Some things that I never expected happening while I was on the World Race were things like I never expected to treat peanut butter like peanuty gold, I never expected to miss graham crackers and I never expected to love people as much as I have in every country that we have gone to.
Oh, I also never expected to experience team changes.
I thought, when I left the States, that the six other women in United Warriors were going to be the same six women that were going to walk off the plane with me 11 months later in whatever airport we will eventually return to trying to express all that we went through.
When I found out that team changes were an inevitable thing I began to try to rationalize with God about keeping my team together… I actually wrote an entire blog about that… All in all, my team has changed. At the time, in Peru, I was nervous.
What was it going to be like getting to know more people?
How are we going to get to the same emotional closeness as United Warriors?
What if they don’t like me?
What if I don’t like them?
These were all questions that went through my head as we went to our first team dinner. I was afraid of allowing God to take control and the more that I lingered in that place of uncertainty that fear and anxiety grew. It grew until Lydia, my team leader and friend, turned to me and said, “I prayed for you to be on my team”. It was in that instant that I realize that a lot of prayer went into the formation of this team, Lydia’s and other’s, and that God knew what He was doing.
As we sat down to choose our new team name thoughts were thrown out as we tried to come up with something that sounded “cool” and maybe a little “Christian” with a flare of Spanish. Choosing team names is a lot more of a process then I think the sidebar of this blog gives credit for. As names were tossed around and ultimately vetoed someone came out with “sunflowers”. After the in initial burst of laughter that followed the thought of being introduced as “team sunflowers” someone else pulled out their translator and looked up the Spanish word for sunflowers, I’ll save you the time to type it into Google Translate (:)), it is “Girasoles”.
And, now Girasoles is my new team name.
You see, Girasoles literally translates to a flower that circles, or turns to face, the sun. Team Girasoles, our team, wants for that to be something that is spoken over us. We want to be those flowers that circle, those flowers that continually turn their faces, toward the Son.
After living with these six women for the past month I can look at our team and answer all of the questions that I had before our team had eaten our first meal together.
What was it going to be like getting to know more people?
It is going to be wonderful because it has been beautiful so far.
How are we going to get to the same emotional closeness as United Warriors?
We are going to surpass it because we are already doing it.
What if they don’t like me?
That couldn’t happen they are learning to love like Christ.
What if I don’t like them?
As I learn to love Christ more and more and learn how to love like Him more and more I’m learning that it would be impossible to not love others…and my team, they make it easy to not only like then but to also love them.
Let me introduce to you my new team and family, Team Girasoles:
