One of my favorite things to do on the World Race was to simply make people smile. A lot of times, I caught it on camera! This short video is a culmination of 11 months of smiles, something I worked on the whole year. I would work on this video when I was having a bad day and instantly felt a million times better. Scroll down for some of my favorite smile pictures and the stories behind them!
*a few of the videos were taken by Ryan Weathington – check out his blog and videos here: ryanweathington.theworldrace.org
Jackie, one of my friends on E Squad who eventually became a raised-up squad leader, is smiling because we are in Atlanta getting ready to leave for Johannesburg, South Africa! The race had officially begun.
This is one of our friends and employees at BEAM Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. She’s smiling because after class was over each day, everyone who worked there would spend time enjoying each other’s company – laughing, playing jokes, and bringing special snacks to each other. I started understanding the word ‘community’ here.
Ashlie and Taylor are laughing because we were getting rain in dry South Africa at the compound where we stayed (BEAM Africa). Instead of letting the raindrops chase us inside, we decided to dance in it! One of my favorite memories from Month One.
Vivian is smiling on our adventure day because we found coffee! On our way to Victoria Falls, our bus dropped our two teams off in the cold rain in the Middle of Nowhere, Northern Botswana. As we laughed at the wild warthogs running down the road, we couldn’t find any restaurants or stores open. Finally, we met a man who said he would open his kitchen to serve us coffee, and we warmed our bellies and our spirits inside his restaurant.
I tried not to have favorites on the race, but I couldn’t help it – Hanitriniala was one. She and I were fast friends – and discovered quite quickly that we were kindred spirits. She was our translator in Madagascar and I spent several hours with her on a public bus every day. She and her daughter have some of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard – and her daughter plays guitar beautifully. Hanitriniala is smiling in this picture because we were having such a great day… Spent the day in a mountain village in Madagascar sharing the gospel, and then were invited in to the preacher’s house to have a fire- cooked meal and some of the best coffee I’d ever had!
These sweet sisters were likely smiling because they had something up their sleeves. They are the daughters of a “Boo Enterprise” employee in Montasoa, Madagascar and brought smiles to every person on my squad who played with them each day.
These Cambodian smiles came after a day of fun and games. We traveled an hour outside of Phnom Penh two Sundays in a row to share the gospel and have a day of singing, dancing and just having fun with these cuties.
Nothing makes me smile faster than a ride in the back of a pickup truck – especially when I get to share it with a friend like Kevin in the gorgeous mountains of Thailand!
These smiles from a back of a tuk tuk in Honduras are ironic – because in a few hours – nothing would go as planned – and we would head into one of the biggest adventures we would have on the race. We were expected to go up to a mountain zipline and come back down that day, getting home before dark. Instead, a torrential downpour washed out the dirt mountain road we were on almost as we were on it. We barely made it to the village on top of the mountain and had no choice but to spend the night there. The adventure continued as we walked a mile trying to find an open store to find something to eat, and then as the electricity went out… We finally decided to eat at the only restaurant open in town and ate our tipico (traditional Central American dish of beans, rice, tortillas, and queso) by candlelight. Even though our plan fell completely apart, this adventure ended up being one of my favorite memories from the race.
This man followed us around the bus station with his guitar on our travel day, so I decided to get my own guitar out and play a little with him. He loved it and so did I! When this picture was taken, there was a group of Honduran people taking pictures and recording the moment. This man’s joy was contagious – he made my day!
