Loving in the Mess (And Other Lessons You Learn on the Race) - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

This is an update of our second-to-last month on the Race. #ahhhhhhh!!!

We just finished about 25 days of ministry outside of Kampala, Uganda. We were working with a church, Ambassadors of Life, and we lived with the Pastor and his family all month. We loved them, and despite living with diaperless tots that poop and pee eeeevveeerryywwhhheerrre, we had the best time getting to know them. This is a family that knows how to laugh together and we loved laughing with them!

We didn’t realize how blessed we were to have two bedrooms and a toilet in Rwanda. We thought we were living on top of each other there. Turns out the joke was on us! Uganda has been one of the toughest months conditions-wise (6 girls crammed in a room, no running water, latrines that smell so bad I thought I would die some days of self-asphyxiation). But interestingly it has been one of the most meaningful months relationally. It’s funny how that works. Malaysia was a month of bliss conditions-wise, but I didn’t connect to people there the way that I have here.

This is Sophie (aka Trouble) with some neighbors. She is such a gigglely little girl and so sassy!

Me wearing my new chicken dress I received as a gift after speaking in a church down the street. Betty, the Pastor, sent this dress and the purse to me and she even threw in some shillings. I was incredulated as my friend Becky would say!

Steve-oo and his sister Sophie! Our surrogate siblings this month!

In just a few short days we will officially be month 11ers. It’s such a good feeling to know we are so close to being home, but I also have a different kind of motivation to hurry up and start working. I want to do more for the people I have encountered. For the ones who won’t have a fighting chance to get ahead without people to help carry some of their burdens.

It must be a God thing because if you know me at all, you know that I am a Central America gal through and through. If I could change ethnicities I would become Hispanic. For reals. One of the highest compliments you could give me would be to say that I kind of look like a Spaniard. Sure I am proud to be an American, but man would I love to claim some hispanic blood in my veins.

All that to say, part of the reason I decided to do the World Race was because I wanted to expand my mindset about the rest of the world. I wanted to gain an appreciation for Asia and Africa the way I had for Central America. I didn’t necessarily see myself moving to either of those places, but if I could at least encounter people there then maybe I could value them in my heart a little more. Then I could think of faces instead of a map when hearing the words, “Cambodia, Thailand or Rwanda.”

I had a notion that traveling across the world and doing life with people so different from me might help increase my compassion for people in general. I honestly think there is something to this. How can you become compassionate without actually practicing it? How can you say you truly value people unless you are willing to get your hands dirty together…to hug…to share space and meals and jokes together. I have learned so much here about genuine love and acceptance on the Race, and I want to carry these mentalities back to my hometown…or wherever it is I happen to land next.

I have learned a lot of these lessons from my squadmates, actually. Nature verses nurture. I may not have been born with a nature of compassion (ask my sisters what it was like to grow up with me), but I am learning it by watching others who seem to understand it so well. I know it is not based on feelings, but on action. You choose to love people, you choose to accept them, you choose to value them. Sometimes it takes some work to undo what you have always intrinsically believed and so easily accepted about those who are different from you.

I grew up in the deep South. It’s no mystery how I have probably been influenced by a culture where the color of your skin really does change the way people view you, the way people treat you, the opportunities you have to succeed and all of the other underlying prejudices that society has perpetuated. With this in mind, I was kind of wondering what it would be like to come to Africa. Would I operate out of those deep-rooted, unspoken prejudices or would I feel fully free to love people genuinely with nothing getting in the way. I’m telling you, it was an honest but unspoken thought I had before landing in Kampala in May.

I think we have all been stretched in our capacity to love others off and on our squad this year. I know I have. I’m telling you, it sounds ironic but prejudice knows no boundaries, and at the beginning of all this I think I probably measured others (and myself) pretty severely against some imaginary idea of what a Racer should be. I know I judged some people before getting to know them. Yet some of those people have become the ones I appreciate the most and now I can’t imagine having gone through this without them.

