Here’s a fun fact for all you blog readers…
I am one of my squad’s logistics leaders!
You might be asking yourself, “what does that mean?”
Well, it means that me and my partner (Nathan) are in charge of planning and leading travel days from one country to another, planning debriefs, and a few smaller tasks that take place from month to month.
I was asked back in August to serve my squad in this way. If I’m being completely honest, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t realize the amount of planning this role would require. I didn’t realize that I would often have to use my off days to work on logistics. I didn’t fully realize that on travel days Nathan and I were fully in charge. I didn’t realize the amount of responsibility I was walking into. And I didn’t realize just how much I would love this role.
Being one of the logistics leaders has provided me with such a unique experience on the field. I get to see God move in a lot of ways the rest of my squad doesn’t. I get to serve my squad throughout the year in this role.
On the race, we are each put on teams of 5-7 people. These teams are the people the do ministry and live with. As a logistics team, Nathan and I make up our own team. We’ve been together since day one and unlike other teams on the race, our team will remain the same throughout the year. He and I will serve in this role until we land on American soil again.
If I’m being honest, most of my month in the Philippines was spent working on logistics. I had to miss a few days on ministry to go into town, get wifi and work. At the end of month 4 we have a debrief. Debriefs are scheduled 5 times throughout the race as a chance for our squad to come together, with leadership who fly in for the weekend, to relax, rejuvenate, and fill up before heading back out to the field.
My job was to find a location (within budget), figure out transportation for 40 to and from this location, plan meals, and make sure our coach Jeremy had what he needed when he arrived. It was more difficult than I expected to find a place in budget that had the space for 40 and could provide all the amenities we needed for debrief to run smoothly. In fact, it seemed almost impossible as the month went on. Oh and I had to make sure I had the money pulled out of the ATM, in the correct currency, and in order to it upon arrival. Nathan was super helpful when he had wifi but unfortunately his team lived in a small village and wifi was only accessible once or twice a week for him, as he had to travel an hour into town to get it.
As I mentioned, I had to miss several days of ministry this month in order to prepare. This was difficult for me. I felt like I couldn’t connect to my ministry and felt somewhat disconnected from my team because of this. I knew going into this month that we would have team changes at debrief. This really added pressure to this month because I knew it was my last month with these girls. Going into the month I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible and I felt like that was difficult with all my logistics work.
On the other hand, I knew that all of work was a chance for me to serve my team and squad well so I wanted to give it all I had. I didn’t want to settle!
As the month went on, we were still struggling to get everything set up and it was stressful. A week before debrief we still hadn’t booked anywhere… here’s the cool part: I got to see God pull things together flawlessly in the nick of time! We had a beautiful debrief location, everything fit in budget and it was such a restful week.
Honestly, my logistics race has been one of the more interesting parts of my race. It seems like on every travel day something happens and things never go quite as planned. Whether it is an unexpected “terminal fee”, a 6 hour bus ride that turns into 22 hours, squad mates getting pulled into an interrogation room in South Korea , or a hot pink bus that rolls up to carry your team from Cambodia to Thailand… it’s always something on travel days.
Will travel days ever be easy? Who knows…
But here’s to crazy travel days, debriefs, my partner Nathan and God challenging us to trust Him with all that we do.
