Road to the First Stop

I want to travel and serve the Lord, but how?

For a long time, I assumed that calling meant going overseas. Being a missionary sounded incredible. New places. New people. A clear sense of purpose. But the more I paid attention, the more I realized something uncomfortable and undeniable: there is so much need right here.

Our neighbors are struggling. Hunger. Being unhoused. A lack of clean water. Isolation. Needs that many people don’t associate with places near them—yet they exist down the street, across town, and in counties we rarely talk about.

That led to a new question: If the need is local, how do you even get connected to it?

How do you find the overlooked communities? The neighborhoods that don’t make headlines? The people doing the work quietly and faithfully every day? Surely there’s an app. A website. Some master list that shows where help is needed most. But what I found instead was something different.

These places already have people working in them. Friends. Churches. Organizations. Good Samaritans showing up day after day. And yet, so many of them are understaffed, under-resourced, and unseen. So I put pen to paper and asked the only question that mattered:

How can I help?

I’m just a college student, at least for a short while longer. What can I realistically do now? And what about after graduation?

Then a thought began to take shape.

What if I went to these communities instead of trying to study them from afar? What if I traveled across the country, listened to people where they live, learned their pain points, and brought all that information together to do something meaningful with it?

It felt big. Almost too big. Where would I even start?

Prayer. Discernment. Conversations. Meetings—lots of them. Talking it through with people who know me well and people who barely know me at all. And then, almost unexpectedly, momentum.

To travel, I’d need transportation. A trailer popped up for sale. Wait, what? I don’t know how to travel by trailer. I don’t know the first thing about it. But I can learn.

So, I asked around. I listened. I took notes. I bought what I needed (and probably a few things I didn’t). Next step: a vehicle that can pull it. Easy enough, right?

Then came the hardest question yet:

Where do I go?

There are thousands of counties in the United States. None more valuable than the next. Every single one has need. Every single one fits the call to Go Forth.

So I reached out. LinkedIn. Instagram. Camp friends. School friends. Pastors. Nonprofits. Anyone willing to listen. Slowly, a list began to grow, organizations and churches across the country, each rooted in their communities, each doing work worth showing up for.

I’ve accomplished a lot to get here and there is still so much left to do. But I’m ready.

Ready to listen. Ready to learn. Ready to serve.

I’m ready to Go Forth.

Now it’s time to find my first stop.