Many students at Harding share a passion for travel and a desire to show God’s love around the world, but find it difficult to engage in long-term opportunities. Schoolwork and other responsibilities steer people away from participating in much more than spring break or summer mission trips. However, recently two students have decided to put school aside for a year and pursue this dream to enter the international mission field.
First-year marriage and family therapy graduate student Leighton Teague and sophomore Nicki Onyeama have both been accepted into The World Race, a Christian mission organization that seeks willing millennials to embark on a nine to 12-month journey to different countries around the world to show Christ’s love to those that they encounter. Teague will join the “11n11” trip which will send her to 11 different countries over the course of 11 months. Onyeama will participate in the Gap Year Race that will send her to three countries over the course of nine months. Both are excited about the opportunities that are ahead of them.
Teague’s trip will run from September 2015 to August 2016. Onyeama will depart in September 2015 and return in May 2016.
“I’m excited to see the world from a different perspective without having school and deadlines to worry about,” Onyeama said. “I’m just excited to be able to spend a whole year focused on growing.”
Teague is used to traveling, after participating in both Harding University in Australia in Fall 2012 and Harding University in France in Summer 2014 study abroad programs. However, she is still nervous about what this trip will require of her.
“In some of the countries we have been told that we will not have comforts such as roofs over our heads or beds to sleep in,” Teague said.
Month-long tent accommodations and limited access to hot water are all comforts that Teague said she is prepared to give up. Taking advice from Harding’s recent American Studies Institute speaker, Dr. Kent Brantly, Teague said she realizes that Americans tend to make an idol of comfort and that these comforts are not promised on the mission field.
Harding alumna, Amanda Abla just recently returned from the “11n11” World Race in December. Abla said the trip made a huge impact on her.
“This journey has opened my eyes to how God works in incredible ways, but He is also here, in Searcy, at home,” Abla said. “The same God that I saw in 11 different countries is here and we have the ability to grow just as close to Him without traveling around the world.”
As advice for Teague and Onyeama, Abla said that they should set no expectations and allow God to blow them out of the water.
