I said those words one year, three months and twenty-seven days ago.
Now when I think back on that day, I imagine God watching me and laughing.
I was in Costa Rica on a mission trip with ten other youth ministry majors from CIU(of course there would be 11 of us; God gets a kick out of sprinkling that number through my story). It was Sunday night and this group who was working with another ministry nearby came to help us lead a youth group.
When they said they were on the World Race, I thought for a second, then burst out, “OH I heard of that once! Is that the deal where you go to 11 countries in 11 months?” followed by at least five other questions before I finally paused to let them answer. They laughed and said yes it was. I asked where they were going, what kind of ministry they were working with right now and what they’d get to do later, and it all sounded pretty great. Then I asked how much they had to raise to go. As soon as they said $15,500, I decided it didn’t sound so good after all.
After youth group was over, we were heading back to our hotel and we asked the World Race people where they were staying. They pointed a bit beyond the park we had been at, and we saw a bunch of tents set up. My jaw dropped. “You have to live in a TENT for eleven months?” I officially thought this whole thing sounded crazy.
We got to work with them and hang out a couple other times during the week, and I was always full of questions. They told me all about what they’d be doing and where they’d be going, and I said, “Wow. I could never do that, but that’s awesome.” On our last day before going home, I hugged all of them and promised to follow their blogs and pray for them the whole rest of the year.
I pored over every one of their blog posts for the next few days, and kept thinking, “This sounds like the best thing in the world. If only it weren’t so much money.” At the time God hadn’t even started hinting that he had any opinion on it, so pretty soon I forgot about it. Then the whirlwind of the next few weeks happened, which if you haven’t read about yet, you can here.
Fast forward to now, and I’m about to go off on the same crazy journey that those awesome people were.
While I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be, fundraising really hasn’t been as hard as I expected. Or at least, trusting God with fundraising hasn’t been so bad. The number in my account isn’t as high as I’d like, but I don’t mind. I have so much peace that the money will come when it needs to, I can’t even make myself worry.
And to think I ever said, “I could never do that.” Now I can’t picture myself doing anything else.
