Sara Hall: Legacy …
… Team World Vision!
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)
Posted February 8th, 2008 at 7:00 PM by Sara Hall
Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Elite Athlete Blogs, Sara Hall
Welcome to the official blog of U.S. middle-distance runner Sara Hall. Sara’s list of running accolades include being a former NCAA All- American at Stanford, the 2006 USA 5K road champion, 5th place finisher in the 1500m at the 2007 USA Track & Field Championships and the 2006 champion at the Continental Airlines Fifth Avenue Mile. Check back every other Friday for her latest entry!
What kind of legacy are you leaving behind? It’s a question I often think about, especially recently when I was asked by a reporter from ESPN, “What will Ryan Shay’s legacy be?”
I’m sure that Ryan’s death jolted all of us out of our daily routine into thinking about our own lives and what we are living for and to what end.
I don’t want to look back on my life and say, “Well, I won some races, set some records, traveled around the world… but didn’t really do anything to change the world around me”. Not to say that everyone needs to go live among lepers in Calcutta like Mother Teresa, but I believe we are all called to make an impact.
Ever since I was young, I wanted to make my mark on the world by being a missionary. In 2nd grade, I would draw pictures of myself with my 7 blonde children (and no husband present- ?) in Africa bringing aid. (On a side note … I planned to name my children Christina, Christine, Cristin, Caitlin, Catherine, Christopher, and Cameron- somehow I didn’t see this as impractical at the time!)
God put this desire to live and work in a third world country helping to meet physical and spiritual needs in me ever since I was young. When I was preparing to graduate from Stanford, I was torn between pursuing this dream he had put in my heart, or to pursue the talent he had given me in running. In the end, I felt God prompting me to pursue a career in running for a period of time before the missions work. However, the past few years have been hard because I really don’t feel like I’ve been preparing myself for that future at all- if anything, it is making me accustomed to a life of selfishness and self-indulgence, which will only make life on the missions field more of a culture shock!
The reason I’ve continued running professionally is with the hope that somehow God can use it for something greater, something larger than myself. The exciting thing is, now I am finally beginning to get a glimpse of how that can happen. Ryan and I met with some leaders from an organization called World Vision to talk about partnering with them in their work though starting “Team World Vision”.
World Vision is a very reputable Christian aid organization that focuses on community development by empowering the people of that community rather than just a band-aid approach. They exist all over the world and are often the first ones on the ground to respond to the scene of a crisis because they are already located nearby. I could go on and on about the work that World Vision and the unique and effective way in which they go about it, but if you are interested, you should check them out at worldvision.org.
Ryan and I had the chance to see first hand one of their community development projects in Mexico this past weekend. It was so awesome to meet the people living in these communities outside of Tiajuana and hear firsthand how they have benefited from World Vision’s programs. I met children who were being sponsored to go to school and have enough money for nutritious food through their child sponsorship program (if you’re a skeptic like me, sometimes you wonder whether your money actually goes to a specific child- well it does!), meet women who have been taught skills they can use to make products out of their home while still taking care of their children, met teenagers that have been spared a life of drugs and gangs because of the sports programs that have taken their time and attention, and families who don’t have to sleep in the mud because World Vision’s donated supplies to fix their roofs and pour cement floors. It made me long to stay in that village and join in hands-on, but I am hoping that by crossing back over the border and returning to my training, my efforts can be magnified!
The idea of Team World Vision is very similar to one of the Team in Training models, where you get people to sponsor you to run a race. However, what makes it unique is that 100% of the money raised goes to the development programs in Africa! It’s incredible to think that instead of just entering a race with the goal of running a certain time, you could run with so much more purpose knowing the impact you were making in an area that is desperate for help!
Ryan and I are so excited to be a part of Team World Vision and inspire as many people to get on board as we can! We are planning on being involved in formulating the team’s training plan and giving them advice along the way, and coming to some of the major marathons where teams of World Vision runners will be running to meet our teammates, and even going to Africa with other Team World Vision runners to see first-hand how the money raised is impacting the villages there.
I hope you guys will consider joining Team World Vision and create a legacy of change in Africa through caring enough to run for this reason!
- Sara
Stay tuned for Sara’s next entry on Friday, Feb. 22nd!
To comment on this entry and to send feedback & questions to Sara, please click here.
Photograph: Courtesy of NYRR
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Tags: blog, childrenmissionary, elite athlete, elite athlete blog, elite athlete blog series, elite runner, legacy, olympic games, olympic team, olympics, professional running blog, running, running community, Ryan Hall, ryan shay, sara hall, team world vision, tfs elite athlete blog series, the final sprint elite athlete blog series, thefinalsprint.com elite athlete blog series, track and filed, weblog, world vision
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