If you know me, you probably know that I am not an outgoing person. I don’t talk to strangers, I don’t make friends easily, and I usually avoid large groups of people. This month, however, I had to get right out of my shell because our work was almost entirely based on talking to strangers and making friends with local university students.
As far as living conditions go, my team has been staying in the home of a local pastor and his family. We never, ever thought that we would be living this comfortably on the World Race. Our home is a short walk from the beach. We have beds, hot showers, and wifi. We even have AC, but the weather is so nice that we don’t need to use it. Our host family is loving and accommodating, willing to drive us to the grocery store or show us some touristy sites. Needless to say, this is not what I imagined when I signed up for this trip. I expected living in tents (month 2), brutally hot weather (month 3), or at least a threat of malaria (also month 3). Instead, I feel more at home than I have the whole race.
Sounds comfortable, right? But this has also been one of the more uncomfortable months of the race. Let’s start with the language barrier. To be honest, this is the first month on the race that language has been an issue. In South Africa, Swaziland, the Philippines, and Malaysia, the people we interacted with by and large had some level of English knowledge. In Mozambique, our contact was South African and we usually had a translator with us to speak to the local people. Even when we didn’t have a translator, one of our team members spoke Portuguese so we were never totally lost. Vietnam is a completely different story. Our contact does not speak English, so we speak through his daughter, whose English level still is not very high. We are in a touristy area, but most of the tourists are Russian and do not speak English, and of course your average Vietnamese person on the street does not speak English.
I have enjoyed being immersed in a totally different language and culture, but it has made our work tough. It has been mostly self-directed, which is a challenge in itself. We have been talking to various people at the mall, in the market, or on the beach, making a few friends along the way. There is a university nearby, but Chinese New Year was at the beginning of the month so classes just started this week. Two of my team members put up a sign advertising free English conversation, so we have been meeting with people over coffee to chat in English. To reach people this month we could not sit idly by and wait for people to come to us; we had to actively go and seek people out. Talking to strangers and meeting new people has forced me to rely more on the Father to direct conversations and bridge the language gap.
Although I was not looking forward to getting out of my comfort zone to talk to people, I am happy to report that I did make one dear friend. She is 19 years old and a freshman at the university studying management. She is all smiles and lights up when talking to people. She loves playing sports, cooking, and riding her bike. Her English is very broken but improves every time we talk. I was blessed to be able to give her a Bible and see her come to church for the first time. I don’t know exactly how much she understood, but I know that she is in His hands now and I am so glad my comfort zone was pushed to its limits this month.
I still need about $2600 to be fully funded! Our final deadline is technically the end of February, so please consider making a onetime donation to help me continue this race!
