This story backtracks a little..back to our travel days to South America. It happened on our flight from China to San Francisco. We all ended up being assigned middle seats, which none of us were exactly excited about. I ended up between a man from India and a woman from the states (who slept the entire flight). I was completely exhausted by this point because It was 40 something hours into our travel and I think I had had MAYBE 4-5 hours of sleep. I ended up buying a neck pillow in the Chinese airport because I needed sleep and I was about to spend 12 hours in a middle seat. Probably the best purchase I’ve made the entire race.
We got on the plane and I knocked out hard for a few hours and then all of the sudden I just woke up. I had had my headphones in listening to music, but I thought someone was saying my name, so I struggled to open my eyes and pulled the headphones out of my ears and looked around. Pretty much everyone on the plane was fast asleep because it was around 3am. Then, without missing a beat, the Indian man next to me asked if I was from San Francisco. We started chatting about where we were from and talking about our families.
Pretty quickly after explaining why I was traveling and what the World Race is about, our conversation turned religious. He was Hindu and he started asking me questions about Christianity and what I believed, and then I would ask him questions about what he believed. He thought that all religions believed in the same god and I explained why I disagreed. Then he asked about Heaven and Hell and what Christians believe in regards to the two. He believed that we, as people, are heaven and hell. When we are good, we are Heaven, when we are bad, we are hell. At points, the conversation was sort of aggressive from his side…one of his questions was, “If Heaven is real, are we in heaven now since we’re in the clouds?” Thankfully the Holy Spirit just took over and did all the talking for me.
There were a few breaks in the conversation, but he always came back with another question, or the Lord gave me something to say. He asked me about evil and if I had experienced anything demonic in nature. I was actually able to basically share the entire bible and gospel to answer the question. I shared about how Satan fell from Heaven, why we have hope, and how we can battle evil. This is when I sensed a change in the conversation, like Jesus was really doing something. I shared different spiritual warfare events that I had experienced, as well as stories my dad had told me from his past mission trips. He was intrigued. He was almost in shock, He kept saying “That is unbelievable,” but in an amazed way, not an unbelief way, if ya know what I mean.
Pretty quickly after that, I could sense his heart softening. I had been praying that the Lord would reveal to me what He was looking for. I could tell he was searching for something or that he needed to hear something specific. He mentioned to me that he hates how materialistic the world is and he is, but even when he tries to escape it, he always ends up back in the same place of wanting more than he has. That’s literally the definition of the world without knowing Christ – trying to escape the world but always being pulled back. We talked about how materialism is a problem in the States, as well as in India. Then he asked if we got paid well to be doing the World Race. I told him that none of us were getting paid, but that we fundraised to be able to pay for the trip and how a lot of us walked away from jobs, careers, families, etc to spend a year serving people around the world. He was blown away. He told me that he was so impressed that so many young people would be willing to do that and he asked how. I got to share some cool testimonies of how the Lord provided for me and my squad-mates to the world race. Again, he couldn’t believe it. He was honestly in shock. He was hungry for more.
This is about when I started to realized, he needed to hear about how only the Lord can satisfy and without Him, we’ll always be searching for something more. So I shared that because I have hope in Christ, that I don’t need to worry about money. I told him that I’m still human and I still do worry, that just doesn’t go away, but ultimately at the end of the day, I know that God will provide for whatever He calls me to. We talked more about it. It was a really cool experience for me and my only regret was not getting his contact information.
When we landed, I wasn’t tired. I felt like I had slept for 8 hours. It was so cool to see how much God can do through a little nobody like me and how he blesses you for sharing His goodness and following the leading of the Holy Spirit. God does cool things.
When we all got off the plane, Regan, one of my squad-mates, asked how my conversation went. I didn’t realize anyone knew I had even had a conversation on the plane. She said at like 4am she kept hearing my voice and knew it must have been an important conversation because I’m not exactly the most Chatty Cathy with my seat buddies on plane rides. She had been a few rows in front of me praying for me and my words. LIKE HOW COOL!!!! That’s such a good picture of what community of the race looks like. AH! Okay, God is cool and that’s my story.
