One of my new family members suggested that we try to come up with some random facts to get to know each other better, so here is my go at it. Enjoy!

 

1. I was born in Colorado, but I've spent most of my life in Maine. 

2. I think hedgehogs are adorable and I would like one for a pet someday. 

3. I am right-handed, but I wish I were ambidextrous.

4. I read a lot.

5. I love to write. I'll probably journal every day on the race. 

6. My cooking specialty is Hawaiian chicken.

7. I love a lot of the older Disney movies (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King are among my favorites).

8. I am quiet, usually because I am observing everything carefully. 

9. I'd say I'm fairly organized and neat. 

10. I have four brothers and two sisters. 

11. I've been to Peru once, and Nicaragua twice. 

12. I love being by the water. 

13. I've been to the mouth of an active volcano. 

14. I love Lord of the Rings. 

15. Pistachio and hazelnut gelato are my favorite. 

16. I'm 5'3.

17. I have a geographic tongue.

18. I collect quotes like some people collect coins. 

19. I am a night owl. 

20. I love sleep, but it alludes me a lot of the time lately. 

21. Music is like a life source to me. 

22. I've explored a bat cave. 

23. I swam in the only shark-infested lake in the world. (I never actually saw a shark though).

24. I love the moon. I can't wait to see the stars without light pollution on a regular basis. 

25. I've had a special place in my heart for the victims of the Holocaust since I was a little girl and began to understand what actually happened. I've read books about it since then.

26. I detest raw onions. Even when they've been taken off, I can still taste them. 

27. I've found blogging to be harder than I thought it would be. 

28. I hope to become fluent in at least one other language someday. 

29. I really like lists. 

30. At home I set two alarms to wake me up in the morning and I hit snooze at least three times. 

31. I plan to go to Israel someday. I was supposed to go once, but the trip got canceled and it broke my heart.

32. I am usually pretty task-oriented until the job is done. 

33. ISFJ is my MB personality type.

34. I can usually multitask pretty well.

35. It's not my first instinct to share about myself.

36. I'm introverted.

37. I have a hard time processing out loud, and I have a hard time asking for help.

38. I've wanted to travel since i understood the concept.

39. I was the only person in my family to have a passport until last year.

40. Jobs I've had have included; childcare, cleaning, food prep, florist, retail, house/pet sitter, landscaping, painter...
 
41. I like to scrapbook. 

42. I like small, tedious things like untying knots.

43. I'm okay with details.

44. I like odd numbers like 3 and 5.

45. I'm the third oldest in my family and the oldest girl.

46. I like to hunt for sea glass.  

47. I'm excited to sleep in my tent.

48. I am pretty flexible. On trips it doesn't really bother me to not know where I'm sleeping that night. 

49. I'm gonna be a rebel and not go to 50 : ) 
  

   I had never heard of the WR until this past December. Ever since Nicaragua I knew I was being called to go and serve, but I didn't know how that was going to happen. Initially I thought along the lines of an international relief group, so I looked into several and kept coming up with the same list of medical, academic, and experiential requirements that I didn't have. I had set a dead-line for myself of when I wanted to have quit my job and be doing something, anything else more along those lines. The dead-line came and went and I was no closer to finding anything, and to be honest I wasn't even looking that hard anymore. Then a couple weeks before Christmas a good friend mentioned to me this thing called the world race. Her daughter had heard about it at school and we both agreed that it sounded like an amazing program. That night I looked it up and read a bunch of the articles, watched some videos, and requested a brochure. I never got a brochure (still haven't haha). Instead I got a phone call. Someone was calling from the WR and was wondering if they could answer any questions. For me, I don't know if I would have taken this so seriously if that hadn't happened. If a piece of paper had come in the mail, it would have been easy to look at it, and then lose the initiative to follow up on it. But the call kind of shook me up a little bit. So within 48 hours of learning about the WR, I started the application. It took me a while to finish, partly because halfway through I had a small panic attack when I thought about leaving my brothers and sisters, friends, and everyone else I knew for a whole year. But every time I started to get nervous, God brought me down from that freak out with a renewed confidence. Soon I had the phone interview and I thought that that had gone well, but I was also ready for the answer to be a no. And part of me kind of wanted it to be a no. It would be a lot easier and a lot safer if the answer was no. A yes would mean a lot of work, opening myself up to a lot of hard things to be done in and through me, and it would stretch and grow my faith in completely new ways. Did I really want to do this? So I started to pray harder than I have in a long while that God would give the people reading my application the wisdom and discernment to know if this was where He did in fact want me to be. I thought that I was ready for either possible answer, but when I got the call saying that I was accepted, I was shocked. Before this whole thing started, I had never experienced moments of speechless, happy, shock, followed by tears. But these days, they happen all the time. God has already blessed me so much through the incredibly generous and genuine people surrounding me as I get ready for this trip. Thank you! 

I'm pretty sure the people at the post office now know my handwriting and the distinct teal colored pen I chose to use whenever they see one of my letters : )
This week I've been getting a lot of responses, some in very unexpected ways, and it's been very humbling and a little overwhelming. I'd been praying for big things to happen, but it kinda of caught me off guard when they started to (it doesn't make much sense, I know, that's just me). Money is one of the things I struggle with worrying about, so to see people already being so extremely generous...that means a lot to me. Thank you!

A lot of the lyrics to songs seem to say exactly what I'm thinking or feeling, so I will probably end up putting a lot up here as time goes by.  

