Before the World Race, I would choose to read blogs of the World Racers on my free time. I remember one blog that I read that spoke about community. She spoke about how living in community was the hardest part of the race for her. She spoke about how her team could chose to love each other and how they don’t have to live the way they are living. By the end of the blog I thought “Man, something must have happened on that team!” I have never lived in community like this, but I now know what she was talking about. A team definitely doesn’t have to have a fight or need “something to happen” in order for it to be difficult.
Let me tell you about community on the World Race. We are never allowed to go anywhere alone. We live together, we work together, we sleep in the same room, we have a limited amount of space on the property of where we are living to go off and have “alone time.” Alone time consists of putting on headphones and spending time with Jesus, even though we are still only several meters away from our teammates. We are always around our teammates. This is an awesome growing experience for me because I really enjoy living by myself and having alone time.
I have been with this team for almost 8 months now (except we gained two girls and lost one within the past two months, but for the most part it’s the same team). This is a lot of time to be around the same people and it wears on you. The question is, will you allow it to wear on you? It takes communication, it takes love, and it takes God. We have one and a half months left, it is at the point where we could give up. We could stop trying, but I don’t think that’s what God wants. Living in community is an every day challenge and effort.
I absolutely love these girls, who we’ve named ourselves the “Alpha and Omega Sorority”. Every single one of these women help me grow every day. They inspire me daily on how to be a better woman of God. I thank God for these women and feel incredibly blessed to have them in my life. No matter how difficult it is, I know these girls will have my back if I need them.
The other night, we were told to “Dress up to take pictures after the church service”. We don’t really dress up much on the World Race so we thought it would be fun to take some team photos. After the photo shoot, our team leader shouted “Everyone head to the bus station!” We were pleasantly surprised with a pizza dinner provided by a very sweet boyfriend of one of our girls!
I love these girls so much. Even when times are hard, even when attitudes can easily be more on the negative side, the “Alpha and Omega Sorority” will always be women of honor and will always strive to be closer to God. Thank you Lord for providing such an awesome group of girls to show me what I need to learn.
