the why.

hey guys!

So welcome to my first blog post! I wanted my first post to be about the why for this adventure the Lord is bringing me on. Why I am not going to college next year. Why I am leaving everything that is comfortable to live out of a backpack for 9 months. And why I am saying goodbye to those I love most to travel the world. The simple answer is to love.

This past summer I was given the opportunity to serve at Saranac Village in upstate New York for a month. For six days, highschoolers would come to experience the best week of their life as we served and loved on them, and Christ used this to transform their lives. This month changed EVERYTHING for me. What on the surface looked like a month of folding laundry, in reality, was an overabundance of love towards these campers. This month challenged me as nothing else had before, but I also grew in ways I never had before. I was introduced to the overwhelming love of Jesus and what it could look like when poured into the lives of others. I was surrounded by people who loved the Lord with all their heart and this pushed me to love in the same way. We love others because the Lord first loved us, and this became so so clear to me during my month. God’s love transforms lives and I saw this each and every week as hundreds of campers committed their life to Christ. While the campers never saw me cleaning their nasty, crusty, food smeared table clothes or making their hundreds of bed packs each week, the glory was not mine to take, it was the Lord’s. He worked in these campers’ lives because of the overwhelming and perfect love He has for them, and I simply did their laundry so they could experience this love. This is why I go. 

As it came time for me to make a decision on where to go to school and what to study, I became overwhelmed with feeling lost and not knowing who I was. I knew I wanted to live a life for Christ, but I didn’t know where He wanted me to go or how He wanted me to do it. I prayed continuously for clarity and wisdom to make the right decision, and that is when my mom mentioned the World Race Gap Year. Nothing about it was clear and nothing about it was comfortable, yet something kept telling me that was it. For too long I refused to accept that this was the answer because of the fear that held me back. At the same time, I was reading Everybody Always by Bob Goff. Every night I picked up the book to read and the words told me to GO & DO NOT FEAR. I became overwhelmed by the Lord’s voice telling me to go and I knew I needed to say yes. I took a leap of faith and here I am traveling to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Thailand, and Eswatini, instead of moving into a dorm next year. I am trusting in God’s perfect plan and having faith in the unknown. I am going to love on these strangers across the world because that is how Christ lived his life. Because to live for Him is to live like He did, giving Him all the glory in the meantime. Thank you for following me on this journey and I am beyond excited to see how the Lord will use me to fulfill His purpose. 

much love, 

katie