What’s Next?

It’s the question everyone is asking. And they start asking that around month six, but the answers get serious around month eight. And that’s the question that all of you reading this blog are wondering: Sophia, you’ve just gone on a wonderful life-changing trip around the world, what are you doing now?

I am happy to announce that I will be attending CGA this fall semester! 

CGA is a program in Gainesville, Georgia, called Center for Global Action (or CGA). CGA is a 5 month leadership and discipleship program that equips followers of Christ to create a biblical community through teachings, scripture, and activation wherever we go. It is a program through Adventures in Missions, the same parent ministry as World Race. CGA is a program that teaches believers to create spaces of vulnerability and connection in everyday life as we all seek to know more of Jesus. This program will set the groundwork for running a ministry and knowing how to lead people and yourself in a Godly way in daily life. It is in this program that I will learn how to lead the way God wants me to so that I can best impact people around me in my future schooling, jobs, and every day interactions. During CGA, all participants will get part-time jobs in order to apply the things being taught and also to really walk out “life is ministry, ministry is life”. The difference between CGA and the World Race is I am now a leader rather than a participant, as well as the important fact that I will be living in a house in Georgia rather than travelling to other countries. 

CGA functions a lot like a college, in that I will spend lots of time in a classroom and learn things. Except, instead of learning school-like things, we’ll learn about topics such as knowledge of God, spiritual gifts, knowledge of self, discipleship, leadership, communication and other Kingdom skills.

“Know yourself, lead yourself, lead others” – This is CGA’s core value. CGA will guide me through these three steps by discipleship and inner transformation to empower my ability to lead others.

Come back with me to January, heading to the Delta Airlines part of the airport in Atlanta. It was around 5 AM. I had nobody else to talk to at that point, we were all in a van travelling to the airport and everyone was either talking or sleeping, so I, in true fashion, talked to God, because God is always awake. 

“God, what’s after the Race?” I asked him. 

“CGA,” he told me. 

“Oh,” I said, surprised that the answer had come so quickly and even at that time. “Okay.”

One of the ways I tell if it’s really God talking to me is if I get an answer and I have not previously or recently been thinking of whatever the answer is. Now, I’ll grant you, my teammate Esther had been filling her application out a few days ago, but our days were so full of things that it felt like a week had passed when it was really only three days. So I had definitely not been thinking about CGA. In fact, when they came to give us a presentation about who they were and what they did one day in Gainesville, I’d left with the small but firm idea that I would likely not be attending the Center For Global Action. Not that I was against it, but at the time it wasn’t something I could see myself doing. 

But in the Delta part of the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, Georgia, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Okay, Lord.” And that was really all I thought about the subject until three months and one country later when questions started popping up. So I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time, and a lot of prayer has gone into it

Through CGA, I hope to learn the necessary skills to lead others, learn how to walk out my faith in a steadfast way, get rid of old bad habits, go deeper in my relationship with the Lord, and learn how to disciple people the way I have been blessed to experience. 

I think that these five months spent at CGA will help build upon the foundation the Lord  created during The World Race. It’s an opportunity for me to be discipled even more with people who know and love me and is an investment for my future ministry opportunities. By the end, I hope to have a further understanding of how to apply my giftings and where God wants me to use them to bring the kingdom and share more of Him.

So, here I am, fully committed to going to CGA and committed to the things God wants me to work through. 

But before we get into the next part of this letter, I want to express another HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who supported me on my last trip! To every single person who donated, prayed for me, or even just gave me words of encouragement, THANK YOU!! Going on the World Race would not have been possible without your support and your belief in me and the Lord in where he wanted me to go. Whether it was by check or in person or donations online, thank you so, so much for everything you have given me and thank you for trusting that this was where God wanted me to be. 

I actually want to add a special shoutout to people who prayed for me while I was overseas on this journey. I remember one difficult day in the Dominican Republic, I stared up at the night sky and was kind of feeling alone in my struggles and problems. I felt like the Lord hadn’t heard any of my prayers or words that day. But I was lying on the floor as I often do when I’m upset, and suddenly all I heard was the Lord saying, “Don’t you remember you have people praying for you all over?”

(I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone, somewhere, was praying for me at that exact moment.)

And honestly, that was a better word of encouragement than I could have asked for. Prayer on the field taught me that all prayer everywhere is so important, and I now take it more seriously than I did before. To everyone who prayed for me while I was on the World Race, thank you so much. It means so much more to me than I think I can accurately express. 

So. Now that that is expressed to the best of my ability, let’s talk logistics!!!

(Yay logistics!!)

Nobody seemed to like logistics announcements while we were on the Race. I always enjoyed them, though. To Kenchex, the Logistics team on my squad, this goes out to you.

Let’s get the hard stuff out of the way first: I need to raise $6,000 before I arrive in Gainesville on August 6th. 

I know $6,000 is a lot of money. But I also know that $15,800 is a lot more money, and that happened in the course of nine months, so $6,000 should be relatively not as stressful. I ask that you prayerfully consider partnering with me once again- or for some of you, for the first time. 

Donations work the same way they did when I was fundraising for the World Race- you can mail checks to Adventures in Missions, 6000 Wellspring Trail, Gainesville, GA 30506 with my name in the memo line or you can scroll right back up to the top of this page and hit that orange Donate! button. Other ways of donating include the app Venmo (find me at @shobogans), or if I’m blessed enough to know you in person, you can just give me the money. 

Other things I need are prayer and more prayer! That is what really gets me through this!! Prayer is so so important on this journey and I want to thank you for every prayer you’ve said in the past about me and also for all the ones you are going to say about me. 😉 Specific prayer requests are: I need a car to get around Gainesville, a job both for the summer and for my semester at CGA, and guidance for what happens after CGA. 

On another note, I need to tell y’all about my new blog website! Since CGA is a different program than the World Race is, I’ll have a different blog URL than the one that’s currently pasted into your search bar up there. That means that when I start CGA, I’ll be posting blogs there instead of here! Don’t worry, though- that website isn’t yet set up so if I gave you the URL to it, you’d only find a 404 error message. When the new blog website is set up, I’ll make a post here about it and give you the URL at that time! This blog will still continue to exist, so don’t worry about losing any of the things I’ve posted here because you’ll still be able to read them. When that website gets set up, I’ll give you all the details and talk more about it.

Whew! That was a lot of things. Thanks for sticking with it through the very long paragraphs of logistics. 

I’m so happy to finally be able to update you all on what the next steps in life for me are! Thank you for sticking with me through this journey and for reading all these blogs I’ve posted. Please consider partnering with me again and thank you in advance for all you are doing to further kingdom work. 

Catch ya in Gainesville, Georgia!