"Where I Belong"
Switchfoot
 Feeling like a refugee
Like it don't belong to me
The colors flash across the sky

This air feels strange to me
Feeling like a tragedy
I take a deep breath and close my eyes
One last time

Storms on the wasteland
Dark clouds on the plains again
We were born into the fight

But I'm not sentimental
This skin and bones is a rental
And no one makes it out alive

Until I die I'll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong
Where the righteous right the wrongs
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Feels like we're just waiting, waiting
While our hearts are just breaking, breaking
Feels like we've been fighting against the tide

I wanna see the earth start shaking
I wanna see a generation
Finally waking up inside

Until I die I'll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong
Where the righteous right the wrongs
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

This body's not my own
This world is not my own
But I still can hear the sound
Of my heart beating out
So let's go boys, play it loud

On the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side
I want to look You in the eye
And know that I've arrived
In a world where I belong

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."  Joseph Campbell

I sent out a bunch of support letters a couple weeks ago and on Sunday I had four people tell me that they wanted to support me in any way that they were able. That was really encouraging. And yesterday I talked to a good friend who I hadn't heard from in a long time, and she was very excited for me. It's really good to hear things like that, because asking for help is not easy for me. Especially in regards to money. It's probably one of my least favorite things to do, because, unfortunately, I have a tendency to try to do everything by myself. But I can't! It was never meant to be that way. And in something as big as the world race, it's all about the people helping you and enabling you to go where God has called you.   
Sometimes I need those reminders of how God is working in and through this whole process. I've already seen how He's provided for this trip in little things, but I need to daily surrender to trusting Him with the big things. 
I don't know where the money for this trip is going to come from exactly. 
I don't know how I am going to pay for all my gear and vaccinations.
I don't really know how any of this is going to play out...
but God does.
And I'm good with that.  

   Have you ever felt like you were supposed to do something? Not in a "I should clean my room" or "do laundry" way, but in a way that placed everything you believe in on the line and forced you to make a choice? A persistent whisper. A tightness in your chest that wouldn't go away. An almost desperate yearning to be there or at least be a witness for those who are hurting and forgotten... And what if what you're being called to, what you're willing to make major changes to pursue, and give up your personal comfort and safety for...what if no one else gets it? Or they tell you to your face that it's crazy? I mean, I understand where they're coming from, I get how it seems crazy. I sold my car, I gave away most of my stuff, I have no money to speak of, and I'm quitting my job. All of this was done or decided before I had even heard of The World Race. I feel compelled to go. Go far away. Go to people who hurt and are living with pain that few can imagine. Injustice and cruelty spark in me a righteous anger I hadn't ever really felt before. I didn't really know what I was getting ready for at the time, but I knew it was big. 

   "What breaks your heart? What is it in life that moves you to tears or turns your stomach? What injustice crushes you and, if you let it, will keep you awake at night? We see so many people in need today that we can easily become callous with acceptance and indifference. When was the last time you felt your heart pierced by the plight of another person? What is it that strikes a blow to your heart when you hear about it? What breaks your heart?"
                                                           - Craig Groeschel "Weird. Because normal isn't working"

   It helps to know that there are people who have felt the same way. My best friend told me a while ago, "When people say you're crazy to do want to do something like this, you're probably right on track with where you supposed to be." 
   
  
 

  About two years ago I went on a missions trip to Nicaragua with a group from The Navigators. I had been on trips like this before, usually to much closer places, but still, I had done the missions thing, right? These trips were always fun, a chance to be somewhere different than you were use to, an opportunity to make new friends, do new things, etc. I always felt great being a part of helping those in need, and inevitably God would show me things and touch my heart in different ways, but I wasn't really letting it sink deeper, down to the core, where it should have been. 
 Then I got to Nicaragua.
  The week was full of new challenges, some seemingly insignificant now, and some that I look back on and still wonder about. By the middle  of the week I already had that feeling of not wanting to go home. One of the last things we did was drive to the city dump in Managua to see where the kids who had come to the camp we had held were coming from. They lived there you see. In the dump. In the literal mountains of trash that stretched beyond what you could see because of all the smoke from the trash being burnt. The air was full of the smell of rotten food and burning plastic. It didn't take long before my throat started to feel funny, and I tried to keep my mouth closed. Air like this isn't meant to be breathed in for long periods of time. And yet this is where these children and their families live. It's their home. I had the whole trip back to think about what I had just seen, and I decided then and there that I wouldn't just let it become a lost journal entry or just a page in a scrapbook. I had trouble acclimating back to "normal life" after that, so I decided to go back to Nicaragua. Within two months I was on my way back, this time I was to stay for almost a month. It was very different this time, it seemed like there was a lot more work being done on me by God then I was being asked to do around the camp. I had brought a devotional book with me that someone had given me years ago that I had never gotten around to reading. I didn't even remember what it focused on, that's how long it had been since I'd looked at this book. Turns out it was a year-long, daily devotional book emphasizing missionaries in other countries. Their struggles, their joys and triumphs, how God had worked in their lives, and personal testimonies about those who are hurting and hungry for God. I finished the book in less than two weeks. Certain stories kept hitting me particularly hard, and that's when I first started to hear God whisper, "Go there", or "I want you do that". I was very opposed to the idea right off. I had never thought about myself as a "missionary". The thought seemed crazy to me. Missionaries are super spiritual people who have it all together and don't ever look back or worry or have doubts or concerns about anything...right? But the question of, "Are you willing to go?" kept coming back. "Are you willing to surrender what you know and all your fears, and just trust me?" It is not an overnight process, and it took a lot of other steps and breakthroughs  for me just to get to where I am now. A big one for me was to pray that God would break my heart for what breaks His...and really mean it. It's amazing how God can use each of us even with all our unique differences, from our personalities and gifts, to our past tragedies and experiences. Sometimes it just starts with saying, "Yes."