i! I am an AFM reader just like you, who has taken up a call from God to help raise money for the AFM church building project in Turkey. Let me tell you how I got started.

During Christmas break in 2008, my family and I were driving home from a walk on the beach one Sabbath afternoon. As she often does on our Sabbath-afternoon excursions, my mom was reading aloud to us out of Adventist Frontiers magazine. She turned a page and began to read a story written by Barnabas Hope entitled Wanted: Dear Saints. It was a list of the needs of the Turkish project.

Over the previous months, I had been praying for a specific mission project to help fund. As soon as my mom read of the need for a church building in Turkey, I felt the “Holy Spirit excitement” as Barnabas Hope called it in the article, and a strong Impression said, “Shuree, you want to help support My cause, so here is the project. Help raise money for this church.” I was so thrilled I wanted to jump out of my seat! After my mom finished reading the article, I said, “Mom, please read about the need for a church building again.” When she finished, I said, “Mom and Dad, I have to help raise money for that church building. How much did they need, $625,000? It’ll take a while, but it’s possible! I feel this is what God wants me to do.”

“That’ll take awhile Shuree,” they said. “That’s more than half a million dollars! But if God wants you to do it, go for it!”

“People swim to raise money, don’t they?” I said. “I swim a lot of laps every day. Imagine if the Turkish Project got paid for the number of laps I swim. That would help raise money pretty fast! Can I please have the article when we get home? I’m going to email Mr. Hope immediately!”

And that is how it started. I emailed Barnabas Hope as soon as we got home, saying I wanted to help raise money for their church. I was ecstatic when he emailed me back a few days later. He liked my swimming idea, and he added a great twist: “Why don’t you swim the distance Paul traveled on his first missionary journey and find people to sponsor it?” I loved the idea and immediately went to work planning it. The distance Paul traveled on his first journey turned out to be 975 miles.

It took awhile to get the whole project organized and find sponsors. I wanted to hurry and start, so I ended up writing letters asking for sponsorship and placing them in the church mailboxes of my church family. At first, just two families agreed to sponsor my version of Paul’s Journey. I prayed that God would lead more people to respond. My sponsors were few in number on March 1, 2009 when I started my journey. However, by the end of the month, I had 12 sponsors. A few more weeks went by, and I had 15! God was answering my prayers.

So, for 14 months, I have been running and swimming for Turkey. It has been such an honor and so much fun to be running and swimming for God’s cause. Even though I love to run and swim, I cannot honestly say I was eager to do it every day, waking up before 6 a.m. I’m a student at PUC, and the pool is outdoors. When the weather turned cold, there were plenty of times I would have rather stayed in my warm bed. Whenever I felt I had no strength or didn’t want to swim in the cold, I would tell God, “I wish I could be sleeping right now. On my own, I can’t do this today. Please give me the strength to swim for Turkey!” And God always gave me the strength. In fact, one day, I was planning to swim three miles. It was frosty and cold, and I did not want to go get started. (That is a LOT of laps! Homework was sounding more and more attractive all the time.) But God reminded me why I was doing it and impressed me that it was not going unnoticed by Him. It would be a blessing to the Turkish Church even though I didn’t always feel like it was. With those joyous thoughts, I plunged in and swam all three miles, the farthest I had ever swum in one day.

Last fall, I ran on the cross-country team at PUC because it was a great way to get lots of miles in for the project and meet new people to run with. My focus was to get more miles for Turkey, not to win races. However, I was surprised when I seldom placed lower than the top three when we raced against other schools in our division. The results of the California Pacific Conference Cross-Country Championships were the most amazing to me. That day, I was not feeling especially fast or ready to race, but God reminded me that I was running for Turkey, and I would still earn 3.1 more miles regardless of how I did in the race. That made me very happy, and I focused on running for Turkey. Was I ever shocked when I ended up placing 8th and making the all-conference team! It was so exciting, and I could only thank God and feel even more honored to run for His cause.

In September 2009, I had the privilege of sharing the Turkish church project DVD with my church family. They responded so well to my short explanation of my swimming/running project and to the DVD that a few sponsors doubled their sponsorship! More people who were not sponsors gave donations to the Turkish project. Praise the Lord!

When I came to Pacific Union College this fall, I shared this project with my Sabbath school class and asked them if they had more ideas of how to raise money. At that time, no one had more ideas, but some of the students who were there told others about the project, and someone gave one of my friends a check for $200, saying they wished they could give more. That is the biggest so far. Their treasure is definitely in heaven!

During winter quarter, I was praying for more ways to earn money for the Turkish church, and God helped me find a fundraiser company called Phoneraiser that recycles cell phones and ink cartridges. They pay up to $300 a cell phone to whatever cause you’re supporting. I filled out the form right away to request the fundraising directions and Phoneraiser address labels for the boxes of cell phones I would collect. Phoneraiser sent me shipping labels, which are currently sitting on my desk in an envelope anxiously waiting for fall quarter to roll around. I ran out of time to organize the project this school year, but I am going to collect cell phones and ink cartridges over the summer to get ready for this fall. If you have some old cell phones or empty ink cartridges lying around your house, please email me at ashuree@gmail.com to find out where to send them. I assure you, every one you send to me will go to raise money for the Turkish church building fund and provide way more money to the project than the postage required to send the phone or cartridge to me. (Well, assuming you live in the United States! Otherwise, please keep the phone and donate the money you would spend on postage to the Turkish church building fund.)

My fundraising for the Turkish church building is still definitely a work in progress. But God has blessed abundantly so far, and I know He will continue to do so. From my experience running and swimming Paul’s journey, I have learned that if we put all our energies into working for God, He will reward us in ways we do not expect, and He will always give us strength when we need it. In my opinion, the best thing any of us can do in this life is to make Hebrews 12:1 our motto, and never stop running for God’s cause.

Personally, I was beyond thrilled to get to use literal running and swimming to work for God. But since we are all different, it’s wonderful that there are a million and one ways to “run the race set before us.” I hope you find your special way to run for God, whatever it may be!

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