Well first and foremost He convinced this materialistic prideful
North Carolinian only child fraternity
boy to go onto the World Race. (I packed my life into a backpack for a year…goodbye
materialistic Garrett, I’ve calculated that less than 2% of my time is spent
without someone else around…goodbye only child Garrett, I was elected a team
leader which means my 5 other family members should always come before
me…goodbye prideful Garrett, hope to see you soon? j/k, God placed a girl from
South Carolina on my team…goodbye North Carolina boasting Garrett, and we’ll
just say goodbye fraternity boy Garrett, no explanation necessary)
interrupted a prayer session my host family was having with some friends of
theirs as I tried to ascend the steepest flight of stairs on the planet. Slow
and steady TRULY wins the race…leg and face bruises to prove it
First day of ministry I contracted some type of boil on my leg from possible
spider bite? Kinda freaked out after day 1 I wake up with dime sized
water-filled bump on my leg but the surgeon we were staying with reassured me
that immediate death was highly unlikely.
leather cut-off glove, drives 100mph (not really mom, just using this for
emphasis so don’t freak out) constantly tries to avoid potholes at these speeds
which leads to awesome encounters with other motorists AND he has a DVD player
in his dashboard so he watches movies as all of this goes on.
who doesn’t speak English so we went back and forth with hand-signals and
broken English and Russian for about 10 minutes before I realized he was asking
me to preach at his church in 30 min…SWEET
Multiple churches ask us to sing American songs in front of the
congregation…use your imagination as to what our angelic voices harmonize
into…Matt has dubbed us the “Tone Rangers”
God allowed someone to produce mesh shirts for all of Ukraine to
wear…you try taking someone in a mesh shirt seriously.
Squatty potties
This Sunday on the way to church we hit a pothole so hard that it
broke the leaf-springs in the van and the rest of the morning was an adventure
in and of itself.
Watching extremely sleepy teammates trying to nap in long rides
filled with sharp turns and pothole avoidance maneuvers=AWESOME
You are always supposed to keep your eye on the ball in softball and
at one point during the game on Thursday I was trying to start the “wave” in
the crowd. I got so excited that I beckoned Rachel and Jessica to look and
participate in the “wave” and upon looking back, a foul ball was hit and
ricocheted off of Rachel’s head…oops (Later in the game an invisible barrier
made Jessica’s run from third base to home quite dramatic which involved at
least 3 barrel rolls and a little bit of face meeting ground/dirt.)
Rebekah wondering if Russian people actually think in English but
just speak in Russian
I can apparently make an unforgettable slurping sound when I sleep
that entertains my teammates…probably a direct result of the spider bite
mentioned earlier because I don’t recall hearing about it pre-race.
Ending this list on the number 14 because OCD people will be upset
about this all day wondering… “why did
he end on 14? Couldn’t he have thought of at least 1 more to make it a clean
list of 15 comical stories? It just makes no sense to end on 14…”
