Hey! Welcome to my blog! For those of you who don’t know, I am going on a mission trip for 9 months to Ecuador, India, and Zambia ( in that order ) and I could not be more excited!! This blog is a great way for me to share my thoughts, experiences, and pictures that I have on my journey and a great tool for you to follow me as I embark on this adventure! Now, some of you reading this may have known me my whole life, or maybe you hardly know me at all, either way here is a little bit about me. My name is Nickolas Loper, I was born in Plano, Texas and moved to Springdale, Arkansas (Woo Pig) around 6 years ago. My family consists of my Mom, Julie. My Dad, Chuck. My younger brother, Spencer. And of course, my two dogs Cozmo and Cooper. (easily the cutest dogs to ever walk the face of the earth don’t even question it. I am 19 years old and love to play basketball or any other sport for that matter. I graduated from Shiloh Christian School in 2015. Okay now that all of the boring details are out of the way lets get to me, why am I going on this trip? How did I even end up here?
Those are great questions, if you would have told me a year ago that in October of 2016 I would be leaving to go serve and spread the gospel around the world for 9 months I would have laughed at you and told you that you have no idea what you’re talking about. But long story short, after a roller coaster of a freshman year at college, (really just the downhill part..) God miraculously opened this door for me, I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but he did. This was the first time in my life that I can remember being physically called to do something. I knew that it would be a challenge and something that really got me out of my comfort zone, which if any of my former teachers are reading this right now, they can attest that challenging myself is something that I purposely avoided. I’ve never really had to try in school for a long time now I have been just squeaking by, doing the bare minimum with little to no effort just because I could. But when this opportunity came around I physically felt God calling me to grow up and snap out of it and you know “get my stuff together” if you catch my drift. God has blessed my life in so many ways, I am not even going to act like I can comprehend how much he has blessed me, but I know its more than I could ever fathom. So when this opportunity arose I knew it was for me, I was tired of wasting time and the gifts God has given me just for my own personal pleasure. I wanted a drastic life change, and to (for once) actively live out my faith. And that’s why I decided to go on the World Race.
So, a little bit more about me, I love to talk, I’m a talker. But, I really really do not like to write so this blog might be a little awkward and informal but just go with the flow and feel free to leave your revised and edited versions in the comment section below if you so choose.;) Another thing, I can tend to ramble and get off topic as you may have noticed already. Just go with the flow, and if you have any specific questions just leave a comment and I will make sure to answer it when I can. I have a very dry and sarcastic sense of humor, think Jim from The Office, or for you “seasoned” readers, think Chandler from Friends. Lastly, you may have noticed the title of this blog is “Chapter Zero” when thinking about what I was going to do for this blog I decided I wanted to do something different, (I know I am not the only one who has thought this before) I am going to do my blog as a story, this is Chapter 0, the introduction, Chapter 1 will be about training camp, and so on and so forth. I will try to write a blog maybe once every week to two weeks but they will not be just a timeline or calendar of what I have been up too but instead I want to dive deeper into how I am growing spiritually, hopefully that makes sense. Okay this thing is pretty long now so I think its about time to wrap this up, all 2 of you who have made it this far thank you for reading and I am so excited to have you follow my journey, stay tuned, its going to be one heck of a ride.
