I am often asked about the highlights of my World Race so far. How can I choose? On the World Race, even bad days are good days. When it gets hard, in the back of my mind, I still know I’m living my dream.
Friendship is one of my absolute favorite things. I can honestly say it’s been so refreshing and life-giving in the context of the World Race, and we’re just getting started. I got to spend month one with a really great human named Baileigh. One of our first few days on the race, we sat next to each other during a long car ride and shared with each other about our lives. The rest is history.
Baileigh is legit the only person I’ve ever met who’s potentially more hyper (weirder) than I am. If she’s not sleeping, she’s probably singing Hamilton. Honestly, there’s a good chance she sings it in her sleep, which is good news, because she accepts me singing Waitress constantly. She makes me laugh pretty much all the time. She’s generous and was willing to help me out often when I forgot or misplaced things I needed every day in Mozambique. She also generously shared things I could’ve survived without, but was much happier with, like detangler and cookies. Baileigh is so much fun, she’s compassionate, always willing to listen, and this paragraph was extremely frustrating to write, because all I can think is, you’d just have to meet her.
While living in the compound in Mozambique, the only time we were indoors was when we were in the bathroom. There were two separate rooms, one with nothing and one with the toilet and shower. Literally every night, we’d pull a chair into the room with nothing and one of us would wait while the other showered and then we’d switch. It gave us time to talk, process our day, and listen to music. I treasured that time and probably would’ve lost my mind the first month without it.
Our debrief at the end of month one came with its own sense of culture shock as we had just come from being outside in the dirt one hundred percent of the time and eating more rice than I can express to staying in a clean hostel with a swimming pool and too many food options in the area. I went from hardly sleeping in Mozambique to sleeping like a baby at debrief. Debrief was a time set aside to process month one, rest, and prepare for Swaziland.
My squad worshiped together each night, and one night, a squad leader spoke out about some of us feeling like there was a mountain between us and God. I hated identifying with that feeling, and I fought it, praying for God to speak and connect with me. Not only did God speak some personal revelation to me, but he allowed me to connect with him through something that brought me such joy: Baileigh asked me to baptize her that night!
My friendship with Baileigh and the fact that I had the joy of baptizing her have been, by far, two of the biggest highlights of my World Race so far. Over our first month in Mozambique, I watched this friend seek God and desire more, and I got to talk with her about my own baptism and what it meant to me. The night she chose to be baptized, I got to be there as the old passed away and new life was brought up. I can’t think of a greater highlight than that.
Living life together the first month of the World Race is meaningful. Every person on my squad had just left everything and everyone they know, and instead, we had each other. I was told by a past racer that one of the only constants on the World Race is the people on the race with you. So, to a friend I made month one who talks with me about God, asks good questions, encourages me, and walked with me through a pretty crazy transition into living life out of a backpack- thank you, Baileigh.
