why I’m going on world race gap year !!

Hey y’all! My name is Kaitlyn Duffy, and I’m so excited to share my journey with you!!

I, like many other high schoolers, had always planned on going to college right after high school. I had planned to get a degree in ministry and then follow the Lord. So it came as a major surprise to me when I came across World Race and felt Jesus call me to it. My shallow plans were shattered by the perfect plan of God. 

My journal had been filled with “here I am, send me,” and yet when God actually did, I froze in my tracks. How can I say yes to a nine month trip? How can I leave my friends and family behind for so long? How can I postpone college, how can I live out of a backpack, how can I lay my life down daily? 

But… the more the enemy tried to peg me with the fear of “how can you go?” the more I heard the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit say, “how can you NOT?” 

So, I gave God my yes. I will be going on World Race Gap year 2022 as part of the outreach squad, and travelling to Costa Rica, Romania, Eswatini, and South Africa!! God is teaching me that nothing I give up or sacrifice can ever compare to the fullness of a life following Him. Jesus is more than enough for me. His plan is far greater than mine, and to trust that requires complete surrender. It requires my heart abandoned, eyes fixed on heaven, and willingness to obey Him wherever He calls. It requires surrender. It is not about what I can do in my flesh, but what I can surrender to the Lord to be used by His perfect power. He uses my brokenness for beauty, my ashes for glory, my pain for a purpose, my ordinary for extraordinary. 

It’s all by His power, and it’s all for His Kingdom.  

So, I am going on the World Race because my heart has been transformed by Jesus’ love- the love that came down and died for my sins, the love that set me free, the love that paid for my eternity. Jesus laid down His life for me and has called me to share this love to the ends of the earth! 

Out of an overflow of the love that has so freely been lavished upon me, I will go. I will make disciples of all nations. I will trust the Lord. I will obey Him. I will seek Him. I will clothe the poor, feed the hungry, wash the feet of the hurting, love the orphan, pray for the widow, and share the good news of Jesus to the very ends of the earth. And I trust He will do exceedingly above all that I can ask for or imagine. Not by my power, not by my words, and not by my actions, but by the One who was, and who is, and who is to come- Jesus Christ.  

I will go, I will spend the rest of my life following Jesus, because how can I not? 

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And behold, I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20