No matter how much I accept, value and love people though, the one thing Ugandans are not afraid to point out is the inequality that exists between us just because of where we are from. As Racers we talk about going home in August and getting jobs, going back to school, and living with friends or family for a season. We have these conversations with locals, and though figuring out our plans may be at the top of our prayer requests, there is almost always an immediate rebuttal to our comments of a question-mark shaped future. (And most definitely some underlying laughter).

The response to our uncertainty almost sounds kind of like a “wow, life must really be hard for you…in America…where you will find a way, even in the most dire of situations, to eat three square meals and have place to sleep and make some money even if it is not the job you wanted.”

It’s one of the things you can’t deny or even attempt to downgrade, because it is true. There is no use in trying to gloss over this reality because it will be pointed out to you. You will be reminded of the privilege you have just because of where you were born and you will have to face for yourself how unfair it is that life is so easy for some people and so desperately hard for others who didn’t really start on the same playing field to begin with.

It’s why I am so glad to be here. You can picture a stereotypical village in Africa all you want, but until you come and see life for what it really is and hear stories of desperation out of someone’s own mouth, you might not fully appreciate what you have been blessed with. I imagine you won’t experience a righteous indignation over what someone else has gone through either until you have heard about it with your own ears.

I’m not saying you should hop on a plane immediately and do what I am doing. I am saying I needed to do it. I needed to come and see, just like Jesus beckons Andrew to do when they meet for the first time. “Come and you’ll see” what the fuss is all about. Come and you’ll see what the real world is. The one we are counting down the days to leave behind because we miss our beds and our families and our church services that last 1.5 hours so we can leave at lunchtime and spend the afternoon eating tacos with friends.

I do miss all of those things, and I miss Central America. I would still love to keep speaking Spanish and maybe I will take that Ancestors.com DNA test to find out if I can truly claim some hispanic in me. But now that I am here…in Uganda…I am different than when I first arrived. Because I have seen. I am leaving with a sense of investment that I don’t want to shake just yet.

I have met people who have impacted me…people who have given me opportunities to hug and laugh with and shed some tears over. I have met a toddler who literally pooped on my arm, and I didn’t care because to me he is precious. My team has loved on ringworm infested girls hoping we wouldn’t get it, but not letting that stop us from letting them nestle in our laps. You get used to this stuff…it becomes normal because you ignore your natural reflexes and you show love anyway. You do this daily and your mindset starts to change. I promise I am still a germaphobe, but I am working on never letting that get in the way of reaching out to someone no matter what their physical condition is.

You don’t get this by staying where you are. (And you also don’t have to board a plane to Africa). BUT you do get this by moving towards people. Move towards them. Get your hands dirty with them. Walk in the mess with them for a bit. You don’t have to pick up every burden of theirs and make it your own, but you can pick up a small load and carry it for a few miles. This is one lesson I can’t afford to leave behind. It’s what I want to try to do (learn to do), but I also realize it may be the hardest thing to make a priority once I am back home.

So here we go…all of us a little tired…kind of rundown at times and fighting off the occasional parasite, bacterial infection or general cold. Fighting off the temptation to focus only on the light at the end of the tunnel instead of letting God meet us in the tunnel itself. Fighting off the temptation to rush it along instead of embracing every day for what it is…a chance to be light, to speak to strangers we may never see again and to love like we won’t get the chance to love again. Easier said than done, but we’re making it through together and I think that’s the only way I could do this.

Thanks for your love and support and prayers as we get close to wrapping up this journey. We definitely need it.

Now just 34ish days till our feet touch US soil… (but who’s counting 😉 Can’t wait to be back and revel in this trip from the other side.

<3, h

This is Farista and Farisea, two twin girls who live at the church. The are deaf and don’t go to school. It’s a process, but I am hoping God will make a way to get them into a school for the deaf.

Steve and his mom Beatrice (Pastor’s wife).

Pastor’s pigs. He’s trying to raise them to sell as a business.

My team got to visit the Hands of Love school in Kampala. We really wanted to connect our Pastor with this ministry and it’s founder, Bishop Elijah. An added plus was that I got to meet some of the boys that my friends from Atlanta sponsor. What a crazy moment!