“Does anyone else want to cry right now?” one asked. Heads nodded in unison. “This is not what we expected,” someone mentioned. Only five of us sat around our table since the four others went to the store to get a few supplies. Silence sat in the heavy humid air as we each were swarmed with our own overwhelming thoughts. My thoughts were on home and also on the loneliness I felt in the moment of disconnect with my teammates and my squad. “I hate this,” I thought to myself for what seemed to be the hundredth time. To look around, colors vibrant on each wall, and murals on some walls of our outdoor church where we live. The locals walk by our gate, and the smells undefined. (Something like body order, seasonings, ocean, sweat, bug spray and rain?) In that moment, we decided we needed to play the thankful game, and we all did. “Let’s start the weeding,” someone finally declared. One of our assignments is to pull the weeds from this garden area where we are living. Who could predict the path it would walk us through?
As we each chose a patch to start from, conversation began to spring up like flowers in bloom. Our hearts began to pour out our stories and our struggles and boys to each other and it felt so good. We bonded so much over weeds. Like seriously, we felt like those women who do laundry together outside talking about the town gossip. It made me feel so happy to be pulling weeds. You know how weeds are often associated with pulling out the bad stuff in your life? Well I think I just found a different positive thing about weeds. Each weed we pulled represented a healing taking place in this time of our lives. As we got to know each other each weed was like a point on the scale of growing in our trust and relationship with each other. We found out how we all felt the same concerning our stuff on the race and how God each had us here for a reason and the potential we saw.
We pull the weeds in between these rocks and stones and bushes.
Let me tell you about where we live. Don’t freak out. We live two streets away from the beach in a tourist surfer town. We sleep in our version of a treehouse without a tree body in it.
We now realize the World Race now. This is the race. Just the thought that we are going to be sweating like this for 9 months is awful. We thought training camp was the worse we’d ever have it? Well…no. Now we are going to live the heat. For forever. I’m going to be so tan in 9 months…
One of the craziest things for me is that while I’m not seeing reasons why I’m supposed to be here or what God has to show me, I still see the potential and hope of how He’s going to do this. I see hope in the lives and honesty of my teammates. I see so much potential and the beginning of great stories and changes and struggles. I see that my team and I have so much open time here in El Salvador so we can seek time to spend with the Lord and grow ourselves and depend on Him and our identities. While I don’t see why I’m here, I see I’m here for a reason, and it spurs me on. Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to quit? Every step of the way I’ve wanted to quit. Taking one day at a time.
So much, I feel, has happened in us since we’ve been here. Somewhat undefined, but I think we’re still processing it all. So much to process. But thumbs up, we’re doing the thing. And we’re still alive!
Firsts Accomplished / Bucket Lists Stuff
– Entering my first country and using my passport!
– Living in said country!
– Stepping into this side of the ocean! I’ve only stepped in the Atlantic and the Gulf.
– First flights!
Prayer Requests
– that we will use this time to connect with each other and to seek the Lord
– that we as a team will find other ways to minister to this community
– gain some Spanish so we can communicate with locals
– our host and our food lady
