What the World Race Is Not: A Guide to Ditching Your Expectations
An experience like the World Race is something so big that you can’t completely prepare for every situation you might encounter on the field. And it’s supposed to be that way. We encourage our Racers to check their expectations at the door and be open to anything and everything God wants to teach them through their 11 months.
Despite our advice, it’s pretty hard to give up the experiences you hope for and the stories you want to live, and most Racers come in with lots of specific expectations. Kevin Garcia, of the July 2013 R Squad, started the Race with a good idea of how he thought it would go, but he quickly experienced brokenness and then watched as God blew his mind and wrecked his plans.
The staff at Adventures will be the first to tell you to not have expectations. Honestly though, if you have never been on a trip with Adventures in Missions, I think it is impossible.
You’ll see the trip, you’ll pray about it, apply for it, have the conversation with your mobilizer, fundraise, go to Training Camp and have your world rocked, and then get on the field and NOTHING will be as you expected.
Because: You have expectations.
The one thing I have realized being on the field for three months is the following:
Ministry does not always look the way you think it will.
On the World Race, you may very well play with orphans, preach the gospel in a region with less than 0.1% Christians, pray healing into bodies in pain, heal the blind, feed the sick, see miracles, prophesy great truth in Jesus name, cast out demons, make wine in the country with wonderful folks, drink tea on mountain tops, hike through jungles, jump off a cliff in Greece into crystal blue water, have your guts torn out and reintroduced to your body by God himself, reexamine what is really important in your life, and all sorts of other great things.
But please, if you can avoid it, don’t romanticize this experience because it is just as annoying, monotonous, and trying as real life, if not more so.
You are with the same people all the time and you learn how angry you can get over silly things, like someone eating your cheese in the fridge. You will hear the things about yourself that you never wanted to hear. You will will wake up some days and just not want to go to your ministry site. You will miss your best friend more than you can imagine. You will have mystery stains on your shirts and thus they become unwearable. You’ll try to make mashed potatoes for everyone in your house because you want the comforts of home, and the water won’t boil because the pot is too big…and you’ll still eat these boiled, half cooked potatoes.
You will spend a week making a new website for your ministry that they may not use. You will go to three services on a Sunday, give your testimony at all three, and not one person will be moved. You’ll have smelly children want to climb on you like a jungle gym on the days when you do not want to be touched by anyone, not even Jesus. You might have a loved one die back home and you choose not to go home, so you mourn alone.
And at times, you will hate your team, you will hate yourself, and you will look up at the sky and say, “Jesus, why am I here?”
The World Race is not a vacation. It is not a glamorous, short-term mission trip to make yourself feel good and check it off your Christian to-do list. It is not a continual spiritual high that you get at a Jesus Culture concert, at your local church, at a conference, or even at Training Camp.
It is something you are quite familiar with:
It’s real life. It is the REALEST life you will experience in your 21-35 years of life, guarantee it.
There is a statement that has started flying around: “When I get back to real life, I am going to…”
But I’d argue that this is as real as it gets. This is life. I’m living it to the fullest.
It’s beautiful and wonderful and messy and trying and upsetting, and some days I hate it.
It has started to teach me about my true nature. I’m not as skilled as I want to be, I’m no where near as learned in my faith as I should be, and my highly extroverted desire to be with people all the time has diminished to being in the kitchen by myself and enjoying the solitude of writing a blog, and I’m okay with that.
In spite of all of the things I just mentioned, I don’t think it was a mistake coming on the Race.
For every single hard day, there are four that are incredibly beautiful. For every monotonous moment, there are ten or twenty that will take your breath away.
For every second you feel like you are a terrible “missionary” (whatever that means), Jesus will give you hours of reassurance that you are chosen, called, set apart, worthy, and exactly where you need to be for this moment in your life.
The World Race is not always fun, but it is always worth it.
I’ve done more in the past three months than many people will do in a lifetime. And the best part is that I still have a lot of life ahead.
Photos via @KevinGGG and @ecostell
When you let go of the things you’re holding onto and look around at how God is working, you get to see the unexpected ways he’s changing you and using you to change the world.
