November 30th, 2018: a date that I haven’t exactly been looking forward to. This is the day on the calendar that I needed to be fully funded for The World Race and that fact has been a bit scary to be completely honest. This journey with fundraising has been far from easy, but it has been more than worth it!
Coming into this month -month 4 of The World Race, some of the feelings I had were as follows: excited, curious, hopeful, overwhelmed, tired, anxious and worried. I remember the first Sunday we had in Botswana. Our ministry host, pastor John, asked during our time of prayer if we had anything we wanted to share or say. Deep down I wanted to share my need for funds-but I was hesitant. God quickly pushed that hesitancy aside and made the words came out of my mouth like word vomit.
“If you could please pray for my fundraising, and for Charity’s. We have a deadline to meet by November 30th-if not we could be sent home.” There are the words that took the place of the hesitancy that I was feeling. Pastor John was more than happy to pray for myself and Charity’s funds and then seal it by thanking God that it’s already done and we don’t need to talk about it anymore.
The minutes, hours and days passed on and we continued with our different ministry opportunities. I continued to post, reach out to people individually and share what God has been doing in, through and around me here in Botswana.
However, as I continued to do my part to try to reach the goal of becoming fully funded, the funds weren’t continuing to come in. It was at that point that I began doubting myself and if this was still in God’s plan for my life.
Well God shook his head at my doubt because as of 11/1/18, he sent my sweet squadmate Sarah Pippins parents to rally around me in this journey to become fully funded! Not only did they share my posts on Facebook, they also set up a raffle-raffling off a weeklong stay at vacation condo that they own! At $100 dollars a raffle ticket, in a matter of 2 weeks $3,100 dollars had come in from that and other random donations! On the night of November 30th 2018 I was sitting in bed, messaging back and forth with Tammy (Sarah Pippin’s Mom) and she has asked me if she could get a message to my team leader Claire, so I relayed messages back and forth between them for a bit. Then as I continued to exchange messages with Tammy, I received one from her that said that someone decided to back out of purchasing their raffle tickets and instead they decided to pay off my remaining balance!!!! It was that night that I became FULLY FUNDED for the world race!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*More details of this fundraising miracle to come soon*
It was a long journey to get to this point but God is good and I am thankful, grateful and blessed that this is his plan for my life & that the prayer that my ministry host Pastor John said my first Sunday here in Botswana -came to pass in its absolute fullness!!!!
