K-Squad is coming home…
Exactly ONE MONTH from Today!
On June 23rd, 2017, I will be taking my last international flight of the World Race from Belize City, Belize to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. From there, I will spend a few hours getting through American customs and security, hug my some of my squadmates goodbye (those of us who are taking our last AIM flight together), grab a quick dinner in the airport, and fly home from Miami, Florida to Newark, New Jersey!
Wow. Where has time gone?
This blog has been a long time coming. I’ve thought of writing a blog like this since Susan Perry posted her “How to Handle Your Racer Coming Home” blog last year a month before she came home from the World Race and it inspired me to write my own. You see, even though I’ve never experienced re-entry before, my squad, my leadership, my teammates, and I have been talking for months about what it’s going to be like when we get back to the United States. We’ve been processing through a whole myriad of emotions surrounding re-entry (many of which will still be there when we get back) and talked through scenarios about what to expect. And while I’ve never experienced re-entry myself since the World Race was my first time out of the country, I am expectant of the big change that is coming from living in community 24/7 to having my own room, from not seeing family and friends (from back home) in almost a year to getting to see them all, to not hearing English all the time to hearing it all the time, etc. But my community of friends, family, and supporters back home are probably the ones who know the least about what to expect when I get home.
Insert this blog.
After the initial excitement wears off, these are some tips on what to expect when your World Racer comes home after being away for almost a year of mission work.
11 tips for after 11 in 11:
1. Reverse culture shock is a real thing. We have become used to experiencing many different cultures around the world, but what happens when I get to Month 12 (living life back in America) and I don’t have to pack up and leave at the end of the month? When I realize that this is my home and I’m not leaving until I can find a place of my own? Except for our very brief layover in Los Angeles, California during our travel days from Thailand to El Salvador, I haven’t set foot in the United States for almost a year. I have lived in community 24/7 and I don’t know what it’s like to have my own room for more than just a few days. I’m not used to hearing English all the time and may forget that it’s rude to tune people out because I am used to doing that with foreign languages I don’t understand. I know during my brief layover in L.A. it was overwhelming for me to be able to read all the signs in the airport. I haven’t driven a car in over a year. My phone hasn’t worked as a phone for text messages or phone calls since I left New Jersey. I don’t remember what it’s like to be able to drive to a food store, a convenience store, a restaurant, a mall, etc. to buy anything I could possibly need when I need it instead of, for example having to wait a week to take the bus to get peanut butter from the good food store in town. I have had a limited amount of independence on the Race for safety reasons and may forget that I don’t have to use the buddy system to go wherever I want. Spending more than $5 on a meal, or clothing, or anything for the past 10 months I have considered an extravagance.
If I seem rude, I probably forgot the social norms of how to act in a particular situation. The number of choices in a grocery store, a mall, or any store bigger than the size of a bedroom back home might overwhelm me. I once shopped in a food store in Thailand that was as big and diversified as a Walmart back home and I felt so overwhelmed by the amount of choices that I bought myself chocolate bar for getting through the experience. Air-conditioning and indoor heating are considered luxuries around the world and I’ve only experienced air-conditioning a handful of times on the Race (and I haven’t experienced indoor heating in about a year and a half). I might forget that I don’t have to convert anything when using U.S. money in America. In almost every country I’ve been to, we haven’t been allowed to flush toilet paper. In India, most people don’t even use toilet paper, so we had to buy napkins and tp whenever possible to make sure our supply never ran too low. Please give me grace as I re-learn American culture.
2. I couldn’t have said this better than Susan Perry did in her blog, so I’m just going to quote it here:
“I will need to grieve losing the World Race and the life that has become my norm. America doesn’t talk enough about grief. Grief isn’t just an emotion that you experience with the death of a loved one. Grief happens–and needs to happen–whenever something that carries importance in your life is lost or ended. Allow your Racer the time and space to grieve as they need. At the same time, do not handle them with “kid gloves.” Don’t shy away from their grief. Don’t tell them to just “get over it” or “move on.” Don’t act as if the World Race is something that is automatically behind them the second they land in America. The WR isn’t just a fun vacation that I’ve been on for eleven months. It has been perhaps the most formative and stretching and growth inducing time of my life. The Race will always be part of me. I have become family with each person on my squad, even those who left early. Don’t be surprised or offended if I compare a lot of things to the Race when I first came home. It’s all that I have known for the past 11 months. Don’t be afraid to step into the hard conversations, even if they seem to come out of nowhere.”
3. Please ask me specific questions! Broad questions like “How was your trip?” or “What was your favorite part of the Race?”, while you mean well, will be hard for me to answer. Try explaining the most challenging and spiritually-stretching, but also joy-filled year of your life in just a few minutes. Not that easy, is it? I want to answer all your questions and I am excited to hear about your year away from me as well, but it will be difficult to explain with broad questions. I’d love to set aside time to discuss one country at a time with people one-on-one, with couples, and with families when I get back. After I take some time to readjust to America, I’d like to speak at the churches who supported me and the Christian clubs I used to attend to share a presentation about my World Race experience as well!
4. Please remember that you lived your life here in America for almost a year without me too. I want to tell you about everything I experienced, but I also want to hear about how your year was too! I’ve heard so many friends from back home tell me that, “Oh, it’s boring compared to what you’ve been doing on the World Race. You don’t want to hear it.” But the truth is, I do want to hear about everything! From my perspective, I miss my college friends and college ministry, I miss the stability of living in one place for most of the year, I miss regular Sunday church services in one church and my friends that come with it. I may not be caught up on who’s dating who, who’s married or engaged to whom, Christian music, American politics, modest fashion, who graduated and who’s still in school, and these are things I would loved to be filled in on! (Except maybe the politics. I’ll probably read old newspapers and watch videos online so I can form my own opinions about how America has changed while I’ve been away.)
