Why The World Race

Hey everyone!

I have been committed with WorldRace Gap Year since November 2020, but I have yet to share why! I graduated from my private Christian school in May (woohoo!), but during school I took a class called ‘Christian living’. I had never spent much time writing in a journal, but we were assigned to do a daily log, and I realized that I really enjoy it. I love writing out prayers, praises, and letters to God. I now really enjoy writing in my journal and it is a huge way that makes me feel closer to Him.

In August of 2020 I was getting ready for my senior year. Last year of my high school career and I couldn’t believe how quickly it came.

This is it. 

But questions started to pop in my head like, 

what on earth am I going to do after high school? 

I knew I didn’t really want to go to college. Which is funny because my whole life I had dreamed of going to a college to play a sport. But by my junior and senior year, I changed my mind and knew that I didn’t want to go to college. 

I felt God wanted me to do something different, which lined up with my want to serve God, help His kingdom, and grow in my relationship with Him. My dad and I had a good ole “Front Porch Chat” and I talked to him about how college just doesn’t sound as interesting to me like it used to. 

So we started talking about the possibility of a gap year and then got in a conversation about YWAM. My brother did YWAM, so right from the start I liked the idea. I loved hearing the experiences that he had and I noticed when he came home how much he loved the Lord. I could just see a fire in him. I wanted that fire. I wanted to know God, love God, and seek God, but I didn’t know how and I wanted to learn. 

Still though, YWAM just didn’t feel quite right.

The sun sank lower as my dad and I talked a little more and he told me about World Race. Some good family friends had a relative who went on the race a couple years ago (shoutout Jacee Yount:)) and she absolutely loved her experience. So my dad told me to look up World Race and let him know what I thought about it. 

Later that night, I read about the gap year and read some blog posts and told my dad about how it sparked my interest. So my dad got in touch with Jacee asking if she could come over to talk about the World Race with me and share her experiences and memories. She was more than happy to visit and after talking to Jacee, I prayed about it and was like,

alright God, I’ll apply for this. 

But honestly I wasn’t taking it super seriously. I figured I could just take a spot and back out later if this wasn’t for me. I applied and was accepted in early November. I wasn’t really active on starting fundraising right away. 

yeah whatever I got accepted. I’ll worry about doing stuff with world race later. 

I let fear and worry take over in addition to all this covid stuff. There were still so many unknowns and I didn’t want to get excited and get my hopes up for something because whenever I did, the hopes were often taken away because of something covid related. 

But one night I couldn’t sleep. I tried for over an hour to try and fall asleep, but I just couldn’t. I was getting upset because I love sleeping, but all of a sudden I got out of bed, grabbed my journal, pen and Bible and started writing to God. 

Jeremiah 29:11-12 popped into my head because we had talked about it earlier in my Christian Living class that day and I had written about it in my class journal at school. So I’m sitting in bed and I turn to those 2 verses in my Bible. 

okay God I know these verses. I have had to memorize them ever since I moved to my school in second grade. I have had to memorize it every year up to 8th grade. So why am I flipping to these verse when I could have just said it to myself? 

But I had never read what it says after Jeremiah 29:11-12. I memorized it because I was supposed to so I could get a good grade. So I started to read what it says after Jeremiah 29:11-12. It’s crazy to think that the very next verse helped me so much. 

Jeremiah 29:13, “you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” 

I immediately thought to myself

 holy cow I needed to hear this. 

I had been so focused on my senior year, sports, and all of the unknowns in our world, that I had forgotten what I wanted to do. 

Seek. 

If I go and seek God wholeheartedly, I will find him. That’s when I knew. I knew I needed to do this. I felt God telling me “Go. This is what I want you to do.” I teared up a bit and thanked God. And guess what? After that, I slept so stinking good!