This year, my squad and I have been in 17 countries, and through our time on the field we have acquired many useful skills for life. As we all prepare to enter the job force back in America in just five short days, I figured I would share some useful skills that we can’t put on professional resumes. So here it is folks, my World Race resume.
Danielle Lee Farina
(Also responds to any word similar in pronunciation)
Address: as big of a mystery to you as to me
Phone number: nonexistent
Employer: Adventures in Missions/World Race
Position: World Racer, Team Leader, Worship Coordinator
Skills:
– Ability to hold it together when rancid smells make me want to vomit (thank you, Asia)
– Mosquito squashing master
– Ability to eat any meal with just my hands
– Can supress the urge to vomit Asian/African delicacies until after we are out of view of the host (durian, anyone? No? Nobody?)
– Can handle E-coli, bacterial infections, parasites, and amoebas like a champ (#sickfor11of11)
– Ability to gracefully swerve questions everyone wants the answers to, but nobody has the answers to (#teamleaderskills)
– Conflict resolution professional
– Speaks the truth in love
– Haggling master (No, sir, I will not pay you 4x more than a local would just because I’m white, move along)
– Ability to navigate foreign countries using ISG (international sign gesturing)
– Knows conversion rates of countless different currencies and can calculate them even after traveling for 50 hours and being jet lagged. (1 USD = 22,137 Vietnamese Dong, trippy, right?)
– Has the patience to grocery shop for a week for a team of 6 directly after leaving the airport after traveling for days, not sleeping, getting a new budget, not knowing what equipment we have to cook with, having no idea what our schedule is like or how conducive it is to cooking, AND pleasing vegetarian AND lactose intolerant teammates
– Can cook bomb meals for a crowd using one propane burner, one pot, a spoon, and a knife (but y’all are doing the dishes ;))
– Lice picking extraordinaire (I spent four months of my race doing this daily. Those lice WILL die.)
– Can handle any creepy crawlie foreign animal/insect with the help of a single Chaco. (You dead bro. Sorry not sorry.)
– Squatty potty master (peeing in a field? peeing in a squatty potty? teaching random teenagers in the Malaysian airport how to use a squatty potty? witnessing 287 men peeing on the side of the road in broad daylight this year?)
– Making VBS curriculum on the spot for 150 Thai students, no problem
– Preaching without notice, done
– Creating programs for kids in 10 minutes or less
– Will sweep and water the dirt without asking why or saying my real thoughts about the job
– Can pack my life into a backpack that is less than 40 pounds in a matter of 20 minutes
– Can eat any meal from any dish
– Can deal with any sleeping situation (planes, busses, trains, 6 people in a 6×10 foot room, 25 people in a moldy dungeon, sketchy hostels, airport floors, dirty church floors with the spiders, roaches, and mice) been there, survived them all.
– Master of going with the flow (“Girls, wake up and put some makeup on, we have to go to a funeral.” Actual way we were woken up one morning in Nepal.)
– Can survive any travel day, mishaps, sketchy potty breaks, and all. (All I need is my music and a snickers)
– Will chose growth in any circumstance. The good, the bad, and the ugly. In any circumstance I will chose Jesus, and growth with him.
Will you hire me now? I promise I work hard, and as funny as some of these skills are, you never know when they might come in handy. Thanks, World Race, for helping me grow in so many different facets this year!
