Wow, the four weeks since arriving back on American soil have been a lot of excitement, change, and adjustment. First off: We are having a baby! Marin was finally able to get into the doctor and everything checked out. We are due at the end of February or beginning of March 2016. ( #40 strong Lsquad readers) Marin was quite a trooper in Costa Rica in July as she didn’t feel good a lot of the time. Secondly: We live in Rapid City now. I’m so used to moving around that moving didn’t really feel like moving. It just felt like a normal day. I think being a Rapid Citian will sink in in a few months when I don’t leave and my body starts to wonder when the next travel day is. Third: I have a new job. I started on August 10th with a local bank in Rapid. Its a little surreal to go from hauling lumber in the rain forest one month to a cubicle the next. One thing I am looking forward to is having a consistent schedule and routine, and making money of course (I hear those babies can be expensive).
If I’m being honest, I’ve done a relatively poor job of “processing” The World Race thus far. With that being the case, this is my first attempt to really reflect in depth on it. Here are a lot of thoughts and things learned in no particular order. Most are serious, some are a bit more full of humor, but the’re my first attempt at unpacking an amazing year.
Our prayers don’t return void – One fascinating passage on prayer comes from Acts, chapter 10. Cornelius, a centurion in the Italian Cohort, who is not Jewish but who prays to the true God and is described as “a devout man who feared God with all his household”, has vision of an angel. The angel says, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter.” To make a long story short, Cornelius does as he is told. Peter comes and shares the gospel with him. Him and his whole household believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes upon the household and they all start to speak in tongues.
What gets me most about this story is the part about Cornelius’s prayers coming up as a memorial before God. Prayers that he had prayed years ago, weeks ago, minutes ago. His prayers did not fall to the ground. In the same way I learned on the race that our prayers do not fall void. Going from country to country my prayer life changed a lot month to month. As really anyone can attest to, we often have to stop praying prayers before they are directly answered because their are 10 new things/people/situations to pray for. I had so many instances where something happened and I was reminded by the Holy Spirit, “remember when you were praying for that”. I have complete confidence that prayers I prayed for people in Uganda, Montenegro, Nicaragua, or wherever have not fallen to the ground. All this being said, I completely support persistent prayer (Luke 18:1-8) but I know that when its not possible my prayers don’t fall void.
Freedom!!! I realized by month 3 that I really really like being able to just go places alone sometimes. The World Race has a rule that you always have to be with someone when you are out and about or away from your home or ministry site. Great rule – but I have to say I’m loving being able to just drive/walk where I want again.
Safety – It was honestly safer than I expected it to be in almost every country we were in (and I’m not totally sure what I expected). I remember having some pretty funny conversations in Asian countries with people commenting about how dangerous America is (they have never been here they just see our news). It was so comical to me listening to them and thinking “my family/friends think its here that is the really dangerous place!”
Contacts – Every month we partnered with a different ministry contact and I have to say that my teams were EXTREMELY blessed in this area. I learned a significant amount about intimacy with the Spirit and what serving God looks like from just about every contact, and that is not exaggerating. I can’t say enough about how much these faithful men and women blessed me simply by letting me be around them for a month.
Community is wonderful: All of you college goers remember freshman year? You were packed into dorm rooms with a bunch of people you didn’t know at all and many of the them became some of your best friends. While its not everybody, I know so many people that say “freshman year was my favorite, their was always so much going on”. Basically, their was this great community formed on the dorm floors but everybody couldn’t wait to get away and live off campus with some peace and quiet. In doing so the community was lost as you now had to walk across campus to see anyone.
I myself often fall victim to this attitude – I want my own space and I want some privacy and quiet. Their’s nothing wrong with this and it certainly is necessary and helpful to have alone time – but I’ve learned in the past year that I’m actually much happier when I have close friends/family to share the majority of the day with. It makes me put people over tasks (or at least try) which I’m not always great at.
Sports: They are everywhere! While I can’t say I’m the most fond of soccer, I was pleasantly surprised by getting to play volleyball and basketball often on the race. The highlight had to be playing basketball in Rwanda when the game was stopped for a good 5 minutes because a herd of cattle was walking through.
80% of what we (or at least I) do on the internet is a big waste of time. Ironically, you are reading this on the internet, hopefully its part of the other 20% 
. When we were in Uganda, our pastor talked about the great influx of junk food and fast food now available in Kampala (the capital) in the last 10 years. He said a lot of the people have little knowledge of what it means to eat healthy and many are starting to get fat. While none of the food is bad/evil in and of itself, many of the people simply don’t have a knowledge of the harm it can cause in high quantities or an effective plan in place to avoid abusing the food. I think the USA is experiencing the same thing with the internet now available 24/7/365. Its taking us out of being “where we are” and being with the people we are with and replacing it with a less satisfying level of relationship.
I miss the daily adventure: Potential adventure was oozing every day of the race. A trip to the grocery story, using a new bathroom, walking down the street. You never knew when the next funny, weird, crazy thing would happen and 90% of the time it was just doing a normal activity.
I don’t know how to express the changes inside of me – So, how was the World Race? Me: Um…good? It has been a difficult thing to try to describe and in my processing it has been even more difficult for me to express how I have changed. I mean, I’m still the same person, I’m Brady and always will be. I know that I have new perspectives and motivations since I left for the race but I still haven’t figured out what those look like being lived out in the USA. I feel like the Holy Spirit has been saying “be patient” with this. I want to be patient but I also want to fight against jumping right back into old routines and patterns that were fruitless while continuing patterns that are fruitful. In short – I’m still working on this one.
Leadership – Lsquad was blessed with AMAZING leadership this year. Our squad mentor, and the captain back in Georgia, was Jeremy, a former racer. Our squad coaches were Jim and Sammye. (Coaches are volunteer couples, usually older and with more wisdom than us youngins) Tragically, Jim passed away in December. Randy and Betsy stepped in as coaches for the remainder of our race. These people (Jeremy and the coaches) prayed for each one of us every single week, read all of our blogs, and were our biggest fans and mentors. They came out to meet us 4 times throughout the year for debriefs where they taught us. I can’t say enough how completely AWESOME they were. We had a great squad, but so much of that goes back to the leadership we had, their consistency, and how they always prayerfully knew the right buttons to push and strings to pull to call each and every one of us closer to the Lord and closer to our true potential.
Christ’s claims are both ridiculous and awesome I love the simplicity of the debate in Acts 27 between Paul and the non-believing Jews. “Their is some disputes about their law and a man named Jesus who the Jews say is dead but Paul says is alive”. That pretty much boils it all down right there. Paul says Jesus is alive. He has risen from the dead. The Jews say he has died and is still dead.
If Jesus is still dead then you shouldn’t care about a thing he said. However, if Jesus is alive you should care a whole lot about what he said because he holds the key to defeating death.
1 Corinthians 15:19 says “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” It’s both a statement of fact and almost a reverse challenge in a sense. If Christ wasn’t raised from the dead and if his followers aren’t raised from the dead what is the point? You’re wasting your time – put your hope in something else.
I love that I believe that a man, who was also God, who lived over 2000 years ago is my savior. I love that his blood is sufficient to be the covering for my sin. I love that he endured the cross for “the joy set before him” as Hebrews 12:2 says. He did it out of love, because love is his very character. The joy set before him was getting to be with me. It was getting to be with his creation again in a renewed world. It wasn’t just him going back to his Father, he had already been there (John 1:1). He didn’t have to leave in the first place but who chose to for the joy set before him. He chose, yet he didn’t have a choice, because it was his very character and being to love and to go after his fallen creatures.
Part 2/2 coming soon
