So your best friend, your daughter, your boyfriend, is a Racer. They’ve bought into this great adventure and traveled to the other side of the planet to love strangers the way Jesus loves them. Communication is limited, and pictures
on Facebook just don’t show you the whole thing. But even without fully getting what they’re doing, you’re loving them. Which is hard. Because it’s hard to love someone on a different corner of the globe. It’s hard to love someone you haven’t hugged in months. So here are some ideas. Every person is different and that means even Racers too, but here are some hints, a stepping block, on how to connect with your person.
1. Pursue us. Being on the Race, we are constantly pursuing people. We engage our hosts, our teammates, people in our village, in conversations all the time. In fact, a lot of our ministry is to build relationships with people. In a way to love someone like Jesus, we try to pursue people like Jesus. But we’re not Jesus. And it becomes exhausting. I get it. We’re on the other side of the world. You don’t know the time change, our schedule, or if wifi is even accessible. But every time we turn on wifi, we all secretly hope to find missed calls or just thinking about you texts. Send more than just replying texts. Ask your Racer when they can FaceTime, don’t just wait for the call. We will pursue you. It’s one of those things we’ve learned this year, but pursue us too. Let us know we aren’t forgotten.
2. Tell us about your life. We love talking about The Race. We love sharing the stories and processing with people back home and getting a different perspective. We might even do this too much sometimes. But we don’t want to dominate the conversation; we want to hear your stories and process your life too. Don’t think what we are doing is more important than what you are doing. Don’t think your adventures and stories don’t measure up. 11 months will go by, and we don’t want to get home to find out just how much as changed about you too. Don’t just tell us the big things like proposals and job changes. We want to hear about what you think is irrelevant too. Tell us about work, exams, the arguments that seem petty looking back on it, and the family drama from Thanksgiving. Tell us what you’re learning. We aren’t the only ones on an adventure this year. And we want to support you in yours like you’ve been supporting us in ours.
3. Read our blogs. Though it looks like you’ve already got this one mastered. We’re encouraged to write blogs frequently. Some love this task, others hate it. But knowing that not only strangers or future racers are reading our words, but our friends and family are reading them too, it’s pretty good motivation. Reference our blogs in conversations. It give us a place to start when explaining what God is doing. Here’s a secret: the quickest way to my heart is to know what country I’m in without me having to tell you. I get it. Our route changes all of the time, and it’s hard to keep track of what month it is. Usually people ask, “what country are you in? What number is this?” And that’s not bad at all. I know you’re interested, and I’ll gladly tell you. But when someone knows where I am, I feel loved. I feel known.
4. Be our news source. Some months, we’re in the African bush or a remote village. We may only get a couple days of Internet during the entire month, and we use those precious moments to connect with you. Tell us what the Kardashians are up to. Make us a playlist of your new favorite songs. Tell us who won The Bachelor, or what the blue and black dress thing is all about. You would think traveling the world we would know foreign politics really well. We don’t. Tell us about current events, and remind us that it’s time to do our taxes, because we might forget about that too. We will return home in 11 short months, and America could be our biggest culture shock yet. Knowing a little bit about what we missed makes the idea of re-entry less intimidating.
5. Encourage us to be present. At the risk of contradicting everything I just said, remind us of where we are now. At some point in The Race, we’ve thought about quitting. Some of us might have even looked up flight prices just to see how possible it is. Don’t let us quit. Maybe it’s during the holidays or weddings we are missing; it could be after some serious stomach battles or when sunburns and mosquito bites have been a reality for three months, but at some point, America looks like the promise land. Home seems like the prize not Jesus. Remind us where to fix our eyes. Encourage us to process with our teammates not just you. Remind us of our excitement during those REI trips we dragged you on. Remind us of our dreams we told you about at 3am. Remind us of why we started this to begin with. We miss you more than you know. We want to be with you. But we all know we are right where we are suppose to be. Help us to actually be present where our feet are.
