Launch. I barely made it here – financially. I had so much to do in the week prior to prepare to leave. It was just this past Saturday when I finally moved out of my apartment. I stayed up so late packing the night before launch (1.5 hours of sleep). I have spent a bit of time since I got here taking care of bills and getting things squared away before I leave. I have not had enough quiet alone time to mentally prepare myself for this huge step in my life. You could say I am having difficulty thinking straight.
One of our fundraising deadlines was December 15 – we needed to have $6,500 by then. When that day came around I still needed $1,500. My mobilizer, Erin, informed me that I would have until launch to finish getting all that money. Now, I want to say that God did a work in me, and for whatever reason, I had faith that the money would come in and I would launch with my squad in January. This does not mean that fear and doubt never crept in – trust me, they did. But God gave me the faith to believe that He would make it all happen.
My last day at work was December 21, 2012. For the two weeks after that I did a lot of traveling to see family and packing up my apartment. It was very difficult to fundraise. I was to the point where I did not even know what else to do; I was out of ideas. I mostly used blogging and social media to get the word out and raise support. Barely any support came in the rest of December. I still waited for God to move and do His work. About a week before launch I still needed $800. By last Thursday only $500, Friday about $400, and Saturday – the last day payments could be made that would post by launch – I needed $175. Granted, some of these had not posted and were verbal pledges. So when I say I needed $175, there was actually only about $5,200 in my World Race account. By this time my faith had grown even more – after all, I was seeing God fulfill His promise. I knew I had this all along.
During worship Sunday morning I was so excited – I cannot think of a time that I was more filled with that joy that only comes from the Holy Spirit. The whole time I thought God was just doing this to build my faith – and He was – but it was then that I found out it was also about thankfulness. I was crazy thankful, not just for what God had done, but also for what He was going to do. I was so happy and excited that I thought I would explode. It took all I had in me not to jump up and down, dance, and scream at the top of my lungs. That joy got to the point that I was even crying. What a crazy and amazing experience. About an hour later I was informed of more money coming in which would put me over the deadline! It wasn’t until I knew I had enough money to go, that this journey I was on became real.
I knew everything would be taken care of but there were still some financial issues. The day before I left I was talking on the phone and emailing Erin about money that still had not posted to the account (which was quite a bit). I was trying to track down the names of people who said they were giving and how much so she could have the accounting department search for their payments and make them top priority. Since the money was not in the account Erin was having to contact her supervisor about permission for me to still attend launch. So technically it was up in the air (but on the way down). Tuesday morning on the way to launch Erin called me. She asked if I had looked at my account that day. I told her I had a few hours ago but it was still the same as the day before. She told me to check again because I had exceeded the deadline with $6,788! It was shocking to her that all of those checks and online payments came through so fast – even ones we didn’t know about. I also had several anonymous givers (thank you so much). I looked at my account just now and I have $7,382! Such a God thing.
So that is how I got here. The past couple days are not necessarily how I wanted to start the race. Having headaches, extremely tired, unable to think straight, and just in general feeling completely unprepared to leave for the World Race. Today I started getting excited again about the work we are going to do and the awesome girls on my team. We are leaving at 6am Friday morning and I am still dealing with this unprepared feeling. I don’t know why my race had to begin this way, but I just have to continue to trust God in whatever craziness there lies before me.
Launch Into the Unknown
