Why I am going on the World Race!

Going on the world race has been on my heart for the past 8 years! In December 2012, my twin sister and I had the amazing opportunity to attend a mission’s conference in St. Louis, Missouri. There, we met this organization called Adventures in Missions. They shared with us about their 11-month mission trip – the World Race. My sister and I were immediately hooked as soon as they finished explaining and we knew that one day it would be our time to go. The World Race is a mission trip that focuses on growing in our personal relationship with the Lord, while serving and loving others to make an impact in their lives. In my specific route, I will be travelling to Central and South America, and Southeast Asia.  I may get the pleasure to be involved with sports ministry, community outreach, prison ministry, discipleship, children’s ministry, evangelism, reaching unreached people groups, sex-trafficking ministry and drug rehab ministry.

You may be wondering, why wait 8 long years? Why leave my friends, family, and a great job behind in 2021 to pursue this trip? Well, I honestly believe that these 8 years has been a preparation season for me in what God wants to do in and through me during the world race and for the rest of my life. I am just in awe of all the experiences that I was so fortunate to have…

It all started when I joined the college ministry in the summer of 2013. After my accident (see About Me section for more info), I finally felt like I was truly meant to be alive for such a time as this! Going back to school that Fall, the college pastor took me under his wing. He taught me how to be bold in praying for people for physical healing in places like grocery stores. I also learned what it meant to truly enter into the presence of the Lord while worshipping with him and the college ministry twice a week.

2014 was my first experience in going on mission trips. I was in Panama City, Florida over spring break sharing the good news with college students partying on the beach while also taking opportunities praying for people for physical healing everywhere I went. I then travelled to Mexico with the college ministry to partner with missionaries from the Vineyard Church to love the community where they were sent. We mainly did prayer walks and held worship nights for the community. That same summer, I had the amazing opportunity live in Recife, Brazil for 6 weeks to serve under an organization called Exodus Cry. We hosted a 24-7 prayer/worship room partnering with many local churches to pray over the city and for God to move through the sex-trafficking culture. I had the honor to love and encourage prostitutes (men and women) on the streets in Recife and hearing their stories. Starting in the Fall of 2014, I had the privilege in taking School of Kingdom Ministry at the Vineyard Church. It is a 9-month curriculum which teaches you about your identity in Christ, and how to partner with the Holy Spirit to pray for spiritual, emotional, and physical healing and deliverance. I also got more comfortable in giving prophetic encouragement through the course. The class helped me to grow in taking more risks for the Lord and stepping out of my comfort zone which allowed me to see so many people encounter the Father’s love.

In 2015, I learned how to take my worship to the next level with prophetic dance. A good friend, who is a professional dancer, showed me how to be vulnerable in the Lord’s presence through dance. Prophetic dance is a way to move with the Holy Spirit’s leading while engaging in his presence to bring healing within yourself and the people watching. I also did the pastoral internship at the Vineyard for about 10 months. I learned a lot about myself and my skill sets, and how I can be used more in the Kingdom. I interned under our mission’s pastor and had the honor to lead the college ministry on a mission’s trip to Mexico that following summer in 2016. It was a blast to lead and very encouraging to see the team members take risks with the Lord. For some of them, it was their first time encouraging and praying for people. I was so proud of them sharing their testimonies and growing more in the Lord. I also interned under our evangelism pastor with a ministry called Healing on the Streets. We would go out to a particular location in town every Saturday and love on the people that passed us by. We would speak life to them and pray for them, whatever they needed! We saw so many healings and salvations!

From August 2016-June 2017, God took me on a journey to live in Beijing, China. It was a very interesting experience to say the least. I taught oral English to 7^th and 8^th graders in public schools and students at an English training center. During my winter break, I had the amazing opportunity with 2 other ladies to teach School of Kingdom Ministry in house churches at various locations in China and at a church in Taiwan. Teaching the ministry curriculum in China and seeing the hunger in the lives of those who can’t really be completely open with what they believe brought me to tears. The Holy Spirit moved so powerfully in every meeting and hearing testimonies of how God worked miraculously and touched people’s lives made the experience so worth it!

