The last few days have been filled with emotions, tears, community, worship, laughter, sessions, airports, and little sleep. My week started off with saying goodbyes. It may have been one of the hardest things I have ever done. Many tears and I mean many, were shed. It is hard to fathom that I won’t see these loved ones for 11 months and honestly, I don’t think it has hit me yet. We gave our hugs, kisses, and I love you’s and before you know it, I was on the plane down to Atlanta. Atlanta was filled with reuniting of friends, sessions, worship, and community. In just a couple days, my relationship with The Lord and my squad had already grown immensely.
So the way The World Race works is that I have a squad of 49 people. I travel to each country with them all. Then once we get to the country the squad divides up into small teams of 6 or 7 people. At the end of the month, the squad comes back together as a whole to debrief and then move onto the next country together. I am 1 of 6 girls on my team. Rachael is from California, Lara is from West Virginia, Kristin is from Ohio, Dani is from Wisconsin, and Jeanetta is from Minnesota. These 5 girls are who I am going to be doing life with for the next 11 months. These girls are wonderful. We have already had laughs where tears are streaming down faces and they have such a love for Christ that is so contagious.
And we are all so excited because we now have our route! Yay!! So for those of you who didn’t see it on Facebook, my whole team flies into Sofia, Bulgaria together. And normally, we would all split off into different places in that country, but this time, The World Race is doing something they have never done before. The teams are going into 4 different countries for the month. My team is going to Kosovo. Other teams will stay in Bulgaria, some go to Macedonia, and other to Serbia. Right now we are waiting at the JFK airport in New York. Our next flight leaves at 10:45pm for Warsaw, Poland. From Poland we will fly to Sofia, Bulgaria where we will take a bus to a town in Macedonia and then catch another bus to Prestina, Kosovo. There, our host will meet us and take us the rest of the way to Gjkova, Kosovo.
As far as the ministries we will be doing, it is pretty vague. We were told we would be doing church ministries and outreach. So excited to be getting more information!
I have a flood of emotions going through me right now. I am so excited to finally be leaving to go spread the love of Christ. This being the first time outside of the country (besides Canada, because that doesn’t really count), I am a little nervous. I have no idea of what to expect. But God has everything under control and all my trust is in Him! And many people on my team have done a lot of traveling in the past so they kind of know what they are doing. Have to go now so will post this quickly. More to come soon! Thank you everyone for all of your prayers! They are greatly appreciated! Keep them coming please!
