It was an average day in January, which was particularly and obviously average because it began with checking Facebook before moving along to a standard class routine.
Typically, I have this terrible habit of opening messages, reading them, and then forgetting to respond, but there was one new message that caught my attention. Sent from my awesome friend Sarah Olmstead, who will now only be referred to as Olmstead in the remainder of this post, currently in the middle of her own World Race and living in the bush of Africa. At the beginning of the month we Skyped and it was basically understood that she was going to be roughin’ it and it would be highly unlikely that she would have much internet access. Thus, naturally, this message from Olmstead came as a pleasant surprise, but its contents were pretty suspicious.
I say suspicious because it was one of those moments where you look down your nose, squinting your eyes at something not convinced that it is the real deal. She wrote “Do it.” and with that I already knew what this was referring to. “If any part of you is thinking of doing the World Race, do it.” Little did Olmstead know, I had already begun the application process and had been contemplating the WR for a while now. This was followed up with her stating that God told her, and that she didn’t want to sound like the "creepy missionary or anything" (too late), but she had to let me know.
Apparently she was getting ready to speak at a church in Africa and instead of panicking about public speaking, I came to mind. After praying about it for a while and despite some resistance to giving me word of this, she decided to tell me and be that “weird missionary.” It’s pretty interesting that in of all the places in the world, God found a way to let Olmstead, in the bush of Africa, know to encourage me in this and confirm a lot of what I was already starting to walk into.
A few weeks later at worship band practice at my church, we were having our monthly all-team meeting consisting of logistical stuff as well as prayer. We rotated around, taking time to pray for each other and so much of it ended up being spot on. When one of our worship leaders, Jordan, started praying for me so much of what he focused on was about me going out, being sent out, and going into the world. Again, I hadn’t really said anything to my team yet, because I didn’t want to jump my guns, so Jordan had no idea that I just had my phone interview the day before and his prayer was so timely.
This situation and the one with Olmstead was pretty confirmational to me, and I am not one to quickly jump on the philosophy that everything is a sign or that every single open-door is meant to be walked through, but this was different. God has been urging me toward this since I heard of it more than year ago through Sarah and also my friend Sandy. I loved the idea of trekking the earth, but considering the things and people I would leave behind left me unsure. God let me know that he had freed me to be fully obedient to him (2 Corinthians 3:17), including this, so I decided to respond and do something knowing that "There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind" (C.S. Lewis). I think this is going to be one of the most profound and shaping things I can be a part of and reality is setting in: less than 16 days 'til I'm off to the backwoods of Tennessee for training camp and then in 2 ½ months I’ll be leaving to the world.
If you have considered supporting this mission at all, I humbly ask that you help me to reach my first goal by raising $3000 in time for training camp (2 WEEKS!) to cover inital costs. I do not have a complicated game-plan or grandiose approach because I know there is so much to do, more than I ever could. But I am certain in the fact that God is calling me and the Church to the mission of making disciples one by one to completely change the world.
“If we were left to ourselves with the task of taking the gospel to the world, we would immediately begin planning innovative strategies and plotting elaborate schemes. We would organize conventions, develop programs, and create foundations… But Jesus is so different from us. With the task of taking the gospel to the world, he wandered through the streets and byways…All He wanted was a few men who would think as He did, love as He did, see as He did, teach as He did and serve as He did. All He needed was to revolutionize the hearts of a few, and they would impact the world.”
[David Platt, Radical]
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Adventures In Missions
P.O. Box 534470
Atlanta, GA 30353-4470
