2014 grad writes about “Living on Mission”

Micah Torgerson began life after Lakeside on a fairly traditional path—college, CPA exam, job with an accounting firm. He stumbled upon the World Race Instagram page one fall evening in 2019, and a he hit a fork in his road. Read his story here.

The World Race, just like the website says, is “a life-changing mission trip where you will grow with God, serve with others, and make a difference!” More specifically, my trip—World Race 11n11—is an 11-month mission trip where participants serve as missionaries partnering with 11 different ministries in 11 different countries around the world. Oddly enough, I had never heard of the World Race before I stumbled upon their Instagram page one fall evening in 2019. I took a deep dive through the website, watched testimony after testimony on YouTube from previous World Racers, and felt the Lord calling me to push pause on my life and give a year in service to Him.

Then came 2020 and COVID-19. World Race pulled their missionaries from the field. I spent all of 2020 fundraising and growing in community with the brothers and sisters I would soon travel the world with. We spent countless hours on Zoom, chatting and doing Bible studies, and then several cross-country trips to meet and build our newfound friendships. In January 2021, 43 other members of H-Squad and I were approved to commence our Race, with the expectation that it would look different than the traditional format. All in all, we partnered with 8 ministries in 7 countries spread on 3 continents—first Costa Rica, then Guatemala, Honduras, across the Atlantic to Romania and Albania, concluding in Lesotho and South Africa.

One of my most powerful takeaways as a whole is how the Lord abundantly transcends all cultural and linguistic barriers. So often I would see a fear of not knowing the local languages or cultures hindering me from fully immersing myself in all that the Lord was doing in our ministry settings. Time and time again, the Lord would show up and unite us with our partner ministries and the communities we were serving— only explainable through the power of the Holy Spirit.

While I couldn’t be more thankful for the solid faith foundation from my upbringing (thank you, Lakeside!), I wouldn’t trade this World Race experience for anything. Before the trip began, my faith life was opened up to a deep, intimate, life-changing Christian community that helped carry our group through extremely challenging times in the field. I’m thankful to have experienced different cultures—more specifically, different church environments—and to see first hand the zeal for the Lord held by the global Church. I’m thankful for the life-long ministry connections and friendships formed across the country and across the world. Lastly, I’ll be forever grateful to the Lord for using this trip as an introduction to my wife, Kailee (Ed. note: nee Knudsen— they were married May 28, 2023 in Kansas City and currently live in Texas)

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

From the author: The World Race has certainly helped me reshape the way I view living life on mission for the Lord. If you’ve ever felt a nudge to do missions, I would like to encourage you to say yes to serving the Lord in whatever capacity that might look like. There is an open invitation if you’d ever like to connect regarding missions or anything related to life with the Lord.