Good morning!!

My name is Gianna Ramirez and I'm going on the World Race Gap year program. Over the next nine months me and my team will be going to Cambodia, Thailand, South Africa, and Guatemala to share the amazing news of Jesus Christ.

We just finished our first week of training camp here in Gainesville, Georgia and will continue to be lead in discipleship, cultural, identity, and practical training. The main goal of training camp is to prepare us for the field as best as possible. With that in mind, me and my teammates are staying in tents and are bringing minimal gear. We are allowed to use porta potties for bathrooms and have scheduled shower times where we're allowed to take a normal shower and we also have bucket showers available for non scheduled showers. It's been an interesting experience meeting forty-five new people who come from all over America with so many different upbringings and different walks of life. We have been able to learn so much about each other in one week and it is truly amazing the amount of compassion and care that we have for each other. People have been comfortable to share their backgrounds, struggles, and testimonies and have been met with empathy and encouragement.

Here's a little of my story. I'm 18 years old and just graduated highschool. Last summer my parents got a divorce and it has since been the hardest year of my life. Divorce is a messy thing and there is no easy way to handle it. It is the break of a marriage, the break of a family and the break of community. It's been a hard thing to reason out in my head. Divorce is biblically wrong and shouldn't happen, but without getting into too much detail, I understand why it happened. During this last year I felt that certain people that should've been there weren't and some people made it harder than it had to be and that was something that I really struggled with this week. We had a session on forgiveness on Friday and, though I hadn't realized it before, I held a lot of anger towards some people and it was something God wanted out of my life. I needed to trust that He was in control, I don't have to be strong all the time, that He has a plan and it is for good, and that He can heal all the hurt. He's been teaching me that I have to allow Him to fill me up so that I can pour into others and in order to do that I need to surrender everything to Him. I know that He is going to use me in amazing ways this next year and the rest of my life and I cannot wait to share with you all that God is doing.

Signing out,

Gianna