I have always been an extremely idealistic person, attracted to somehow making the world a better place. Even at the age of 10, I wanted to help the suffering by finding the cure for AIDS. This passion slowly evolved into wanting to become a doctor and work overseas, and eventually moving back to the US, start a family, and run a free clinic. Little did I know, God had bigger plans for me.
I was incredibly blessed in high school with a youth minister who carried a passion for missions and a burden for the suffering. Through these trips, God showed me His children in poverty not only in the small town of Greenwood, all over the United States, but also in the world. Trips to Ecuador and Kenya opened my eyes to a level of poverty and suffering that I had never imagined possible. My heart began to bleed for the widows and orphans of the world, and I knew that somehow I was to use this passion and allow God to work through me, but not through medicine.
Over the past few years, I have been incredibly burdened for the poor and destitute, and God has given me a passion to see the church reach out to those who have no one else to pick them up. Immersed in a culture where each person is fighting his way to gaining power and money, I think Christians have lost sight of Christ’s call to carry one anothers burdens and reaching out to help the “least of these.” I slowly began to realize that God was stirring a passion in my heart to do something more with my life than medicine, or simply volunteering. He was calling me to go into the world, I just had to patiently wait for the right time and opportunity to present itself.
A few months ago, my bff and roomie told me about the World Race. Both of us had been feeling a passion to go into the world and serve, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. That same day, we filled out our applications, and now we are both preparing to leave for the adventure of a lifetime.
I know I have nothing of worth to offer because it is only by God’s amazing grace that I have been given this opportunity. I am so grateful that I have been given the opportunity to go into the world empty handed and have God work through me to show His unending love and grace to His precious children.
God deliberately chose what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame. And God also deliberately chose what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are, So that no mortal man should have pretense for glorying and boast in the presence of God.
1 Corinthians 1:27-29
