All my life I have had a passion for missions. Every missions conference at my church inspired me to go out into the world and share the gospel. I used to pretend that I was one of the missionaries from the stories that my mom would read to us. I would imagine what it would be like and I always had an interest in it. I have always felt called to go, but I have never really expressed it. My reason is not because I was reluctant to go, but because I was afraid that life would get in the way, something would happen, making me unable to go. I thought if I didn’t end up going I would feel ashamed for telling everyone that I was. I was also afraid of feeling like a failure for spending my life differently from what I had thought that God had wanted for me. I know now that was silly, because it doesn’t matter what others think of me if I am pursuing Christ. If God has a plan for my life, then he won’t let something get in the way of it happening. If I truly want his will for me, then any challenge that I face in this life cannot overcome his will. I ignored the pulling on my heart for several years. I thought that it was simply not something someone like myself could ever be, only great men and woman of God could be missionaries. Right? Wrong. I felt too ordinary, but God uses the ordinary. So throughout middle school and High School I rode a roller coaster of spiritual highs and lows. I went to a camp, New life ranch at the end of my freshman year and the experience there made me so on fire for God that all I wanted to do was to go out and live my life for Christ, but as I came back I settled back into the daily routine. I went back the next 2 more summers after that and completed the leadership development program. Each summer, I was so on fire for God, and when the school year came in, I fell back into living my life for myself. When I entered my Senior year, all I could think about was the fact that i was about to graduate and I couldn’t believe it. i was just thinking about college and where i was going to be attending. I had a bunch of colleges in mind and I started visiting a bunch of them. I loved each school that I went to and I could even see myself there, but I just wasn’t very excited. So, I just thought that I hadn’t found the perfect college for me yet, little did I know how much the Lord had in store for me. It happened in October, on a Sunday morning at Church. I was talking to my mentor since 7th grade, Tasha. We were just discussing life and then she asked me what I was planning on doing the following year after I had graduated from high school and I told her about a few of the colleges that I was looking at and about some of the majors that I was interested in. Honestly I had no idea, at that point, I had narrowed it down to 6 colleges and about 8 majors that were all completely different from each other. I really just had no idea. One of the majors that I had listed if I decided to attend a Christian University, was missions. So, she asked me what I wanted to do with that and I told her that I had always had a passion for it but didn’t know how I would use it yet. Then she asked me if I had considered doing something missions related during my college years, and told me about the program her best friend, Shannon had done-The World Race. Immediately after we started talking about it, I got super excited and it weighed on my mind the rest of the Church service. After it was over, I told my dad about how I just felt completely called and that I knew exactly what God wanted me to do. Both of my parents were really excited about it and I came home from church and looked it up right away, only to find out that it was only for 21 or older. I was so disappointed because I had felt like I knew what God had wanted, so I just kept looking for other opportunities for missions trips for kids that were 18 and I didn’t find anything the rest of the day. A few weeks later I had completely forgot about the World Race and I was back to visiting and applying to all sorts of colleges trying to figure out where I wanted to go. I kept praying that God would lead me where to go, but I felt absolutely no direction. Because I am such a planner, I felt hopeless. Now, I know that God was showing me that I don’t need to know every little thing because he has so much in store for me that I need to wait patiently for. Sometime in early December I was talking to my friends at school about our college plans for next year, and my friend, Chloe said something about our friend, Bailey going on the World Race the following year. By now three months had gone by and I had completely forgot about it, but right when I heard that I got really excited and asked, how in the world she was going to be going if she was only 18. My friend told me that there was a gap year for 18-22 year olds, and right there it all started over. I couldn’t wait to get home and look into it, but unfortunately, it was only first period, so I had to wait the rest of the day until that night. I came home and applied right away and started to pray some more about it. When I didn’t hear back from them for a few weeks, I thought that I better keep my options open and so I continued to apply to and visit other Universities. Christmas break came, and I felt like hoping to go on the World Race wasn’t reality even as much as I wanted to go, I should be more practical. I had narrowed my options down to The University of Oklahoma, College of the Ozarks, and The World Race, but I did not have a top choice anymore. A few days after Christmas, I got a call from the World race to schedule a phone interview, so the next three weeks I was super nervous and spent a portion of everyday praying about it. On January 14, the day before my 18th birthday I talked with a girl for an hour and when I got off the phone I had no idea if I had been accepted or not, but I was super excited and couldn’t wait to hear back. Those next three weeks were so long, I was just counting down the days until I heard back. On February 7, the World Race called me and told me I was accepted. I haven’t been able to contain my energy because I know that the Lord’s desire for my life is to go on this 9 month trip and I am so excited to see what he is going to do!
