First off, I want to thank all of you who have subscribed to our blog. It really means a lot to us that you want to keep up with us on this adventure we are about to take.
So this is my blog about how we got here – 4 months away from giving up a year of our lives for Christ. A lot of you know that Seth and I went on a missions trip to China in 2007, which was completely amazing. We learned a lot about God, ourselves, and our country. For those who don’t know, we were smuggling Bibles into mainland China from Hong Kong, because the Chinese government does not allow unedited Bibles in the country. The Bibles that are allowed have been edited to remove all the parts about God being all-powerful and all-knowing, and anything about titheing, or giving money away. The Chinese government wants people to think of them as all-powerful, and of course, all money belongs to the government, not you, or God. So we brought in pastor’s study Bibles in Mandarin to distribute to the pastor’s of underground churches. If you would like to know more, leave a comment with your e-mail in the e-mail slot, and we would be delighted to tell you all about it.
For this trip, the World Race, I first heard about it from our good friend, David Stothart (who is actually on the race now, his blog is http://davidstothart.theworldrace.org), but he didn’t tell us the name of the trip, just that it was 11 months long and he was considering it. We actually advised against it, and told him he should finish school first. Fortunately, he didn’t listen. A few weeks after that conversation, I was googling youth missions trips, because I thought it would be cool for Seth to take the parise and worship team he leads at his school on a short trip over Chirstmas or spring break. That search led me to the Adventures in Missions web page, where I poked around and stumbled on the Race page. It didn’t occur to me until about a week later that it was the same trip David had mentioned.
I got very excited about it and watched tons of videos about it. I told Seth about it, but he didn’t share my enthusiasm. I tend to get very excited about something that seems very unrealistic. Generally, the excitement wears off an I forget about it. I knew this was something different, and promised Seth that I would still be excited in two weeks and we would talk more then. In a nutshell, we prayed about it for about 6 months, requested prayer about it from lots of people, and had lots of “if we go….” conversations. In the end, Seth heard from God the last week of December that we should go. Exactly how he heard is an amazing story that I will leave for him to tell. He’s a much better story-teller than I am.
So we filled out our application the first week of January, and here we are. God has been so amazing to us, and we know that God will continue to hear our prayers and give us strength as we follow His calling. I will try to post on here about once a week, in the future. I know we have been kind of lackluster in posting.
Just to keep you all up to date on support raising, we have only received one donation of $50 so far, so we are in need of $26,950 still. If God is moving on your heart to give, you can click on the “Support Us” tab on the upper left to do so. Donations are tax deductible. We will also be having a garage sale in April. Before the sale, we will be in Shreveport, Houston, Austin, and maybe Atalanta, so if you live in one of those areas, we would be able to pick up stuff you need to get rid of.
God bless you all!
