The long awaited day...

"Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples." 1 Chronicles 16:24 

So, as I am typing this post right now, it is currently 1 a.m. on Monday.  It's Monday, which means tomorrow is Tuesday.  And Tuesday is the day I leave for Africa... Saying that still feels so strange to me. It seems like I was just telling people that I'll be leaving in two months... one month... two weeks... but now tomorrow.  I leave tomorrow.  I never actually thought this day would come.  Ever since my junior year of high school when I first heard someone speak about Africa, I knew that I had a special place for it in my heart.  I never imagined that I would actually get the chance to go on a missions trip there.

As Tuesday is very, very quickly approaching, I look back on my journey these past few months as I have been preparing to go to Africa and realize that I have seen the Lord in more clear and incredible ways than I have ever seen Him in my life.  Here is a quick breakdown of my journey --

1. At the Passion conference in January, I realized that the Lord was calling me to be a part of a missions trip to Africa.  Having absolutely NO clue what this would look like, I still surrendered 100% to His plan and knew that He had it all under control.
2. As soon as I got home from Passion, I began searching summer missions trips to Africa.  I spent hours upon hours looking into different trips, but none of the dates seemed to work with my availability for the summer.  I began to take this as a sign that maybe the Lord wasn't calling me to go this summer, which was really frustrating because obviously I had such a huge burden in my heart for Africa.
3. At one of the first FCA's at Clemson after Christmas break, Nathan Smith spoke.  As soon as he started talking about Africa and the trips he takes college students on every summer, I realized why none of the other trips worked out.  This was the trip the Lord was calling me to go on, and He made that more than clear throughout the time Nathan spoke.  Needless to say, I stayed after FCA that night for an hour just to meet Nathan, and soon after that I applied for the trip, was accepted and began preparing for all that the Lord had in store.
4. Fundraising. The part of this journey where I think I have seen the Lord the most.  After I started sending out support letters, the money started to come in pretty quickly.  The trip was originally supposed to be for two weeks, but Nathan gave us the option to stay for up to two weeks extra.  I prayed about it and knew that was an opportunity the Lord wanted me to take advantage of.  But because of that, I had to raise more money than I had originally planned.  I still had faith that the Lord would provide.  After the first month or so of fundraising, the money started coming in at slower paces.  I tried not to let this bring me stress, but it was hard at times to have patience in the Lord's timing.  To make long stories short, I have now raised a little over $1300 more than I was supposed to...praise the Lord.

Throughout this preparation and fundraising journey, I have already learned way more about the Lord than I expected.  If He is already doing this much work in me and I haven't even boarded the flight yet, I can't even imagine all the work He is going to do through my team and I once we finally set foot in Africa.  It is going to be life changing.