and was excited because she now had a small room to sleep in instead of sleeping on two chairs pushed together outside the shack her large family struggled to crowd into. Ellen’s story moved me, although her life was not unlike some of my students’. Unbelieve and heartbreaking to most, but a sad reality for too many.
Meeting Ellen and witnessing the challenges my students face has caused me to embrace this restlessness and to once again challenge my comfort zone. Taking my love of teaching and my passion with working with disadvantaged youth, I have answered the call to complete a year long mission trip through the World Race.
The World Race is an opportunity for me to serve around the globe. This coming September, I will leave to begin an eleven month journey to participate in various ministry projects in a new country each month. My journey will begin in Kenya and finish at the end of July 2014 in Puerto Rico. I will be working in Rwanda, Uganda, Nepal, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, Dominican Republic, and Haiti as well.
While on the Race, I will be working as part of a team of 21-35 year olds from all over the United States and living primarily out of a backpack. Our ministry work will include teaching English classes, working at orphanages, completing manual labor in villages, visiting hospitals, assisting with worship services, reaching out to prostitutes, educating teens, and most of all, sharing my faith with others, including my teammates.
This journey will not be possible without your help. Please pray. For myself and my teammates, that we will enter the mission field with open hearts and let God work through us to help others. That we ourselves are changed by those we encounter and that as a team we bond together as a family. For our safety and health. For our families who we will be leaving behind for a year. That financially we may be at ease because where God calls, He provides. And please pray for “my kids” that I leave behind in my classroom.
In addition to your support, please follow my journey. You can join my experience by following my blog: katievann.theworldrace.org. I write daily on my blog and will continue to do so until the end of the mission. During the mission, I will also include pictures and video of the ministry we are doing. As a teacher, I am also open to connecting with your church to help educate others about my mission through presentations, video clips, and through my writing.
My blog site is also where you can make donations for my journey if you feel called to. The total cost of the trip is $15,500 and with an additional $2,000 in extra expenses for gear, vaccinations, and travel insurance. You can make a one time or a monthly donation on my site by clicking the “support me” link or you can make a check payable to Adventures in Missions and return the response card I have attached with it (a receipt will be sent back to you).
I have attached details on my trip, options for creating an educational opportunity for your church, and a digital copy of my response card for donations if you feel called to do so.
Thank you for your thoughts, prayers and for your time. Even if it is a single prayer, you have made a difference in my life. I hope you decide to follow my journey, and I can’t wait to share my experiences with you.
Love and blessings,
Katie
