August 6 was the 3-year anniversary of my miracle. Two years ago around this same time I moved to College Station to try to walk onto the Texas A&M Swimming Team. Apparently early August is a time of change and the miraculous in my life. Well this year is no different. I’m sitting in the hotel in Atlanta where we have had more training for the past five days before we launch to Cartagena, Colombia, at 3:15am in the morning. Our first flight is at 7:45 to Fort Lauderdale and then we will be in Colombia by 12:45pm tomorrow!!!
This is my team and me at Launch this week!
If you have ever followed my travel blog, then you know I love learning about the places I visit. So here are a few fun facts about Cartagena, Colombia.
- There are over 1 million inhabitants in the coastal city.
- Cartagena was named after the Spanish city of Cartagena, which was in turn named after Carthage, the city that once rivaled Rome.
- It’s in the same time zone as Texas (Central). Whoo hoo!!
- Cartagena is one of Colombia’s most popular cities for tourists
- It was once home to one of Spain’s greatest fortresses ever built. The defense was constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries to protect Cartagena from pirates.
- It was founded in 1533.
- The local food is mostly seafood, coconut rice, fried plantain, and salad.
- You can bathe in the mud of a volcano. Yes, I am making it a goal to do this on an off day from ministry.
This is a picture of the city of Cartagena that I got off the Internet. 🙂
Some prayer requests for the start of this journey:
-Safe travel for all of the L-Squad teams. Three teams will be serving in Cartagena, one in Medellín, and one on San Andres (an island). It will be a lot of travel for some of the teams to make it to their destinations.
-Please pray for continued safety for my team and me (and all the other teams, too). God has helped me overcome the fear I talked about in my other blog, but don’t worry – I still have a healthy fear and respect for what could happen. We will be working in the slums of Cartagena, not the tourist areas. This means we will be in a pretty dangerous area.
-During these past few days of training, my team and I have created “norms” for what interactions and boundaries will look like on a day-to-day basis. Please pray for open communication, feedback given in love, for our team to exemplify the body of Christ, and for others to know Christ’s love by the example of how we love each other on our team.
-Pray for ministry opportunities even outside of our assigned ministry, that we can use any time we have to continue to serve the community where we are stationed.
-Pray that we leave every ministry site better than we found it, both physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
-Pray that God uses all the gifts and talents represented on our team in mighty ways.
-Pray that God provides stories for me to tell and that I tell them well.
My favorite part of training was the day when I came early for story leader training. I was encouraged by the fact that videos and blogs are not taking away from the ministry I will be doing on the Race, but they are a ministry in themselves. This is God’s story, not mine, but He has invited me to tell some pieces of what He is doing throughout the world. This is my passion and what I hope to bring to you.
**Also, it appears wifi will be very bad this year. Hopefully we will find some patches where we have a connection, but the norm will be no access. Thus, I will film and edit videos and then try to upload them whenever I get to wifi. I will put them on YouTube and schedule them to post at a certain time. This means that I will not always get to post them on my blog, as well, although I will be posting blogs as often as I can. Just as a side note: if you want to make sure not to miss any videos, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcR-tK-XoEgb2Uy_WGlnEw
If you hit subscribe, then it will email you every time I post a video.
I wanted a little break so I decided not to vlog at all during launch. It was basically a bunch of informative meetings, epic worship, team bonding, and squad hangouts. I did, however, have a wonderful little incident that I thought was worth recording. It is embedded at the bottom of this post for your enjoyment.
Finally, instead of saying “here goes nothing,” I’m saying the opposite: here goes everything. I am putting everything on the line, from my comfort to my safety to every preconceived notion of the world that I’ve ever had, all for the sake of obedience to the one Who I would give my life to serve. This year is going to be crazy, y’all. And I am so, so ready!!
Thank you for your prayers and support, I love you all, and I will update you from Colombia as soon as I can!
Tera
