My Grandma West taught me how to sew when I was thirteen years old. She taught me how to sew buttons onto shirts and pants and then advanced on to patching holes and rips. (These skills have been vital on the Race. I have sewed several buttons on my clothing as well as teammates clothing. I have patched Leize Marie’s jeans for her and taught her how to patch her pants and as we were leaving Brasov, Romania I slide into the back of a cab which had a screw sticking out of the back on the drivers seat and riped my favorite pair of pants not to mention riping a gash in my leg.)
Along with sewing my grandmother also taught me how to sow seeds in peoples lives. She is an amazing woman of God and has always been so strong. She has always loved people regardless of how they treated her. She has sown seeds in so many peoples lives and she doesn’t even know it. She has shown the love of Christ in so many lives. She is a sower of many seeds. Although I am sewing several items of clothing on the Race I am also learning to sow seeds. This is something that I have heard a lot about in church over the past few years but never was really sure about how to go about it. When I signed up for my first mission trip to Nicaragua in the summer of 2007 I was pleaasantly surprised when we showed up and all these children, teenagers, and adults were willing to open up and accept Jesus. I came back from that trip thinking that that is how all mission trips go. I believe God truly blessed my time in Nicaragua and many people came to know Christ in those ten days that I was there but I believe that it was God working through me.
When I signed up for the Race I thought that I would holding baby orphans in Africa, working with prostiutes in Asia, and feeding the homeless in Eastern Europe. I thought that I would see all these people that I see come to have a personal relationship with Christ. I thought that I would come in and just reap the harvest. I thought that is what it was about. Come to find out, here I sit in month three in Serbia of all places in the world, realizing that God has not sent me here to be the reaper of the harvest. I am not suppose to see all the work that I have done come to fruition. God is showing me that my team is suppose to be planting seeds. Seeds that will grow in good soil. It is our job to cultivate the soil and plant those seeds everywhere we go.
