A blog right for your timeline
This should be fun.
My junior year in high school, I was introduced to them. I now dread them and the thought of them.
Perfect 40’s.
These sprints were horrible. One must have a perfect stance, get off, explosion, sprint, and finish. We would run these at football practice and they were grueling. Now; this wasn’t because a 40 yard dash was hard, but the perfection aspect was difficult. The not falling short part, that was hard. If one person on the entire team messed up, we ran it again. If we only had 4 sprints that day? We might run 10-15 of them. Run them with the JV players? Be expecting to run for a while. 40 of the hardest yards I’ve ever ran.
Here I am in the mission field 4 years later. I’m going on month 3 of 9 on the World Race Gap Year. I’ve spent a month in the Dominican Republic, and I’m closing up my month here in Haiti. Soon I will get on a plane and fly across the Atlantic to Africa, where I will spend the next 4 months, then on to the Philippines for another 3 months. This month we have been working with Mission of Hope Haiti, and organization that feeds 90,000 people a day, provides housing, medical care, clean water, education, and builds and runs orphanages throughout Haiti. I’ve had the privilege to spend just about every day in the villages of Haiti, spending time with the people and working with Hope for Haiti.
One of the things Mission of Hope stresses; is setting a goal so big that they could not attain it without God. When hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Mission of Hope debated what type of relief they could send from their warehouse. Would they send some of the blankets, tarps, clothes, food, or medicine that they had stocked up and distribute around Haiti daily? They prayed on it. They decided that this would require a new level of trust. They decided to not send some of their warehouse (the one that feeds 90,000 a day and clothes part of a nation), they decided to send it all. They didn’t know where they might get the money to restock the whole warehouse, they didn’t have a shipment coming in for weeks. And they said “ok God, this one is up to you”. A few days later, a ship with no manifest, no order record, no money exchanged showed up at their dock with a ship that fully restocked their warehouse. There is no record of the order or the ship or who sent it. It just showed up fully paid for.
I sold everything before I left home. I have the clothes in my pack and my bed at home. Other than that? I gave everything to be here. Trusting the Lord would provide. And wow did He. I got $10,600 funded out of $14,951. In one month before leaving home, my fundraising literally doubled to total $5,000 in one month. My bills at home? The love of certain people has been so graciously covering me while I’ve been out here in the field. And I did everything I could in my power to fundraise. That netted me about $3,000. The rest? The Lord has provided in ways that would have never been possible. One of my donors so wisely prayed over me, “and may you never find yourself standing on your own two feet”. So here we are again. My next deadline? In about a month. Around the time I turn 21, the rest of the $4300 is due for me to stay here in the field.
How does that break down? Well, if 43 people gave $100 or if 100 people gave $43. So here is what I’ll ask. For every person/family/church/group that donates $100 or more, I’ll run a perfect 40. And I will run that 40 yard dash until I get it right. I will take a video and send it to you from wherever I am in the field, if there is a country that you would like to see me run a perfect 40 in? Let me know. Botswana, South Africa, or the Philippines. I may not have the means to fund myself, and I might be totally reliant on the Lord leading you to support me here in the field-but I can run. And so I’ll start running, right now. I can’t match the money, but for the prayers and the financial contributions, I will match you with the effort. I will match you with the sweat and the tears in these nations. I will match you by giving 100% of myself every single day wherever I am, and together we can change the world.
Are you ready to do this with me?
