Bye Bye Bye
It was surreal; the time had come for me to get on the plane and head out to Los Angels, California to meet up with some strangers also known as my team, the people I would live with for 11 months. My best friend Roger, his wife Stephanie, and their daughter Amaya dropped off at D.I.A. This was our good-bye for 11 months. He doesn’t like to admit but I think I saw him tear up a little bit in the car. He is a great man; he walked with me through all the preparation for the race and helped me get my gear for the race, and to this day is helping me deal with home situations.
There I was in D.I.A, I had never traveled alone so this was new experience for me. It was the worst first experience. My bag weighed more then what was allotted. I didn’t know what to do so I paid $75 extra to take my bag on. I was stopped by security because I had a bullet in my backpack. I missed my airplane by minutes. I was in the airport running around trying to figure out what I had to do to get to L.A, California. The employees were sending me up and down the airport to different flights with the hopes that there would be a spot for me. I waited in the airport for 10 hours until there was a seat available for me. I was so excited; I couldn’t wait to get to my hotel in California. I was exhausted.
I got to L.A California at 11 pm. A lady from my church, Becky Jaramillo, booked a hotel for me. I remember that they provided a shuttle van. I called the place and they sent a van my way. I was so excited! I couldn’t wait to lay my head on a nice comfortable pillow . Thirty minutes past, I thought, “ok, traffic is pretty bad, it’s understandable.” An hour past so I thought, “maybe the place is pretty far from here, plus traffic, it’s excusable. One hour and an half passes, still no van. I called the place and the lady calls the man who is driving, he says he is on his way.
There I am with my 65lbs bag 30lbs day pack, waiting for this guy. No show. Its about 1am, and I call, she gave me the same respond, “he says he is close to the airport, the traffic is pretty bad.” Around 1:23 I saw the van, and it passed me! I tried to get his attention, but he didn’t see me. So I call the hotel to ask if she can call the man to make another round to pick me up. There I was waiting another half an hour. I was frustrated and exhausted so I just got a cab. The cab takes me to this hotel, and it was only 20 minutes away! I couldn’t believe it! What in the world took this guy so long to get to LAX. When I arrived the van was parked. I decided to not say anything.
I checked in, I was upset, hungry, and exhausted. I walk into the hotel, and its dirty, the bathroom was dirty, the tables were dirty, I was disgusted! I didn’t even want to lie in the bed. I had to bit the bullet and I just went to bed, with the hopes of, tomorrow would be better. I woke up rested and feeling good! I had to wait 9 hour before our departure. I was alone in the airport for the majority of time. I was ok with it though. I took my Malaria pill, and I forgot I didn’t eat breakfast. I started to feel nauseous. I was looking for the closes restaurant, which ended up being Starbucks. I bought me water and a small sandwich for $14. That was rough! We finally met up and head to Thailand!
Thailand
This was my first time leaving the USA, it was unbelievable, it was happening! After many hours of traveling I was ready to begin this adventure, I was ready to live life with total strangers that I met literally on my flight to Thailand! Except Hilary, I met her a couple days before we left to Thailand; she lives 15 minutes from Greeley, CO.
We left LA, CA, we had a layover in China, then landed into Bangkok, Thailand. From Bangkok, we traveled 10 hours to Chang Mai, Thailand. While we were traveling we stopped at a 7-11. I was super excited! I said, “Thank you 7 Eleven, “I walked in with expectations to grab their awesome hotdogs, a bag of hot Cheetos, and a cold Coke! I love 7 Eleven hotdogs, I can eat them everyday, smothered in their tasty melted hot thick cheese, jalapenos, in addition, their buffalo chicken dog, and a taquito! (Sigh), I wish I could have that right now!
Anyway, we arrived to the 7Eleven, full of excitement to have a little piece of home with me. We walk in and I see lays chips but no hot Cheetos. I saw some sketchy hot dogs with flies that were lackadaisical on the hotdogs. I was disgusted, disappointed, sad, and hungry. It was ok though because there were Lay’s chips! I walk to the chip aisle scoping out these chips looking for the sour cream and onion, or the cheddar cheese flavor! You know which flavor is which by just a glimpse of the bag right? I do anyway. I know that the green bags are sour cream and onion and the orange bags are cheddar cheese. I grabbed the green one with excitement and went to grab my cold coke. Some says to me, “Wow you like sushi?” I said, “why do you ask?” They said, “Your bag, it’s sushi flavored Lay’s.” My eyes watered a little while walking back to the aisle to replace these with the cheddar cheese chips. All I could say is that I walked out with water. Their orange bag of chips was crab-flavored chips. I thought to myself this is going to be a long year!