Coming back to the United States, I had the honor to work for our international pastor in the Taiwan-Mongolia Partnership as her admin assistant. I grew so much from being in her presence. I had the privilege to register our Asian and US partners for a Vineyard mission’s conference in Indonesia in 2017 and be the point person on site with logistical things! In 2018, I was able to travel to Israel with our partners from the Taiwan-Mongolia partnership to celebrate with the Chinese on their 10th year anniversary in bringing the Gospel to Jerusalem.

In 2019, I had the privilege to work with our former mission’s pastor again to train ordinary people, many of them new believers in Christ, in Cote d’Ivoire, Africa using a method called Disciple Making Movement. DMM is a method that focuses on making disciples of Jesus. The role of the cross-cultural worker is to make disciples who make disciples who start their own church. This method is proven very effective in countries with limited access to the Gospel. The method is very scripture-based and asks them what does the scripture teaches them about God and people. Next, we would have them to ask themselves how God is calling them to obey these scriptures and who can they share this with. Training the people and praying over them for deliverance and healing was so cool! We also had the opportunity to teach them how to baptize their own people who come to the Lord! Baptisms were probably my favorite part because before baptisms would even begin, the people worshipped and danced and during the baptisms, they would celebrate each one like they just won the greatest prize in their entire life (which they did)!

Later that summer in 2019, I went on my first medical mission’s trip. I went to the Comoros Islands (in between Mozambique and Madagascar). This trip was both very incredible, but also very heartbreaking. This nation is a Muslim nation. We were sent to provide medical care to people in 3 villages. Although we worked with a ministry organization there we had to be very careful of what we said and did in the clinics. We could not say the name Jesus without the fear of something bad happening to us. There were even spies in the clinics watching and listening to us. I never experienced anything like this before. Although I lived in China, it was just so different here. My heart just broke for the people here because we could not openly talk to people about Jesus and I could not openly pray for people like I was used to. My heart also broke for the Christians because they are living in this culture of fear that’s keeping them from openly releasing the Kingdom. But one of the missionaries told us that during the clinics to keep our eyes open to what the Holy Spirit is doing. So I prayed to God one night because I wanted so badly to be used by him. The next morning we served in a clinic. The Holy Spirit highlighted this young man to me. He came to me to get a pair of glasses. There wasn’t anything wrong with him. But I just felt in my heart that he needed to speak to the missionaries. I told one of the ministry leaders. He took the guy aside, in a separate building away from the clinic, and he shared about Jesus. I found out later that the guy was actually searching about God and even had the bible app on his phone! The guy met up with the missionaries the next day to talk some more about Jesus. A few days after meeting the guy at the clinic, the guy messaged me to tell me that he gave his life to Christ and is now a Christian!

Wow! That was a lot! It is such an honor to have experienced all of that with the Lord. Words can’t even describe the gratefulness that I feel for every single opportunity that I was able to have. Loving people is my number one motivation for everything. Being able to help people encounter the Father’s love brings me so much joy!  I feel that the world race will allow me to use what I have learned and grown in these past 8 years to continue to be the light that God calls me to be. I want to use this trip to steward what the Lord deposited in me, but to also grow in other areas too, like preaching and equipping leaders to fulfill their destinies. I also think it will be cool to just serve in different kinds of ministries. I am excited to make new connections with people, churches and ministries. I really feel that the world race will help me in my pursuit of my dream. My dream is to continue to do missions for the rest of my life. I would love to travel to nations and raise up leaders and plant churches or organizations-whatever is needed for that particular area. I want to help the leaders that I get to raise up in doing what the Lord is calling them to do in their sphere of influence. What makes me come alive is seeing people get set free and truly become aware of their true identity and destiny in Christ. I love it when people are walking in their destiny that God has for them.