I have felt a calling towards mission work ever since my first trip to Mexico. This trip was after my freshman year of high school in 2010. I did not want to go at first, but my mom made me. We were in Tecate Mexico for a week where we built a church in a small community. In this community there was nothing but extreme poverty. The houses were in such bad shape that I wouldn’t even consider letting my dogs live in the house let alone my family. There was no running water in this community and there were very few houses with power but what these people had that we did not was love. This is all they knew, and they were happy where they were at. All the kids spent the week just loving on us and the adults did everything they possibly could to help us with building the church when they weren’t working. When I left I had no intentions of falling in love with the people but leaving was extremely difficult. I cried almost the entire time back to the border. Mexico was all that I could think about for months when I got home, and I knew that I needed to do more. I just had no idea what the Lord had in store for me. At the time I was a Christian, but I did not have a close personal relationship with Christ like I do now. I thought that mission work was just building projects and hanging out with the most adorable kids on the earth. I was wrong. This past summer I had the huge blessing to go to Restoration Atlanta with m churches youth group. RATL for short is a women and children’s home for women and kids who are on the run from an abusive spouse or situation. Being able to serve a week at this ministry show me that mission work was just more than building and playing with kids. I was able to see the youth poor their hearts out to the kids and in turn I was able to poor myself out to the youth group. I was in charge of the Bible lesson every day. This was the first real time that I had to get up and speak in front of a group of anyone about Jesus and it was hard, but I loved it (even if I wasn’t the best at it). God began to tell me during this trip and after that he was going to use me again to speak to people and that I needed to begin to prepare for this. I came back from the trip to RATL on fire for mission work. I began to speak at youth group about things that we could do locally to continue serving the Lord. I also began to look into long term mission work for myself. I knew that when I found the trip that God had prepared for me then it would be extremely obvious. Well I looked and looked and found nothing that was perfect. I began to get discouraged and distracted with life and stopped looking. This was in the early fall sometime. Well the week after Thanksgiving I was in the mountains with my family and out of the blue an add for The World Race popped up onto Facebook. I clicked on it out of curiosity and fell in love with what I saw. I sent the link to my best friend/mentor and my mom to see what they thought about it. They both liked the idea but there was one problem. It was extremely expensive. I have been extremely blessed in life. I have never really had to struggle and everything I needed I always seemed to have thanks to my amazing parents. I never had to truly put my full faith into Gods hands. I never had to truly rely on Him for much of anything. I remember telling my friend that it would be a huge step in faith if I were to do it, but I just didn’t think it was possible. How could I raise $18,000. I don’t know that many people and I am far from rich. But I thought that this link was just God reminding me to look into mission work so that’s what I did. I began to do more and more research into many different companies. They were all good, but I still didn’t think that I had found my perfect fit. Well I knew a girl from high school who is a full-time missionary in Cambodia. I see her dad every so often and make sure to ask about her, so I figured since I was looking into mission work I should try to talk to her about how she got where she is at. Well when we started talking I found out that she works for Adventures in Missions which is the company that puts on the World Race. This was not a coincidence. The add on Facebook was not a coincidence. My God does not do coincidences. After hearing how much she loved working for AIM I started asking God if the World Race was really for me and if it was how in the world would I pay for it. He began to tell me that this was exactly where I was supposed to be and that if I trusted him enough to sign up to go them He would provide the funds for me to make it. This is the biggest challenge that I have ever taken on in life. Normally I would be extremely anxious about how I would come up with so much money in such a short amount of time, but I know that this is something God is in full control over and if I follow his direction them I will be taken care of. I am planning a few different fundraisers right now with my close friends and family and will hopefully get started the next few weeks on raising money. If you are reading this right now and want to help me get started fundraising, feel free to hit the big orange button and donate. The biggest thing that I can ask for though is not money. It is your prayers. Please just pray for me to continue to be at peace over the next 10 months as I prepare to leave my friends and family for a year with nothing besides what is on my back. Also pray for my family, especially my sister Hanna. As most of you probably know, she is one of my favorite people on Earth and leaving her will be the most difficult. I know that she will be taken care of while I am gone though so I am at ease. Also, if there is anything that you would like me to pray for feel free to call or text me if you have my number. If not, then send me and email or Facebook message and I would love to pray for you. Thanks for taking the time to read my first of many blogs and thanks for being apart of my journey.
