One of the greatest aspects of the World Race is living in community. It’s a difficult adjustment to make at first and provides it’s fair share of challenges, but the relationships built from it are incredible.
The first four months of the Race, I lived with three girls and three guys — we had a little family that genuinely loved one another. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, in fact, most of the time someone didn’t. But we respected one another’s opinions, we listened to one another’s struggles, we celebrated one another’s growth, we were honest when we felt hurt and we shared some of God’s most beautiful creation together.
In them, the Lord blessed me with three new brothers and sisters to explore His world with and we did just that. We spent hundreds of hours traveling by planes, busses, vans, taxis and tuk-tuks. We lived together in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, India and a few days in Nepal until we faced team changes for the first time.
Together, we scooped horse poop, worked out on the beach at sunrise, helped build a high school, hiked Table Mountain, slept in shipping containers, baptized me in the Indian Ocean, visited a widow and her family, had our faces painted and hair braided by orphans, raised money to build a new roof for a blind man, rode in the bed of trucks through the cities and mountains crammed with 30+ people, played game after game of fútbol, ate oatmeal, rice, beans and greens for an entire month, enjoyed fresh brewed coffee and eventually grew to love the instant stuff, too.
We saw baboons, penguins, flamingos, gazelles, cows, water buffalos, impalas and hundreds of goats. We signed autographs and took pictures with Indian children, we tossed bricks up a mountain and carried cement up a bamboo ramp to help build two different village churches, we worshipped Jesus in the middle of a Hindu marketplace in the midst of their festival of worshipping their gods, we prayed for them in their temples, we prayed healing over people of all religions, we fasted for our friends and families, we slept on a rooftop, we taught classrooms full of children, lived in the legacy and attended the funeral of a man who translated the first bible in the Hmar language.
We loved and invested in our hosts, the children we met, lived with and taught, and the people of the communities we called home. We said hard goodbyes to people we will never see again and some hopeful see-ya-later’s to some that we may.
And then we said see-ya-later to one another.
We shared one last dinner as team Wildfire at a hole-in-the-wall Korean barbecue restaurant John chose in Kathmandu and reminisced the beginning of the Race. We laughed and some of us shed a few tears. Jace gave me a piggy-back ride and we bought gummy worms from the corner store. Kelsey, Amber and I snugged in our big bed as teammates for the last time, awaiting our fate of being separated the following day.
I’ll be honest — the day of team changes was the most difficult day of this journey for me. I felt like I had left home all over again: parting ways with five of my siblings (Amber and I are still on the same team). I grieved the loss of the family I made in our team, the loss of being on a co-ed team, the loss of feeling free on a team as I was asked to lead my new team and the loss of finishing the Race with the same people I started it with. I cried more on that day than I had the entire Race put together.
But as hard as it was to see us split up, I am confident in the way God has orchestrated our new teams. He’s blessed us each with a new family and I’m excited to see how He continues to use us to build His kingdom. And the greatest part is, we are still brothers and sisters and there’s no distance that will ever take our relationships away.
Robbie, Katie, Amb, Johnny, Jacey and Kels, I love you guys very much and you will always hold six of the most special spots in my heart.
