I’m about done with a quarter of my race…which is MIND-BLOWING! The time on the race seems eternal. The days are long, but the months fly by.
So, in half a day I’m headed into my fourth month and our country is Cambodia. Which means, currently we have two countries left in Asia before we move on to the second continent of our race (Europe).
With it being a quarter of the way done, I just want to share what my favorite month has been so far.
However, the way some of us racers talk about favorites may be different. A racer can have a country that is their favorite because of the country itself, or it can be defined as a favorite because of the ministry done, etc. Bottom line: a racer can have more than one favorite country by definition.
So here we go.
India:
I enjoyed the India and I want to go back to build more relationships and see more of the culture, but so far it is not the favorite month of my race so far. It was the first month on the race and the first month of being with a team. In a larger group of people, it takes awhile for me to get my “sealegs” (as my dad says). It takes awhile for me to adjust, to find my place among people, etc. It also was hard for me personally because I had a lot of sp!r!tual attack and was sick the first two days of being in our host city which was difficult. The people we met were awesome and we also got to do so many types of different m!n!str!es. It was just a hard month for me.
Nepal:
I loved Nepal. It was all squad month so I got to build relationships with my squad, but it was also crazy because all 55 of us were in a building. The m!n!stry we did for two weeks before dividing into two groups was also good and we did a varied m!n!stry, but it was also difficult because it didn’t feel very meaningful to me. It was valid m!n!stry, but sometimes it felt like busy work–just to keep us busy for a couple hours without any real reason to do it (which there were reasons to it, it just wasn’t my most favorite ministry). Nepal IS really gorgeous though. Mountains are surrounding you–breathtaking. And then when our squad separated and we went to a village, that made my whole month. I was with a smaller group of my squad, we were in another beautiful, peaceful part of Nepal, and I also got to really build some awesome relationships and almost become part of the neighborhood we stayed in. So Nepal was my favorite as a country and the last week of m!n!stry was AWESOME.
Vietnam:
However, so far Vietnam is my favorite month as a whole. It was just so well-rounded and it was so incredibly blessed. The first week was hard with not having a schedule, but by second week we had hit our stride. I also loved walking on the beach each day and working out in that way. The Vietnamese people are also so sweet. But more importantly, I felt like I finally found my place in the team and really built some strong relationships within the team. I found a great balance of serving and loving my team and also diving deep into the local m!n!stry because both are important. That was so, so good. Also, m!n!stry was great. We did our assigned m!n!stry of teaching and building relationships; but, we also built strong relationships with some of the tourists in the area which was also incredible making new friends from all over the world. I also had some time to really work on building those good habits with G0d like daily B!b|e study (which is still a work in progress, but getting there) and just learning new things about G0d and how I best have a relationship with him. It was just a great, well-rounded, beyond blessed month. You will hear more specifically as my last couple blogs about Vietnam come out so be sure to look out for them.
