09/06/2025

Hello reader!  Greetings from Albania!  It has been one whole week since my World Race has begun, and I figured this is the perfect time to share with you an update, an update of my ups, my downs, my struggles, and most importantly my hopes.  

My last blog post was talking about how I felt God was really showing me I could trust him and that he loves me, and this past week has been building off of that in a couple different ways.  

We are in Pogradec, Albania, where we’ve been doing our training for the next nine months. All 30 of us are living in a house right across from the beach — and when I say it’s gorgeous, I mean absolutely stunning.  I wake up every morning at 5:30 to workout with everyone at 6 before we do our morning time with the Lord.  After that, we do breakfast and then spend the rest of our time until lunch to work in groups and all together on our school work.  We have not started on our individual classes– like– I will be taking philosophy later on next week, but we are doing the fundamental classes to start– the world's greatest problems, career development, self leadership, ethical AI, and storytelling.  After classes and lunch, we started with our first day of evangelism on Wednesday!  We all walked into the town for a couple hours and asked God to lead us where he wanted us and to speak to the people he wanted us to speak to, and while I didn't see any direct answers to that, there were many people on my trip who were shown specific people or details and went out and found that exact person and talked and prayed over them.  Watching others step out so boldly in faith really made me reflect on where I am with God.

Walking in, I am not where I want to be spiritually.  As many of us, mine has not been the most secure thing in my life for a long time, but not gone.  I have been in a place for almost two years of sincere doubting my faith, and almost losing hope in ever finding any answers because I have been in this place for so long.  But when I got accepted for this trip, I decided to take a chance.  I decided that if God is trying to show me something, or open the door to him, then he will provide a way, and next thing you know, I got accepted for this trip.

Without getting into too much detail about the nitty gritty details of my schedule though, I also wanted to share a bit about  my struggles going into this trip, and how I have seen God working through this trip so far. One of the ways I’ve already seen God working is through the people I’ve met here.

The guys group, we have about nine guys, were invited to dinner a couple nights ago with the owner of this whole organization, Seth Barnes.  During that dinner, we met a couple of missionaries and got to hear their stories, and the longer I listened to their stories of faith and obedience, the more curious I became.  I was listening to this story of this man and his team doing prayer one night, and there was a man who came for prayer.  This specific night, Willy and his team prayed for this man’s pain in his legs.  This person they were praying for had both legs, but one shorter than the other, which caused a lifelong limp, and led to a lot of pain.  Willy and his team decided to give it a shot, but honestly weren’t expecting much. After the first prayer, his wife urged him to pray again. He almost rolled his eyes, but he did it anyway. Then came a third request. By now he was frustrated, but he prayed one more time.  He told us how as he was praying for the third time, his wife who was holding the man’s leg literally started growing in her hands!  She told everyone, and they all gathered around to see this man’s leg grow.  That story shook me in a way I didn’t expect.

I asked questions after hearing that, “Willy, you actually saw it grow?” and “What did it look like as it grew?”  and he explained that if he hadn't seen it, he would have a hard time believing it too, but then went on to explain the importance of prayer.  

That night I really sat in that negative space, thinking, remembering, taking it to heart.  I have heard stories about stuff like that, but honestly didn't believe that stuff happens anymore, and was surprised to hear that story, but that's when I was made aware of prayer.  

So the next day, I decided to pray. It wasn’t easy — part of me still didn’t believe anything would happen. But I prayed anyway. I asked God to show me signs, to use me to help others, even though doubt was still in the back of my mind.

And then, that same day, I heard ANOTHER story, a testimony of prayer.  A story about one of my leaders who had the smallest bit of faith, and God showed up and answered her prayers, and that just absolutely amazed me.  After the previous day, I had been really thinking about and contemplating prayer, but now I was really surprised it is getting brought up again.  

I was moved by my leader’s story, and decided to continue praying, but now with a reminder that all it takes is faith the size of a mustard seed.  Since that moment, I’ve been filled with hope—hope that I’ll find the answers I’ve been seeking, that God will reveal himself so clearly there’s no doubt, and that he will use me to advance his kingdom.

Even though I’m still in a place of waiting, I want to encourage you: you can still move mountains with faith the size of a mustard seed. Even the smallest faith matters