As I drove past my old high school on my way to training camp a thought crossed my mind. I said to myself "I'm not going to drive past here for 9 months". When this thought ran through my mind my heartbeat began to race and my eyes started to water. Had I just made one of the biggest mistakes of my life? Are my squadmates going to be weird or are we even going to have similar interests? Then I thought to myself  "what am I even doing? How did I even end up going on this trip?” This thought just sat there in my mind and lingered on my mind for the rest of the ride to training camp. I had no idea at that moment the reason that God had called me to this trip. It doesn't make any sense to go to college for a year and then abandon everything for 9 months and then try and come back. 

9 months before this I was sitting in my room, quarantined because I had covid, reading a book called "Wild at Heart". This book touched a part of me I didn't even know existed. I had just been through my first semester of college and things were starting to go downhill in my faith and my relationship with God. But as I read this book it sparked something in me. There was this passion for something, something that I could not explain. I thought to myself, " Wow, an adventure in life is really what I need, something to just spice it up a little." Then an idea popped into my mind. I didn't realize this back then but this idea was actually the voice of God. He whispered into my ear and told me ``' wouldn't it be cool to go on the World Race?". Being in quarantine I pondered this for the rest of the day. I always thought of it as something that was so cool but never really feasible or even an option. The longer I sat there the more I wanted to go. I called up one of my friends from high school and I talked to him about it and asked him what he thought I should do. He told me he believed that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't go. He told me I had one week to decide what I was going to do, but by the end of the phone call, I knew what I wanted to do. 

This was my story about going on the World Race. As people kept asking throughout training camp I just told them I thought it was really cool and that God really just called me there and with those people. But the more I thought about it the more I wanted to know deep down why God wanted me there and why I wanted me to be there. This is when God showed me I honestly had reached a breaking point and I had realized that without taking an extended period of time completely dedicated to God I was going to keep getting further and further away from him. I think that my initial reasoning for going on the race was I needed a reset. A way to reset the way I was living, my relationship with God, and a reset for the relationship I had with my family. I also just wanted to travel and do something adventurous. But God's plan was so much more than that. God wanted me on the race to show me his love for me through every possible example and to train me and disciple me to ultimately spread that same love wherever I go. 

Every day I realize the importance of what God sent me here for. The plan God has for me gets more and more extravagant every day. I remember hiking up to this platform next to lake Atitlan in Guatemala realizing that the plan God has for my life is just so much more amazing than anything that I could have ever imagined or planned out for myself. I have never felt so loved in my entire life than the love that I have learned to accept from God. I have been given the confidence to approach people I don't even know and try to start a conversation about Jesus. I have never been so equipped in my life. Sure I got to travel and I got to have the reset that I was wanting but as I look back on it the plan and reason that God put me here are so much more than I could have ever realized myself.