Hi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Tayler, and I am dropping everything for 11 months and to follow Jesus while living out of a backpack. Why in the world would I do such a thing, you ask? Well, I’m afraid I don’t know why God has called me to go on the World Race. But I do know that He is love, light, and salvation, and there are people that don’t know His name or how deeply and passionately he cares and longs for a relationship with them.
I was introduced to the World Race in 2015. A friend from work invited me to her church’s college age Christmas party, where I met a few girls that had been on the World Race and just talking to them blew my mind. I thought they were insane. But I went home and followed the World Race on Facebook and Instagram, then I looked at the website, then I looked at the blogs and I found a community of young adults living recklessly and sacrificially in the love of Jesus. I knew I wanted to be a part of it.
Over the course of the year, I thought about it intermittently while mentally tallying and juggling my plans for my life and the possibility of surrendering to God’s plans for the life He gave me. In January of this year I went to Haiti with a group from my church and I saw the devastating effects that a life lived for Jesus can have on a person. Uncontrollable joy, unapologetic love, and unwavering faith. I knew I wanted to be a part of that, too.
Growing up in the Church, I have heard about God my entire life, but I never really listened. As a self-proclaimed creative and free spirit, I saw God as rules, I saw the Ten Commandments as minimum requirements to get to heaven, not as the culture changing and love laden plan that Jesus laid out in Matthew 5. I realized that God is an artist, He created each of us and everything else, and it is beautiful. I have grown more in the past year and a half after that revelation than I had in the nineteen years before. In Haiti, I was met each day with an absolutely beautiful sunrise (one of which I capture in the video below), and went to bed only after seeing the stars that are named and counted by Him.
I’m graduating from Eastern Michigan University in December with a degree in Arts and Entertainment Management, and leaving my job at the library as a Youth Services Technician to start this journey, and I hope that you will join me in it! I am so excited to see what will happen to and through me during the World Race! Please keep me in your prayers, and if God leads you to give I would be so appreciative. I love my family, my friends, my job and my life, but I will gladly leave them temporarily so God can use me to bring His children home to Heaven forever.