5. Spend quality time with me! Help me process through the transition I’m going through. Listen to me, even if that story that I thought was hilarious wasn’t actually that funny outside of context. Help me to laugh as myself when I make mistakes. Remind me to give myself grace when I’m being tough on myself. Pray with me and for me. Let me know if you have any prayer requests! Ask how I am doing in a way that’s deeper than surface level. By doing these things, you are validating me and what I’ve experienced this past year.
6. Don’t refer to America as “the real world” or the World Race as “your trip.” By calling America “the real world,” it implies that everything I experienced over the past 11 months is not something you consider to be real. By calling the World Race “your trip,” it implies that the World Race is a glorified vacation to different countries instead of the challenging and growth-forming experience it was for me to serve God in many different parts of the world.
7. Again, this one was so well-written by Susan Perry that I’m just going to quote it:
“Invite me to things! I don’t know what’s going on at home. I don’t know who is hanging out tonight. I don’t know what places are looking for new employees. Yes, I haven’t been involved in things at home in almost a year, but I’m home now. Even if you don’t know if I can make it because of work, INVITE me. Reach out to me by including me. Community is real, and my community on the Race is NOT the same as my community back home. I’ll be missing community and being with people.”
8. Allow me to have space when I need it! When I get back to New Jersey, I’m going to need some time to adjust and be by myself to process and sleep. Going from being in community 24/7 living, serving, and spending all my off time with teammates or squadmates to having my own room and the independence to walk or drive to places by myself will be a newfound freedom that I will like to enjoy. I will also have a lot of things I need to take care of soon after I get back such as reactivating my phone, going to doctors’ appointments since I haven’t had one in a year, looking for a job, re-learning how to drive my car, and making sure other legal things are in order. The first few days I might want to start doing all these things at once, and I may have days where I just want to sleep because even though there’s only a 2-hour time difference (with daylight savings time) between Belize and New Jersey, the Race can be exhausting physically, spiritually, and emotionally and sometimes I will need to rest!
9. This one’s worth repeating. Please have grace for me and remind me to have grace for myself as I transition back to my life in America. I will probably have less-than-ideal moments as I readjust to American culture and come back to a house I have never lived in (my mom moved in January), with friends and family who may look the same, while all of us have lived a year apart and have changed and grown as people. I might be hard on myself, so please remind me that I don’t have to have everything all together right away. Gently remind me to let go of my spoken or unspoken expectations of myself for this new season in my life when things don’t go as planned. God’s in control and He wants what’s best for me-that’s all that matters.
10. Understand the Asian phrase “same same, but different.” In some ways, I’m the same person I was before I left on the World Race: I still love reading books, writing stories, and I still love singing worship music. I still dislike ketchup and I still love Disney all of the time. I still have a passion for the Lord and for college ministry. I’m still coming back as Geneva, but I am a different Geneva than the one who left to go on the World Race ten months ago. The Lord has walked me through a lot of freedom-freedom from fear, freedom from past circumstances, freedom to know who I am in the Lord. He has also walked me through forgiveness and shown me how to be more confident in who He’s called me to be. Let go of any expectations you have for me when I get back and what re-entry will look like for me, because I don’t know for sure either! Get to know the new person I have become and celebrate with me the new creation I am in the Lord. Tell me what changes you see in me because of what I’ve walked through with the Lord and let me affirm the growth I see in you as well!
11. That leads me to…what I’m doing next! After over a year of praying about a dream that the Lord put on my heart and Him confirming these plans to me step-by-step, I am excited to announce that I am applying to be a Campus Ministry Full-Time Missionary Staff with Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru)! I feel specifically called to serve in Brooklyn, New York to work with International students, Asian-American students, or General Campus Ministry, starting with New Staff Training in the Winter, should I be accepted. If I am accepted, I would then be assigned a Borough with a few (2-3) college/university campuses to work with and a specific concentration of ministry (international students, Asian-American students, or general campus ministry) and would have to attend 5-6 weeks of Biblical training in Florida.
Where I’m at in the process: I am currently in the application process and probably won’t have my references done until I return to the United States and I’m able to meet with a few of them in person. This is okay because I started the application process super early and the application and the references altogether won’t officially be due until mid-October. Please join me in prayer throughout my application process that if God is calling me to join Cru as a missionary staff member, that He would continue to make His will known to me every step of the way! If I am accepted to Cru, this will be a position that I will have to support-raise my ministry needs and cost of living, which will in turn be paid to me as a salary. Since I feel led to apply for a staff position and not an internship, this would be a minimum of a two-year commitment that I would have to support-raise my salary. Please join me in prayer for this as well, that I would continue to trust God and have faith in Him that if He has called me to Cru, then He will provide, just as He graciously did through all of you for me to be able to serve on the World Race!
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just want to share in the excitement of me coming back to the United States and/or about me applying to be a missionary with Cru, please feel free to comment below, click “Contact Me” to send me an email, private message me on Facebook, email me, or contact me in one of the above mentioned ways if you’d like to meet up to talk about it when I get back to the States in a month! I will try my best to be very diligent about replying within a week if possible with the unknown wifi situation in Belize we’re about to embark on!
P.S. If you are interested in supporting me towards Cru, please don’t donate above because it will not go to me or Cru-it will go to the General Fund for Adventures in Missions. Please get in touch with me and I will keep you updated about the application process and how to donate if and when that becomes a reality! Thank you all for your love and support! Here’s to Month 11!!!
