Before I begin, a shameless plug for money and an update: we are 2/3 finished with the race! Whaaaaaaaaaaat? I have received donations to fund 91% of the race costs. That is INSANE, Y’all. I am so humbled by the way that people have given to support me. I just wants to say thanks to everyone once again. Okay, on with the blogging:
1.) “As it requires courage to speak up, it also requires courage to shut up and listen. We need to learn to do both.” -Eugene Cho
2.) “Vulnerability Myth#4: Trust comes before Vulnerability.” That may be true in some statistically insignificant percent of case, but on the whole, vulnerability comes first; they truat comes after.
3.) Sometimes “ministry” is less about doing something and more about just being there in the midst of peoples’ lives. Sometimes that is easy, and other times it is reeeeeally hard.
4.) Despite what packaging labels say, your team will find new names for foods based on their color or flavor, like “Hulk Sauce” and “Twizzler Jam.”
5.) You will almost certainly find an obscure food in each country that you love dearly and want to consume regularly for the rest of your life. North America has never heard of it.
6.) Just when you think you’ve seen everything, there’s a man boiling the hair off of a headless goat in an industrial-sized pot. On the street corner. Don’t worry; before he takes it across the street to butcher it, he’ll get the strays with a blow torch.
7.) Some days I’m the prodigal son. Some days I’m his brother. God still loves me either way. (Thank God)
8.) There are few joys that compare to finding the perfect gift for a friend and watching their face when they open it.
9.) The scariest moment of your life is not the moment you think you’re going to be a parent, being in a car accident, or jumping off a cliff. The scariest moment of your life is when your home country is playing a soccer game against the country you’re visiting, and you think your team might win.
10.) The world is a teeny tiny place. You’ll be sitting in a café somewhere, and your host will get a text from her boss saying he just got off the phone with your dad because, oh yeah, they know each other. It’s weird.
11.) Everyone gives me grief because I identify as Canadian or American based purely on how much trouble I think I’ll get into with locals, and I wait until everyone else has gone first to test out the waters. The one day I didn’t do this, a Serbian man yelled at me for bombing his country.
12.) My friends love me and will stand by me, no matter what. Knowing that is staggering. Knowing that God gave me those friends is staggering on a whole other level.
13.) I am a dumb, dumb, smart person. The scope of this planet and all its interconnected pieces and personalities and ways of being is just massive. I’m like a jellyfish trying to figure out what the space shuttle is.
14.) Leeches are scarier than you ever imagined. You tell yourself you’ll play it cool and be composed if you find one on you, but who are we kidding here? They’re heat-seeking vampire worms, and they attack from all directions. Composed is the last thing you’ll be.
15.) Sometimes the wifi isn’t good enough to send out an email, much less a phone call. You won’t worry about keeping in touch with your parents; they know better. It’s all the other people you love that you don’t want thinking you’ve blown them off.
16.) Good friends will go shopping for deodorant with you. Best friends will give you one of their own from home, knowing that 7 months in, neither of you cares if you smell like clinical-strength women’s deodorant.
17.) The amount of power and influence you wield simply by being an American, a man, or a Christian is truly staggering. It is unreal. And sort of terrifying.
18.) Being bald is a game changer. Just expect that unidentifiable liquids will fall from cloudless skies onto your noggin, children will ask permission to touch your head, and if you perspire -even on a 90 degree day- people will inquire about your health and offer you a towel while looking at you like you’re dying. Your teammates may rub your head for good luck. Your hosts will wonder if you’re KGB.
19.) You will hear “Open the Eyes of My Heart” in so many languages on the race that you may default to a version other than English.
20.) If it hurts, it means you’re growing. The pain is awful; you have to hit a high temperature to melt off the most stubborn dross. Some lessons are worth the agony, even if you wouldn’t learn them by choice.
