Well the World Race has come to an end WOAH!!! With a stop off in Colorado from the 12th-16th I’ll be back in NC in less than 2 weeks.wow, So you can go ahead and ask; get the simple questions out of the way;
How do you feel?I feel like with anything that you’ve been doing every day for a long
time, the ending always comes a little bitter-sweet. We’ve been living
in close community during these past 11 months that with leaving it
we’re all pretty excited to be feeling the sweet freedom, but at the
same time we’re all a little bitter about leaving the friends we’ve come
to know and love.
But either way the end is here and we are all excited about what God has planned next for any of our lives. 🙂 And so the next question, and the one which will be next biggest question asked.
How was the Race?
The World Race has been great. I have loved every minute of it … well I mean thats not entirely true, there have been some grossly tough times. But overall its been something that I’m so glad I’ve done. Some of the best times this past year have been because of this race and the people that I’ve been with. Its also been a really great opportunity to see what it is in my life that I’m really wanting to do. And somewhere between Construction in Ecuador, Orphanages in Thailand, Community Outreach in South Africa, teaching in Mozambique, and meeting with addictive strung-out teens under the bridge in Bolivia I’ve really been able to see what it is that I would like to do in my life.
Then finally, the question that we’ve all be waiting for:
What’s happening next?
For the first three months, during the summer, I’m loving on my family and living among them; in their home, eating their food, (thanks mom and dad), and letting my love for them come out in all of the newest ways I’ve learned to make it known. I’m excited about going on runs with my dad, taking my mom out for coffee, treating Lucy (my sister) to all kinds of ice cream, and making an effort to get to know more about her boyfriend. I look forward to playing new card games, putting my new painting skills to use, and making plans for the next adventure in my life. What’s that you ask;
One word…Albania. The plans, for now, are to go back to live in Albania for a month in the fall and continue a small outreach program into this Muslim slum. The interesting thing is this; the boys that I’m going back to weren’t part of the main ministry we worked with in Campus Crusade, though I’ll probably work with them too. But the main reason I’m going back is for these guys…
I’m going to fly all the way back to Albania because of this table of boys. And I only know them because of one day when the main ministry that we were helping had a church that we lived in who was doing a feeding program in the community and someone else from a different church was partnering with them to bring food to this small group of people out in the slums. And so a friend of a friend of the people we were staying with in Elbasan during the month of ministry we were there for. But you know, its more than going back to bring them somebody to smile at them; it’s to bring them a role model, it’s to bring them a teacher, it’s to bring them someone to love on them. Because they’ve never had that. During the brief time I spent in Albania it can’t be more obvious that the young men of this country are hurting from their dispassionate, post communism families. It can’t be more obvious that they are deeply longing for something more in their lives than to kind of, “maybe meet the status quo.”
I can’t be sure of what God’s plans for me are in the long run or really what’s going to happen out of the month across the sea, but I’m more than excited to be going and more than excited to be bringing a little more ‘love-like-Jesus’ for them.
Keep loving where and when you can. We can love and we can live, so let’s make it happen. 😉
Love Love.
Joshua
I can’t wait to be back home and see what God has been doing this year in your lives. 🙂
