It's true… I am crazy. I am crazy in love with the people who are hurting all around this world.
I started off this year at the Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. And I mean started off my year there… January 1! It is there where I heard David Platt speak and it is there that I began to really feel the pull to do something more with my life. After that conference, I bought the book Radical by David Platt. Amazing book! Definitely helped me to put in perspective how much this world needs love and Christ. It motivated me to not wait any longer… to go now! But, I didn’t… my plan was to wait a little while longer and then see where life would take me. Then, just a couple months ago, I was at a little reunion with the girls I went to Kenya with… more about that experience in a minute… when the World Race came up in conversation. I had seen the website for the WR a few months earlier while sick with pneumonia and doing nothing but surfing the internet during the day and playing Yahtzee with my mom at night. I thought the trip seemed cool and never thought too much more about it… until that reunion where the trip somehow came up… and I came home from that amazing weekend with those girls and applied for the World Race 
But, this is just what got me to apply for the World Race now…
The journey that brought me to this point actually began about 2 years ago. Until that time, I had never dreamed I would ever leave this country. But, after watching a small video clip from the Invisible Children movie, I felt a tug on my heart to get out there. So, the summer of 2009, I headed to Kenya through an organization called World Gospel Mission. I was only there 6 short weeks, but that experience changed my life. I fell in love with the people I met who were hurting for reasons I could never truly imagine… reasons that I don’t have to worry about living in such a privileged country. I could go on and on and on about this trip…. But I will keep it short and to the point.
Kenya is a beautiful country!
A country where you can take pictures like these without going to a zoo!
And, a country where you can meet some very cool and wonderful people!
(This picture is the girls I was referring to earlier… the ones I had the reunion with)
But, Kenya also looks like this….
…Slums covered in trash…
It was at this slum where I fell in love with Samuel
I only spent part of one day at this children’s home in the slum, but it was enough to impact me for the rest of my life. Samuel sat on my lap the good majority of the hours we spent there. He was tired, weak, and hungry. You see… he was at a place where he should have been receiving care… but he really wasn’t. He was starving! Leaving that little boy who I had only spent a few hours with was the hardest moment I remember having in Kenya. How could I leave him knowing that he would probably only live a short while longer. It still kills me today. If I could have brought him home, I would have in a heartbeat!
And to think… this is only one child… one single human life among the billions who is hurting, starving, and dying while I sit here in my living room surrounded by the luxuries of a laptop, television, refrigerator, a ceiling fan to keep me cool on this hot afternoon, food in the kitchen that would probably feed me for months, and even the simplest of things like clean water. To me, these things are nothing out of the ordinary or even things that are hard to obtain… but, to those who are hurting around the world, these are absolute luxuries!
This is why I want to change the world! This is why I want to do the World Race. I want to really experience this world for what it is… a place in need of LOVE! In need of CHRIST!
My prayer for this race is that I would be able to live out Acts 20:24…
“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me- the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
I call this verse my “theme verse” for the race.
It is hard to give myself completely to God… to consider my life worth nothing to me… but, that is what I desire to do. I desire to see my life that way. That is my prayer… and I ask that you please pray for me in that way too… that I could abandon my life and my desires… my everything… for Christ and his plan for me.
