A week from today my parents will be in Romania for PVT!
Parent Vision Trip (PVT) is an opportunity for parents to come to the field, serve alongside us, and get to visit and spend a week with us as Racers. Nearly two years ago now, when I first told my parents I was applying to the Race, I mentioned PVT and began a slow and steady push to get them to think about coming. Their original response I believe was something along the lines of “yeah right.”
I’m a little biased, but I truly have the best parents in the world. They were married and started our family younger than the age I am now. Since then, both my parents have given everything they have and worked so incredibly hard to provide everything in the world for my siblings and I. They didn’t have time to travel with three kids at home, bills to pay, and everything life has in store in our world today. So my parents have never been out of the country, and they have only flown a handful of times in my lifetime. You can imagine their hesitancy at the thought of flying 12+ hours to a foreign country to see their 21 year old daughter on the mission field.
When I was accepted to the Race, the thought of being away from home, away from my family and more specifically my parents, for eleven months topped my short list of reasons to say no. During the last six months of my senior year of high school, my parents moved to Memphis, while I stayed in Louisville and lived with a dear friend and her family to finish school and graduate. A few years later, I completed a summer internship in Jamaica and was again away from home for three months. But eleven months, basically a year, to travel the world with thirty-two people I barely know, unreliable wifi and uncertain communication capabilities is a very different ball game. So I began praying for a miracle, and the Lord certainly delivered as my parents will be boarding a plane to Romania in just a matter of days.
I can’t tell you how excited I am for my parents to have this experience, and even more so, for all that the Lord is going to do through this upcoming week. I asked my mom to write about all of her thoughts going into PVT, so I now present part 2 of a WR Parent Perspective!:
Who has had to give a response that their young adult child is on the World Race, and then have to go on to explain what that means? That would be Mallory Price’s parents, Brian and Karen Price (lol)! I have found myself enjoying answering and responding to that question more and more since October 8, 2018, after she launched to begin her eleven-month journey as a World Racer.
Mallory first told Brian and I about her interest in becoming a Racer on The World Race at the end of Summer 2017, upon her return home from a three-month internship in Jamaica. At the time, I remember thinking this will never come to fruition so, therefore, we responded in full support. Little did we know, she had been so prayerful about this decision and slowly but surely we began to see more and more throughout the next year this was a viable possibility.
I am ashamed to admit that I was not fully invested in Mallory’s pursuit of becoming a Racer, nor did I take an active interest in her fundraising. Yes, I feel like the loser parent because of that but in full disclosure I was in denial for most of that time period. But, as we know, God is big and often shows up at just the right time in order to show us that He is invested in pursuing a heart, and that heart belonged to our Mallory.
As the time closed in before Launch it was truly apparent and awesome to see Mallory become closer to becoming fully funded, and at the same time the full realization that she was really going to do this World Race thing was a fast reality for us. During this time, I was thankful that Brian and I years prior had attended a parenting class called Growing Kids God’s Way, and God had shown me during this time that he was our children’s ultimate Father and had their best interest always first and foremost. Honestly speaking, I can say that raising three children was a bit overwhelming to me at times. As most parents do I worried I was not always making the right decisions at various times. Thankfully, I quickly always found comfort in knowing that our children were “on loan” to me and that God was ultimately the One with the plan for them. I did not get to choose that path, but instead I get to co-parent as earthly parents and strangely enough I found comfort in that.
When Mallory made this decision of going on The World Race I chose to once again trust in God and to trust in Mallory and her decision to make this commitment. She has proven over and over to us that her decision to be a Racer has been just what God had planned for her at the moment she needed to do it. It has been incredible for Brian and I to watch her mature and grow in her faith and to fully trust in what the Lord has in store for her. Brian and I have enjoyed seeing her transform into a writer and to see so many people we know look forward to her next blog, both family and friends. Brian and I are about to join Mallory on the Parent Vision Trip (PVT) and to be very honest I am quite anxious about the trip. However, I am putting my full trust in the Lord and know that he is using our Mallory to push me outside of my comfort zone in so many ways, and for that I am excited, anxious, and a bit terrified of what the PVT means for me. Most of all, I am looking forward to putting my arms around our Mal Mal and hugging for the full five days I will be by her side.
