Hello family, friends and supporters!
As I sit here going into my 15th hour on this airplane to India, I thought to myself, “It’s been a while since I wrote a blog! Maybe I should go ahead and do that!” I’ll start off by saying that my brain is SUPER confused – what time is it at home? what time is it in India? if I continue to sleep, will I be able to fall asleep again when I need to do so? The answer to that last question is “not likely”. So if anything written within this blog doesn’t quite make any sense – I do apologize!
To update everyone on what I’ve been up to over the last 4-5 days: I left Texas on Friday morning (Sept. 5th) to fly down to Atlanta for Launch. This event is a time to reunite with my squad, receive final training and make any last decisions about what will be coming with me in my pack for the next 11 months. For anyone who doesn’t know, during Training Camp I was asked to fill the role of “treasurer” on my team of 6 women – and I’m absolutely THRILLED for the opportunity to serve our team in this capacity. During Launch, I received specific training for this role (as well as attending a number of other “general” sessions on how to make the best of our Race) – and I’ve got my work cut out for me! It will be my responsibility to help keep our team on budget (as set monthly by AIM) – updating a spreadsheet daily of any withdrawals and expenditures and collecting/writing any receipts for those expenditures. AIM’s heart in this is that we (as Racers) will be honoring the sacrifice and generosity of those who have supported us financially – that we may know and be able to explain how every dollar was spent on this journey. Would you please pray for me in this capacity – that I would have a servant’s heart while filling this role for our team; that I would not feel defined by this role on my team in any way (i.e. if I mess up or make a mistake or if at some point I was asked to step down from this role in order to allow someone else the opportunity to serve); that I wouldn’t allow it to cause our team any unnecessary stress and that I would choose joy regardless of any confusion felt at times on my part. Thank you!
This morning (or was it yesterday morning? I’ll just say we left on Tuesday, Sept. 9th), my squad (42 Racers plus our two alumni Squad Leaders) headed to the airport at 3:45 AM to catch our first flight of the day to NYC. From there, we had a 5 hour layover (my last meal in America: boneless wings from BWW’s, in case you were curious!) before getting on our flight to Delhi at 3PM. The flight was originally scheduled to land at around 3PM where we would then have a two-ish hour layover to get through customs and make our last connecting flight of the “travel day” to get us to our final destination: Bangalore. But at some point during the night, one of our fellow passengers on the plane (not a Racer!) was suffering from “serious heart problems” and we had to make an emergency medical landing in Oslo, Norway. The captain notified us we hoped to be back in the air in 35 minutes as the passenger would receive medical attention and be removed from the plane. However, it was nearly four hours later when we got back in the air. Apparently, there was some difficulty in getting a new flight plan and authorization from Delhi to land at the new ETA – but praise Him that we’re back on our way again! I’ll let you know how our travel days ends out in a forthcoming blog – but just know that World Race travel days turned out to be just as previous Racers had warned – UNPREDICTABLE.
I wanted to finish out by giving a little information about our ministry for this month. Team River Dwellers will be joining Team Mosaic to love on, support and work with the a ministry located right in Bangalore! While I’m still not exactly sure what ministry will look like for our teams on a daily basis, you should know that AIM tries to encourage our ministry contacts (in all 11 countries) to provide us with 6-8 hours of ministry per day, 6 days a week. As you can imagine, it can be quite the undertaking to host 14 Americans for a month – and so if we find ourselves with days where there may not be 6-8 hours of scheduled ministry available, AIM encourages us to seek Him and ask what more we could be doing (prayer walks, loving on our host family, finding street kids to play with, etc.). We will get one day off per week to rest and possibly explore more of our surrounding area – shop at local markets, visit some of the world’s wonders, try some of the local delicacies, etc. Stayed tuned for a future blog where I’ll break down what a typical ministry day looks like (I’ll try to do one of these in each country!)
I’d love to know what type of things you’re interested in hearing about! I’ve seen other Racers who build a questionnaire based on reader responses and they fill out the questionnaire at the end of each month (an example of the types of questions would be “What food did you like? What food did you not like this month?” or “How did you see Him show up this month? What was the hardest moment for you this month?”) I think that it can be a fun and relatively easy way to communicate a good amount of information to my readers about my experiences in each country. So if you have a specific question (or 4 or 5!), just leave the question in the comment section or send me an email! I’ll compile them all and post the completed questionnaire in a blog at the end of every month!
For His glory!
Nat
