When I was growing up I had the privilege of being in a church that had a Huge heart for missions, every year they would hold a missions conference where missionaries from all around the world would come and share their hearts for all the different places were God had sent them. I remember seeing all these families and thinking to myself “What kind of Faith that must take? I want to have to have that kind of Faith in my life!!” The more missionaries I’d meet the more I would dream about one day being like them, and all the different places God might call me to go to.
As the years went on and I got older it seemed as though those dreams became just dreams. Until……
Back in 2014 I was volunteering at Atlanta Fest and had the opportunity to meet some people from Adventures In Missions, I spent all the free time I had talking with them about all of the different trips they offered, including the World Race! At the time I was only 17, so clearly I couldn’t go on a world race just yet. In the mean time I began to look into some short term trips, but life happened and my parents got divorced so my dream was put on the back burner.
In the past year God has renewed my dreams and desires, and after many failed attempts at going to college an finding a career I finally gave in an asked God to guide my next steps of my life in which ever way He wanted me to go. It seemed as though in a matter of weeks He began to put a much bigger plan into motion. One night kind of on a whim I went with some friends to see a one night showing of the Insanity of God! I had no clue what it was or what it was about but the title interested me, so I went. I got there and found out that the movie was about a missionary couple who risked it all the sake of the gospel. God put a burden on my heart for missions once again, at first I just tried to come up with any accuse as to way I couldn’t, pushing aside any real feelings that I had about the matter.
No more than a month later I went with some of the same friends to hear David Platt speak at a local church. It completely escaped my mind that he is the president of IMB(International Missions Board) so obliviously the message he brought that night was about missions. In fact the entire night was dedicated to missions!! As I sat there listening to him God began once again to tug on my heart, and all the feelings I had put pushing aside came flooding back in. But this time the idea of the World Race came to mind.
Afterwards we went to the local taco bell and talked about all that we had heard that night and what God was starting to do in our hearts, I told them about what God had been doing in my heart the past few weeks and told them about the World Race.
The only thing at this point holding me back was the fact that you have to be 21 in order to go on it, so I just figured it wasn’t something that would be happening in the near future considering I had just turned 20 the day before. As we continued to talk they asked me when the World Race had routes for, I told them that at that time they all had ones for August 2017 and my birthday isn’t till next October! They encouraged me to just go online and contact Adventures and get to know all that I can to begin to prepare, so the next day that is exactly what I did. Only I got the website and this thing popped up on the screen sayings “New October 2017 Routes!” I couldn’t believe it! I froze in shock and realize that I could on one of those routes!! In that moment all I could do was stop and pray and ask God if this was something He really wanted me to do, I felt as though God was telling to take the first step and let Him have full control over the results!
SO I DID!!!! Talk about scariest moment ever!!! I filled out the application did ever thing I needed to on my side of it and handed the results over to God. It was crazy to see how easy the whole process was, and how crazy it was that everything just seemed to fall into place, and within about 3 weeks I got the phone call congratulating me on being Accepted to The World Race!! In the past 3 months my life has made a complete U-turn and I couldn’t be more excited about it!!
