How did I get here?
For those who don’t know, I have recently committed to the World Race. It is an 11-month mission trip to 11 different countries to share the love of Jesus and love others around the world. I am still in awe of what God has been doing, is doing, and will continue to do in my life. He has softened my heart and given me a desire to go to the nations. The World Race is never something I would’ve chosen to do on my own, and my story echoes that.
As I reflect on this last year, I can see where God was working on my heart and in my life. God has given me a heart for missions for as long as I can remember. Whenever I listened to missionaries, God always tugged on my heart, usually to the brink of tears. I have always known that I was meant to go; I just didn’t know where. Up until this point, I have never been on a mission trip out of the country. For one reason or another, they didn’t work out.
Fast forward to around this time last year. As a junior in college, I was beginning to think about graduation and what life would look like for me afterwards. I was debating between going to graduate school right away, or trying to get a job. Amidst this planning that I was trying to do for myself, I began to feel the familiar tug on my heart for missions. I began to see my graduation from college as a perfect opportunity to take some time off and GO.
With this realization, I began to search online for mission opportunities. It was then that I came across the World Race. The 11-month time span wasn’t something I would normally be attracted to, but for some reason I was drawn to this trip. I had heard of it before and I knew of people that had gone. I watched a few videos, read a few blogs, and then signed up for email updates. For a while, my search ended there.
Not too long after I went to a “Galentine’s Day” dinner put on by some incredible women in the Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) group at my university. The theme of the evening was to not find our identity in romantic relationships, but to find it in the Lord. We were reminded, near a day that was flooded with romantic gestures, that God loves us infinitely more than anyone on this earth can ever love us. There were some speakers that spoke about the many ways that God was working in their lives. While they were all wonderful, there was one speaker who spoke of her experience with, you guessed it, The World Race.
I was not there on accident. I knew that God had orchestrated that I would listen to her speak about how The World Race changed her life. In a night that was centered in our identity with Christ, I left with missions on my heart more than anything.
For the remainder of the semester and into the summer, I prayed to God for clarity and for Him to reveal His plan for my life.
At the beginning of August 2017, about a year before I would unknowingly launch, I got an email from The World Race about the “2018 World Race Route Reveal.” It was a webcast where they would reveal the countries that each of the three routes would serve in. I had just moved into my apartment in Huntington, and school had not started yet. With nothing else to do, I decided to watch it out of curiosity.
At the end of the webcast, they offered an application fee waiver if you applied with a code they had emailed to me. Again, out of curiosity, I decided to go ahead and apply. The application fee wasn’t much, but I’m not sure I would have applied otherwise. There were seemingly no strings attached, and nothing to lose. After applying, I made an appointment for a follow-up interview that is customary to the application process. I made it for about 3 weeks later. Of the three routes, I was drawn to Route 3. For reasons unknown to me, I have always been drawn to Zambia, and it was on this route (I think God has big plans for me there).
About a week after applying, I received a call from a staff member who told me that after reading through my application and praying about it, that they wanted to offer me a position on the route I had chosen. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I hadn’t even told my parents that I had applied. (Sorry, mom and dad!!!) I applied to see what would happen, and I didn’t have a lot of expectations for what was to come. Thankfully, the staff member I talked to was gracious to give me time to figure it all out.
This was a confusing season in my life. I was trying to navigate a new semester, and I was also trying to make a huge decision. If you know me well at all, you know that I am HORRIBLE at making decisions. I also had to tell my friends and family about this opportunity that was in front of me. Ironically, the minute I finally committed, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. At a time where you think I would be flooded with more uncertainty and fear than I would have before, I felt God’s peace. It was then when I knew this what I am meant to do.
I don’t know what God has in store for me, but I am trusting in His plan for my life. I am honored to be clay in the potter’s hands as he molds me to be more like Him.
Recently in my small group, we have been going through some of the minor prophets. One of the verses we discussed was Isaiah 52:7:
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God Reigns!’”
What a beautiful picture that illustrates how good the news really is. That God would descend from Heaven in the form of Jesus, into our mess of sin and death, live a perfect life, and the die on the cross in our place. So that, if we put our faith in Jesus, God would look at us and not see our sin, but he would see Jesus. What beautiful news it is!
It reminds me of a hymn that my grandma would have the cherub choir sing at my church every Christmas Sunday.
“Go, tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go, tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born!”
