Coming in to Month 1 of the World Race I was preparing to be spoiled. I was prepared to have a bed, to have means of bathing, and to have good food. I shouldn’t have had these expectations, but I did.
And I was right.
We do have beds.
We do have a place to bathe every day.
We have someone who cooks us wonderful meals every day.
As blessed as we are this month, I can’t concentrate on all of the material things we have. I have to concentrate on why God brought us here. I have to think about the people that I get to interact with every day.
I have the privilege of living with a family who loves the Lord and who has graciously and lovingly opened their home to us. Ouma, the lady of the house, sacrifices so much each day so that Ana-Lisa, Ana, and myself are comfortable. I can’t imagine that it’s easy to try to fit 3 Americans into your daily life, but Ouma and her family have done such a great job of making us feel like we’re at home.
We call Ouma our Super Mom because she is great at everything she does. I was so touched when she made this comment about why she loves hosting missionaries:
“I think God only gave me one daughter so I could have the chance to be other girls Super Mom. God is really blessing me by allowing me to take care of you girls like this.”
What a sweet thing to say. I can’t believe I am blessed with such a selfless host who genuinely loves having missionaries live in her home. I can’t wait to see how God uses us to bless her after our month here.
Coming in to Month 1 I also expected ministry to really fun and really easy.
I wasn’t exactly right with this one.
Ministry is so good yet so challenging at the same time. In fact, I think it’s good because it’s challenging. My team and team Zeal are working with a man named Bradley Barnes, who is in full time sports ministry with Kingdom Sports Ministries. We spent our first week going to the school that Bradley grew up in. While we were there we executed games, built relationships, and shared Jesus with over 200 hundred elementary and middle school students.
Sounds easy and fun, right?
So what part is challenging? Working with the other team.
I never thought I’d be writing about how hard teamwork is.
The truth is that each person on Team Ratsah and each person of Team Zeal are incredibly selfish. We, as humans, are wired to think about the well being of ourselves. When one person had an idea it was assumed that their idea was the best one. We weren’t working together at all. We weren’t empowering each other and we certainly weren’t loving one another well. Thankfully we serve a gracious God who is allowing us to learn from this experience and build each other up in our areas of weakness. I’m so happy to be working alongside Team Zeal and I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow with them.
All in all, the first week of Month 1 of this 11-month journey has already been a huge growth point. That just makes me even more excited for the many, many weeks to come!
I'm 80% FUNDED! This means I only need about $3,100 to be FULLY FUNDED! I would love to be able to stay on the Race for the full 11 months and I need YOUR help to do that! Any little donation helps. Thank you to all the people who have supported me thus far and thank you in advance to those of you who will!
Hayley
