CrAzY gLaSs CaSe Of EmOtIoN!!!
(some of you probably appreciate this reference more than others….Will Ferrell humor, anyone?)
So I am just going to dive right on in to what this crazy, scary, exciting, nerve-wracking, blessed World Race preparation phase feels like!
I am EXCITED about…
–leaving my creature comforts….I know this makes me weird. Most people cannot fathom why in the world I would be excited to wash my hair in a bucket of cold, dirty water. I guess I like a challenge. 
-meeting the people I will serve, and being humbled when serving does not mean doing something that will make the cover of TIME magazine.
-meeting my squad at training camp! One of the coolest, most unique things about this adventure is how much emphasis AIM puts on making sure it's participants are truly committed to the Lord and His call. The travel, adventure, new experiences, new friends, and challenge is all a very distant SECOND on the list to why we are ALL going….to serve and grow with our Awesome God! I can't wait to meet the people who want this more than anything else too!
-getting on the airplane to fly to our launch site. I LOVE flying, and always feel like I am going on a little adventure even just going to the airport to pick up a friend, and I love sitting in the airport at 6am and drinking coffee and wondering about the stories of everyone around me.
–running to the mailbox every day to see if I have any support money in the mail and checking my account on my WR profile to see how well support-raising is going!
-new foods! I love food….I have yet to encounter a food I didn't like. I have a feeling this may change somewhere between the termites and boiled camel testicles on the World Race…
–WORSHIP! this might top the list, actually….having real, genuine, authentic, daily, unpretentious worship time with my team and squad on a daily basis. I am already sad that I will have to say goodbye to this in a year and 3 months from now.
-sitting around and cutting up with my team mates for hours on end and having a million inside jokes, and having moments where we want to strangle each other and moments where we want to hug each other. But in the end, we will have 50 new best friends for life.
-seeing how God pulls in all the money I will be needing to make this journey happen. Between the trip, the preparatory costs, and no job for a year, I will be about $70,000 in the hole from where I would be if I didn't follow this calling. That is PENNIES as far as God is concerned!
-what God will tell me to do when I get back.
-seeing the change between the Bethany who leaves in January and the Bethany who comes back in November.
I am SCARED or NERVOUS (a-skeered!) about…
-getting worms. I have a very intense fear of parasitic worms. I can deal with spiders, snakes, rodents, bugs….but don't bring some nasty foot-long tape worm near me. Monsters inside me? Please no.
-sleeping. I am not very good at sleeping in stressful situations. I have quite a long history of doing crazy things in my sleep, like walking and talking and thinking I need to go "intervene" for things that aren't really happening. I hope I don't do this in the home of someone who I do not speak the language of and can't explain myself. How do you explain it when your host mama finds you standing in the kitchen at 3 am holding a frying pan over your head so you can protect everyone from an imaginary intruder?
-getting really, really sick. It is going to be a miracle to make it through this trip without getting quite ill at least a couple of times, and I especially don't want to find myself with something that can't be identified or treated. It is not really the illness itself that I am afraid of, but my ability to trust the Lord to bring me through and not waller in self-pity and homesickness the whole time.
-hate to say this….but raising the money. $15,500 is no small amount of money, plus all the preparatory costs, car payments, insurance, etc. This is a great way to build my faith in God's provision and sovereignty.
-buying gear. I don't have the slightest clue what will end up being something that is useful on the field and what will be an unnecessary cost and weight to drag around. ADVICE about anything….good 2 man tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, internal frame backpacks, etc….is very appreciated! ALSO, if anyone has any of this stuff that you no longer need or use and would like to let me borrow it….that would be AWESOME!
-being homesick. In the great scheme of things, 11 months isn't that long, but I know that on a really rough day early in the trip when things are going slow, I may think that I will never make it through all 11 months and will get super sad and scared and miss home.
–what God will tell me to do when I come back. I don't know which scares me more…going back to life as I know it now, or leaving life as I know it now.
I could really go on and on and on here, but I will spare yall some of the more gory details.
More to come soon! Blog ideas or requests are more than welcome, and ANY questions….just write them in the comments section below!