I was shocked with how dirty Thailand was. There was trash everywhere, it smelt bad, dogs were roaming the streets, and rivers were not your normal blue or healthy green rivers, in fact, there were rivers that were black. I didn’t understand and still to this day don’t understand how a country could be so dirty.
We arrived to our hostel after 12 am. The streets were quite, it stunk, and it was late. Then a Thai man/women passes us by on his motorbike. I thought to myself, “We are going to die.” Let me explain why I thought that. This is my first time leaving the U.S, and somebody had me watch the movie “No Escape” before my trip. If you remember the movie, there is a scene when the main characters are sneaking around in the dark, and a motorbike passes them by. While this wasn’t a movie, we were exposed, and a motorbike passes us by like it did in the movie. I had to keep my composure though; I didn’t want to give my squad a bad first impression.
We walked to the hostel I didn’t know what a hostel was. I thought hostel, hotel, same-same, right? I was ready to lie in a comfortable hotel type bed, turn on the A/C, expecting four of us guys in a room. I was ok with that. I walk into the room saw 5 bunks, which equals to 10 beds, each filled with a body, plus mattresses on the floor. What in the world? I thought to myself. We have 10 men sleeping in this hot room with no A/C, fans that worked ok. Welcome to the mission field. I didn’t realize how bougie I really was. I thought I was a simple man. My true colors came out. I hope that I was the only one that realized how bougie I was. I faked it hoping that I would make it.
Training Camp
It was over one year ago A.I.M started the Fusion Rout. We were the second Fusion Fam. Fusion gives the opportunity for people all around the world to experience the World Race. Because there are participants from around the world, we have training camp in the first country, which was Thailand for us.
Honestly, having the majority of your day filled with sessions and people talking for hours, could be boring. In this case, I enjoyed it! Everything that was taught was relevant for my life. These sessions reveled things I didn’t know I had in my heart, it revealed who God was in my life, and it prepared me for the race. There are days that I find myself in situations and I am reminded of the talks we had in Thailand that help me press in and push through.
I want to give thanks to, Daniel Williams (D.Will, D.Dub, Mentor D), Coach Doug and Renee Duffy , Emily Rae Butterflied , Stephanie Jansen, Tim and Karen Dilbeck, and Je Scott for the prayer, preparations, and the execution that took place during training camp. Those were great moments.
We spent 5 days at the hostel training and preparing. We switched locations to a campground. They is a family that WR connected with. They own a big piece of property, and they allowed us to continue our training camp their. It was a great opportunity to get away from technology and get to know one another, soak in nature, and soak in God.
WR Training
Our first day, we had to walk 1 mile with all of our things under 20 minutes. I was roughly carrying 345lb, which includes my body weight, my backpack and my daypack. It was rough! Unfortunately I didn’t make it under 20 minutes. This was discouraging, yet motivating to get in shape and make healthy eating choices.
This portion of training camp, the leaders focused on real life situations, such as lost luggage. We were getting ready to set up camp; the leaders divided us up and half us “lost” our luggage at the airport. For a day we had to share our tents, clothes, toothpaste, etc.
There are only 4 guys and out of us 4 only one had his things. So Chris and I had to ask the ladies if we could use their tent, sleeping bags, pad, etc. We were trying to collect as many items as we could to get through the night. The ladies had to share their supplies with the ladies who lost their supplies. Chris and I got a tent and one sleeping pad, one blanket and extra cloths from the girls to use as blanket.
There are always 3 sides of the story, your story, his story and the truth. In this case, it was my story, Chris’ story and the truth, which is my story. It was freezing this night. I love the cold and I enjoy sleeping in a cold atmosphere, but this cold was too cold. I remember not getting enough rest because I was cold, and I was waking up to make sure Chris was covered with the blanket. I remember purposely giving him all the covers so that he would stay warm. His interpretation is… Well it doesn’t matter because it is not the truth. You could ask him if you want, his name Chris White on Facebook. This was the beginning of a great friendship.
