…………Why NOT?!?!?
There's two parts to my reasoning:
Part 1:
Ever since I can remember my first road trip, my first airplane flight, my first vacation, my first boat ride, my first hike, my first scuba dive… I realized that God had instilled in me a ridiculously intense passion for traveling and experiencing everything this beautiful creation of His has to offer. Simple as that.
Part 2 (it gets a little more personal now, get ready):
Before the summer of my sophomore year of high school, I was lost, confused, and walking aimlessly with the rest of "the world"–but I didn't know it. You know how some people just hit rock bottom? Nothing is going right in their life and they just KNOW something has to be missing? That wasn't the case for me. I was really involved in school activites, my grades were great, I was playing 3 different sports, I had awesome family and friends, I wasn't being rebellious (drugs, drinking, sex, etc), I mean… I was a good kid and my parents were proud of me! What's wrong with that?
Then I went to summer camp. For those of you closer to my age, do you remember Bug Juice on the Disney channel? The best summer camp show ever?? I had ALWAYS wanted to go to a summer camp. Play sports, meet kids my own age, live in a cabin, so on and so forth. Long story short, my best friend invited me to camp with her that summer, one that she had been going to since she was a little kid… with no hesistation I said "Yeah!".
Here's the kicker, it was a Christian camp. Okay, sooo I'll wake up, have a bible study or two, then its sports and playing outside for the rest of the day…deal!
Yeah, not exactly.
Lets just say that week of camp ROCKED. MY. WORLD.
Flipped me upside down.
Brought me to tears.
Tore me to pieces.
…Then God put me back together.
Yeah. The same God that had been screaming and shouting at for me for 15 years to come to Him. The same God I had been ignoring for just about that long.
I was baptized and saved on that Thursday night and haven't looked back.
God is awesome.
So back to the original question. Why the world race?? And again I say, why not??
For me, its just that simple.
God created me to have a passion to see the world. Check.
God asked me (and everyone else) to follow him. To love him. To glorify him. That's a "Check" in progress, but a "check" nonetheless.
The first time I truly read the Great Commission in Mark 16, I got chills.
"Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation."
Granted, I realize "all the world" also refers to the world right outside my front door, to my classmates, to my family, and to everyone else I see on a day to day basis.
But when this opportunity in the form of "The World Race" presented itself to me through a friend of mine (Lindsey Gay, shout out), I just couldn't resist. And I definitely haven't resisted. Or else this blog wouldn't exist =)
So if you've made it this far in my blog, I'd like to say thank you =)
It's going to be an equally long journey from now until my departure in July as my actual 11 month race will be.
But YOU can help me with that!!!
Here's how:
1) Prayer and encouragement. Yall, this whole ordeal gets awfully intimidating and scary at times. The devil creeps in and trys to tell me that I'm not ready to leave this world of comfort and security behind. I need all the prayer I can get.
2) Donations Asking for money is one of the hardest things to do…but I gotta do it 🙁 $15,500 is a LOT, and I've got a LONG way to go in raising that. I'll write another blog REALLY soon to explain the breakdown of where it all goes. But for now, if you click on the left side of this page that says "Click HERE to Support Me", you can find out how to donate checks by mail (not cash), or donate online directly to my account. Or just contact me at [email protected] if you'd like to send it to me instead and I'll deposit it into my World Race account (this way I can take cash).
$5,000, $500, or just $1…ANYTHING helps! But please, if anything at all, the power of prayer is truly amazing.
