On the 25th we leave for final debrief, then on the 1st we leave for America. The time is coming so closely, and people are starting to get really exited! My team has moved in with the other Ocean View team (team Absolute) and in our house there is a white board with how many days we have left. Every day I hear people talking about how ready they are to go home and how exited they are to go back to ‘normal life’. I want to be exited with them, but I feel a bit differently about the end of the race.
I am honestly not looking forward to leaving the race. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends and family and I am exited to see them. I just don’t feel like I am going home. I have grown up in Minnesota, my home has always been in Minnesota, but all the sudden I am seeing home differently. Home is people, family is home. God has shown me community like I have never seen before, in the course of 9 months complete strangers have become some of my closest friends. I have started to see them as my brothers and sisters! God has called me to be a brother to people, after I heard Him tell me that, I started to feel a sort of love for them that I did not know before. I find that I would do anything for them! It is as though I have grown up with these people as my siblings. I have started to miss my actual siblings back in Minnesota more too, God has put a deeper love in me than what I had known before.
If home is family than I am split. This family that I am with is scheduled to shatter on the 1st of may, everyone to there own places. I do not think these people will all be in the same room again until heaven. I will be returning ‘home’, but not to ‘normal life’. God has called me to be a missionary, this is why I am on the race in the first place. I know that ‘normal’ people usually settle down, get a job, follow a career, raise a family, but this is not the plan God has shown me. For me real life is going to be more unsettled. So not only am I leaving a family of 50, but I am going back to a place I will not stay in, with people who will probably stay. I love those people so much and God has called each of them to a life worth living, but to me Minnesota is feeling more like a rest stop from the life God has called me to live. If God has called me to be a traveling missionary, and my family is now spread all over the world, then where is my home? I know I will always have a place to go back to in Minnesota, and I really do love that place and those people. I guess I just have more than one home here on earth now. Ultimately I see heaven as my home for real. Not only is my calling going to end up there, but all of my family as well. It’s funny, growing up we are taught in church that heaven is our home, but we do not really take that to mean much. It is almost like we do not realize that there is a heaven, and so we get too caught up in this life and making our home here. I know I did not think about heaven much before the race, but now I really look forward to the day when all of my family will be in one place and know that they are truly home. What a wonderful day that will be.
Also here is a quick update on life right now:
We have moved in with team Absolute in Ocean view. We are now 14 racers and 2 others living in a currently unused catholic convent. I have also been given the role of team leader. Caleb needed a time of rest from team leading (he lead his last team as well), and after talking to our squad leader Mark, Caleb decided to pass the role of team leader to me.