The leaders did an awesome job preparing us for situations that may come our way. One of them was community breakfast, lunch, and dinner. One day during lunch we were getting ready for lunch and before we were served they said to us, we couldn’t use any plates or spoons. So everyone eat out of a pot full of rice with his or her hands. There were 23 of us using our hands to eat out of this pot. It was cool to witness our team participating in this. If I could be honest my bougie side came out. It was a lot fun. I really enjoyed myself. It was noticeable how intentional our leaders were in preparing us.
My Crushes
Training camp is great to build friendship with your squad mates. There is a no dating rule. I signed that commitment; I have done it before my first year in Bible College. I thought to myself there isn’t anyone who catches my eye so this will be easy. Well, I am a sucker for personality. I started to crush. Not even two weeks in the race and I am crushing. I said, “This is going to be tougher then I thought.”
I prayed about it. I knew it was a distraction. I knew that if I was to entertain these thoughts these feelings would strengthen and it could potentially derail my focus. I informed my accountability partners. Again it was just a crush so that season came and passed. The lucky men that marry these ladies are going to be lucky, they are very beautiful, they are in love with God, and many of they cook…. GOOD! I will not continue with this subject.
Ministry Starts
To be honest, if I had the chance to relive those moments with the squad I would and I would be more intentional with getting to know them and take advantage of the time I had with them all. We were split into teams. There were 6 of us in my team: Chris, Denies, Gabi, Mackenzie, Alicia, and myself. Chris was the Team Leader; Alicia was in charge of finances. Our team name was, “Trotos,” which means vulnerable. We felt that vulnerability was the key word that described our team, so we went with it. When our name was inserted into the database, they misspelt it and spelt Trots. So there was a joke about our name and us. It had something to people becoming angry when they were hungry. So people would call our team, angry trots when we were hungry.
When we got into our teams the leaders challenged us to go out and make a memorable night. Chris took this literally and came up with an idea to get tattoos. Everyone agreed. That night is literally stuck with the 5 of us for ages. I didn’t get the tattoo. I came very close to getting it. Let me clarify that it’s not because of the pain or the needles, if that were the case; I’d give up my man card. Anyway, for the moment I got a pen-too (tattoo with pen). That night was memorable for me. Our team was great, we had good chemistry.
We were given the opportunity to work with the children in the slums.
Today (1:22:2016) is the day! We are ready and prepared to go out and minister to the children in the slums! This excitement within me is boiling! I don’t know what to expect nor do I know how we are going to speak with them, but I am ready to see how God will come through and make a way for us to communicate with the children in the slums. I was thinking to myself how hard it is to communicate without being able to communicate. As we were lead to the slums by Rose, I didn’t know what to expect, so I got rid of my expectations and trusted that God would come through.
We get to the slums and as I walk through my heart was broken. I couldn’t believe it. Their homes were made with a mixture of aluminum and wood; aligned with one another for about one quarter of a mile. There was a small river that flowed through the slums-this river is very dirty, trash was everywhere and the odder was bad. I saw commercials and I heard stories about this type of living, but to see it first hand was surreal. I became speechless.
The leader had left a few of us there because she had to lead the other group to another destination. We went with the intention to do prayer walking. Before we started prayer there was 2 girls standing, starring at us, then it became awkward because it was silent and we didn’t know how to communicate with these little girls.
Mackenzie attempted to tickle their tummies, and for about 30 seconds there was not reaction from this little girl. I was thinking, “ This little girl is going to crying and we are probably going to get into trouble!” After awhile she started smiling and that smile turned into some chuckles then those chuckles turned into a laugh, and that laugh turned into a very good time playing with them. This all happened with a simple touch.
“Actions speak louder then words” –Unknown
As more kids were coming out, I was clueless to what I could do with them without being able to properly communicate with them. Our leader came back and we started to play with a bucket and rocks. They loved it! I was blown away how much fun it was to play with bucket and some rocks. This simple game was taught through our action, no words. They were determined to make those rocks in the bucket, for the satisfaction of making them in the bucket, their faces would light up with you gave them a fist bump and a high five after making a shoot. The one-week spent with the kids at the slums is very memorable. We began to build relationships with these kids and I personally got attached to them, so it was pretty hard to say good-bye at the end.
The Fusion Squad spent the majority of the month training so we had about a week of ministry in Thailand. Overall, I am grateful for the time spent in Thailand, and the friendships built. If I could be honest, I felt at home. Off to Cambodia!
