swim.bike.run. with a purpose

Today, my 12-week training plan for the triathlon begins. Yikes! It also marks the beginning of an effort to raise money to bring safe, clean water to people without it...

In this post, I shared about Dave's egging me on to do a triathlon with him and, as I began to dip my toe into the training, thinking it was a way God was going to show me His strength when I ran out of mine. And maybe that is what this will be about.

But when I came across this blog, I believe God used to plant a tiny seed of an idea. Karyn, the owner of Delicate Fortress Creations posted about a campaign to Tread on Trafficking in an effort to stamp out the child sex slave trade by raising money and awareness. Participants in Tread on Trafficking come up with their own exercise goal and then encourage people to sponsor them in their effort. This is going on now through June 30th - check it out. :)

I considered dedicating my triathlon training to raise money for this campaign, but wanted to find something that would more closely tie to completing the triathlon itself. And God answered that prayer.

Just this week I came across Charity:Water through the shop and blog of a fellow etsyian and discovered I could create my own fundraising page. So I dove in and created a page. You can visit it here.

Over the next few months, I'll continue to share updates on my training progress and training tips I learn along the way. (you can click the "triathlon" button underneath the main photo at the top of the page to find all related post). I'll also provide my thoughts and more information and links to articles, website and blogs which talk about the water crisis.

But before I sign off, I had to share one last thing which shows so well that it is God who ordains our days before one of them comes to be (a promise from Psalm 139) and makes me fall in love with His sense of humor. It's the logo I created when I first committed to attempting a tri.

I liked the youthful feel of the pictures for the swim and bike portions but couldn't find a fitting one for "run." The water photo came up as one of the options when I searched for images with the tag "running." (These photos were obtained for free here.) I liked the play on words and the photo, so I added it in. And then I laughed when I looked at the swim.bike.run. logo after deciding to raise money for Charity:Water. Only God could come up with something so fitting. I think I'll add this one to the memorial book. :)