I cannot believe the race is coming to an end in a few short days. This year has been the hardest, most challenging, and rewarding one of my life with incredible highs and tough lows. It has been full of once-in-a-life time experiences and adventures. I’ve been volcano boarding, rode an elephant, ate balut, went bungee jumping and canyon swinging in Nepal, and pet a cheetah and a baby lion to name a few. It has been filled with experiences and people I will never forget. The race has taught me so many things that it’s hard to wrap my mind around everything l that I have experienced this year. Living in intense community, experiencing different cultures, serving at a variety of ministries, and adapting to hard living conditions have taught me 3 key lessons:
1) Loving till it hurts // when you love hard, you lose hard
God broke my heart this year for the things that break His. I did not expect the hardest part of the race to be saying goodbye at the end of each month and leaving people that I fell in love with. While other aspects of the race are challenging— sleeping in a tent, eating weird food, using a squatty potty, being on a team with someone you do not naturally get along with, long travel days, etc— they are only difficult temporarily, but leaving people that I met have around whom have impacted my life is permanent. I still miss them as much as the day I left them and think about them often. My heart broke for the prostitutes in Thailand; I will never forget meeting them my first week and waking up in the middle of the night to pray for them, crying for the pain they go through, and begging God to save them from their situation and show them their true worth. I fell in love with Caden in India, and the thought of him still brings tears to my eyes. It isn’t a longing for chicken curry and 100 degree weather that’s responsible for the tug on my heart I often feel to hop on a plane and jet over to India.
It is brokenness like I had never experienced before. I can’t carry the burden that comes from seeing poverty, men and women feeling trapped and hopeless in prostitution, sick children that are left abandoned or orphaned – the list goes on and on. Knowing that I can pray for them and that God loves them and is taking care of them after I leave is the only way I have true peace. Otherwise it would be crippling and impossible to continue month to month. Having to start over each month after I have rung myself of all that I have in the last month is so incredibly tough. But God invited me to be a part of it – it is humbling that God gave me the opportunity to love like He loves and in turn break like His heart breaks. It is a privilege to fight and pray for the forgotten and overlooked people. I am thankful for the hard goodbyes that I had to say all year and the impact they have made on me. A special thing happens when I miss my family and friends back home AND the people I have fallen in love with all around the world.
You can kiss your family and friends (new and old) good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. – Frederick Buechner
2) Adaptability // say good-bye to your comfort zone
The World Race has taught me how to adapt to ANY situation. God stretched me way past my comfort zone time and time again. He was there to catch me every time I thought “there is no way I can do this.” (which was frequent… at least every travel day when I had to carry my pack that somehow became heavier each time) It was by His strength alone that I got through this year. There is no such thing as a comfort zone on the race: You are asked to live, eat, sleep, travel, and do ministry in any way imaginable. It was challenging and I learned that I am capable of more than I thought imaginable when Christ’s strength, power, and energy is guiding me.
Preaching (sometimes prepared, sometimes not), singing in front of a church (or a prison in the Philippines), teaching English, working with special needs children, construction work (mixing cement by hand), door to door evangelism, working in a coffee shop, passing out flyers, approaching strangers on the street, being told you are in charge of Sunday school for 40+ kids with a moments notice, riding in a motorcycle to ministry (that was pretty cool & terrifying), bar ministry, or serving at a hospice center are just a few of the many ministries I was asked to do this year.
A lot of those things were very outside of my comfort zone before the race and still are. I learned to expect the unexpected and trust God that He can use me even when I feel inadequate to do all of those things listed above. Living out of a backpack was challenging and uncomfortable. You learn to get creative with a limited wardrobe – scarves, jewelry, and sharing teammates clothes quickly became the way to have a ‘new’ outfit. The living conditions were tough and I would daydream of being at home in my bed so many times. I slept in a tent for five months of my race, two of those times I shared my tent with another person for the entire month. I have slept on buses, bus stations, airport floors, airplanes, and on my sleeping pad in a cement building. Showering with a bucket, using squatty potties, and hand washing my clothes became part of my normal routine. Praying when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night that a jackal won’t attack you or that you won’t have an encounter with Africa’s deadliest animal, a hippo, were constant threats. The traveling was terrifying as well – flying Malaysia airlines twice, chicken buses in Guatemala (a school bus that goes extremely fast), van ride through the Himilayan mountains, tuk tuks and jeepnes (basically a metal can with an engine and wheels).
Every month I had to adapt to the new country and cultural customs. The bathrooms would be different, how you greet people and shake hands, to smile (in Thailand) or not to smile (in India), eating ALL kinds of food (pigeon soup in Nepal), using a prayer shawl in church, calling people “brother or sister” as a sign of respect instead of using their first or last name, speaking in “clicks” to say hello or call someone their name, not being able to show your knees and shoulders, not being able to show your ankles. The list goes on and on.
When you give God the space to use you when you feel inadequate or weak and not take the easy way out (which is never an option on the race) your faith grows and is strengthened. When I am weak HE is strong.
3) Loving God First // If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat. – My Utmost for His Highest
I cannot count the number of times I have exhausted myself the past eleven months serving and loving people from my own love and strength. God reminded me of the lesson to love Him first, personally and passionately, before loving the people at my ministry and in my community. Even when you do ‘good things’, like ministry and loving my team, if God isn’t your strength and motivation you will fail. The enemy wants you to believe you can do it on your own strength and that you don’t need God. There is no way I would have stayed or lasted the past eleven months with only the motivation and passion to serve humanity. You get burned out; you get tired and exhausted in all ways imaginable – physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
On the race I was expecting to be treated like a doormat. I felt the weight of this about halfway through the race – because we only stay at a ministry for one month, our contacts treated us like short-term missionaries even though we had been going nonstop for over half a year. We often had an intense schedule with limited personal time or space to recharge (while sharing a room with seven people). I didn’t expect this to be as hard as it was. When you serve the least of these and live like the least of these it is humbling and challenging. Without God, my love did falter. Some days I was impatient with my teammates or complained about eating rice again or sleeping on the floor. When I put the time and energy into my relationship with God it made all of the difference. The race quickly brings out peoples’ true colors: when living with people 24/7 in uncomfortable places, you find out what you are made of and how you react to difficult situations. It is like living in a pressure cooker where peoples’ genuine feelings and emotions bubble to the surface. Fortunately, the race gives you many chances to react more like Christ in future difficult situations, and I had awesome teammates that would show me grace along the way.
Serving in ministries around the world has taught me that prioritizing God’s love over showing His love to others is the most effective way to spread His kingdom. I learned so much from working alongside families and ministries that are wise and experienced beyond my years.
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it knows and loves the One who is leading. – Oswald Chambers
The World Race has been a year of experiencing God in new ways and strengthening my faith. Many of the experiences were more challenging than I thought they were going to be, and I wouldn’t want to repeat most experiences again. If God had not called me to be here I wouldn’t have lasted. I held onto knowing without a shadow of doubt that God called me to leave for 11 months on the race. It took so much faith to trust God in all of the hard and and trying times. I had to constantly remind myself that this was His plan all along and seek to find Him there instead of complaining and wanting to quit. Because we are only at places for a month, it is hard to see the fruit from our labors, and that can get disheartening. Some days or months joy and laughter came effortlessly, but those aren’t the moments I grew the most in. I know God will continue to reveal to me the reasons I was called to the race, and I will look back on it with thoughts of “I can’t believe I did that” and amazing memories from all over the world.
