Hi everyone! I’m stoked to have this space to be able to share with all of you about what God is doing in my life as I prepare to leave for the World Race, and especially what he is doing around the world when I am out on the mission field!
I’ll start with a few basics for those of you who are getting to know me a little better. First, My name is Mackenzie, but just call me Mack. I am 22 years old and grew up in a town called Okanogan in Washington state. I’m a senior at Whitworth University and will graduate this May with a Health Science major and Theology minor. I love living in the PNW. I love the fresh air and the open skies that surround me when I drive home. Speaking of home; I have an amazing family who supports me and loves me through everything, they are some of the most important people in my life. I also live in a house with 6 other girls, I can’t even begin to tell you how much these girls have shaped me over the last 4 years. They mean the world to me and have become family. I seriously don’t know where I would be without them.
A little bit about how God led me to the WR. Growing up I always wanted to do mission work. I hoped to work with Doctors Without Borders as a pediatric oncologist; but like usual, God’s plan and my plan weren’t the same, and I am so thankful that they weren’t. Last January, I worked in Guatemala with La Mision, setting up and running medical clinics along side fellow students. That month in Guatemala was unlike anything I had ever experienced, Jesus really wrecked my life. I could talk about that month and everything I saw and experienced and learned for hours! my heart broke everyday for the people around me and my eyes were opened to what true mission work was. I looked around at the people surrounding me in these remote villages; they don’t have clean water, don’t have much food, and have hardly any medical access, but they want for absolutely nothing and that radically humbled me. While I was there I realized that I wasn’t actually giving control of my life up to God. I thought I was, because I’d say “I’ll be a physicians assistant, or a nurse practitioner, but God will show me which one.” Haha, I had no idea. God showed me in Guatemala that I could serve him in ways I didn’t even think of before; whether that be holding a child or a grandma’s hand so they wouldn’t feel alone while getting their teeth pulled, or playing outside in the sweltering heat, with children whose parents needed to see the doctors. God showed me that I didn’t have to be what I thought to be able to serve him; I just had to show up, with an open heart and open arms, ready to love people.
Coming home from Guatemala, I started to feel uneasy about my potential post-grad plans. I had heard about the WR before I left for Guatemala, and when I look back at journals from that month and last spring I see places where I wrote about what a dream it would be to do the WR at some point; it’s crazy to me how God works like that, he put this distant dream on my heart, and now I get to live it out. I knew I wanted to apply for the WR, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted to do it directly after graduation, or once I finished nursing school. As summer came to an end and I started the fall semester of my senior year, I couldn’t push off the feeling of uneasiness about post graduation. Every time I talked to my YL co-leaders about our house for the next year, took a nursing exam, or worked on my nursing school applications, I felt like I was choosing to live a comfortable life. I was trying to make myself believe that I needed to go onto more schooling and get a job before I did what I felt like God was calling me to do, because that was the norm, what people expected. One day I remember opening my computer and going to the WR homepage. I had been praying for what felt like months about what to do, and in that moment I decided to trust God and let go of what was expected of me and apply for the WR; the peace I felt in that moment was indescribable.
I decided to just trust God. I stopped applying for nursing schools, I stopped trying to control my future by making a fallback option and trusted that this was where God was calling me to go. I followed the tug from Jesus on my heart to live uncomfortably, and by the grace of God, that led me here.
