On October first, the day before I had to be at launch and 4 days before I left for Cambodia, I was scrambling around my house searching for my passport. Finally, my mom called me back and I crossed my fingers that she was about to tell me she has my passport. But, in reality, she tells me no and that she never had it.
So at this point, I start freaking out because, in my mind, this means I won’t be leaving for Cambodia and I will have to defer to January, meaning I will have to get to know a whole new squad. And I LOVE MY SQUAD!!!
So I become frantic and start racing around my house throwing stuff left and right to find it. Once my mom gets to the house, she joins me in the frantic scramble. During this whole ordeal my mom and I are just crying out to the Lord to show us the passport and to lead us to it. Finally, we decide to go look in the storage unit, because maybe I had packed it with my stuff a few days before.
NOPE! It was nowhere to be found.
TEARS!
I mean tears.
My mom and I are crying and our spirits are down. We are both feeling spiritually attacked. I am in a ball unable to stop crying. I finally, at the last moment before we have to leave the house to make our flight to Atlanta, decide to call my Squad Mentor to tell him that my passport has disappeared. My Squad Mentor informs us that we need to still come down to launch and we will work it out because, no matter what, I will stay with my squad.
So my mom and I race to the airport to get on our flight, both our stomachs in knots. My mom tries to convince me to eat because she knows how I can get very hangry (that is when you are angry because you are hungry). So I follow my mom’s directions and eat about two bites of my chicken salad sandwich.
Of course my mom sees a person she knows at the airport, and while she is talking to them, I decide to take the time to have a moment with the Lord. I begin to pray. I pray to God about Him helping me accept the situation and asking Him to help calm my soul so that I could enjoy these final moments with my mom for 11 months. I asked God for guidance in the next coming hours because I knew it was going to be a wild ride to get my passport in 24 hours.
Then, I immediately started to feel calm. I ate the rest of my chicken salad sandwich, and I finished reading Radical by David Platt for about the 10th time. God showed himself to me by having calm souls around me and calming mine. I know that my World Race experience so far has been an easy one so the devil had to take one more attempt at trying to steal my joy about this experience.
So on Monday October 3rd my mom and I with the logistics leader for my squad went to the passport office to get my new passport. You could feel the nerves in the air and see the worry on my face. I got there and after 45 minutes we were all walking out the door with a plan for my mom to pick up my passport that afternoon to bring to me.
But now, as I sit at the Chicago airport waiting to get on the plane to, first, South Korea for a 15-hour layover and then onto Cambodia I am excited for this experience and ready to go. I am pumped to explore Seoul, South Korea with my team for a few hours and then hop on our final flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia where our missionary journey truly begins.
Thank you prayer warriors and financial supporters for getting me this far!!!!!!!
