There’s nothing like leaving everything for a year. At first it was easy. Launch, three days in Atlanta, offered me the opportunity to let go of everything I had come to rely on. I left my phone behind in the hotel room throughout the day. I didn’t even talk to me parents before I boarded a plane.
These couple days did nothing to prepare me for life in the field. From the moment we deboarded the plane in Santo Domingo, we were going and going fast. There was no time for the planned stop at the ATM for pesos in the airport. My bag never really hit the floor before we were gathering on a curb outside to find our buses.
This week, team 3D is stationed in Lajas with all of squad D except two teams. Our hosts own a home on a mountain from which their organization is based. HOPE DR has touched the lives of many where they work. Visit http://www.hope4drnow.org/ for more information.
So, we’ve been camping on this mountain for a week. Here’s the view from the our camping spot.
My tent is a mess, my clothes have been “washed” by hand, and I’ve taken more than one shower in a river. It’s hot during the day; my skin feels like it’s always boiling, which may actually be a side effect of my malaria meds now that I think about it. The food has been fantastic. Everything from delicious oatmeal or sweet rice for breakfast to the rice and beans or cornmeal pancakes we have for dinner. I even found a chicken foot in my rice at lunch. It’s everything they said the World Race would be. And yet, I still wasn’t prepared.
Nothing can really prepare you for coming to the realization that you don’t trust anyone on your squad to like you for who you are. I was certainly not prepared for the sudden onset of homesickness when I realized I couldn’t just call my parents whenever I wanted. There is nothing like the feeling of one week on the race. It’s a month stuffed into 7 days.
I have nothing profound yet to share from my experiences. Except to say that sometimes the race is a day of hard work and sometimes it’s a day of sitting on the porch in the rain. The things we do make a difference, but we meet God on a daily basis in the face of children and in the beauty of the mountains.
