It’s currently 4:30 am in Imphal India and I’m dead awake. I’ve been here now for 2 nights, and this is the second night in a row that I’ve woken up this early.
a. Is it jet lag?
Or
b. Is it the fact that it gets dark here at 5 pm and that makes me want to go to bed by 7pm?
I think option B. I woke up this morning and realized that I had almost gotten 10 hours of rest and I still have 4 hours until breakfast is served.
And just to preface this really quickly: I am not an early riser.
Back at home I could sleep until 12 pm if I wanted to, here on the race I’m lucky if I get to sleep in until 8 am. Still, either at home or so far on the race, you’d never catch me up at 4 am.
So, in light of being up at the crack of dawn, I’ve decided that it’s well past due the time to share a blog with y’all. And I really am sorry that I haven’t shared one sooner. To be honest; a lot of it has been laziness, and I know that’s not good. But a lot also happened in Peru, and I want to share it with y’all now.
Chapter 1: From Chile to Peru
Okay, so I’d probably say that this was the first major event that kicked off our time in Peru.
Originally, we were supposed to take a 50 hour ride on 3 different buses to get from Santiago, Chile to Cusco, Peru.
This didn’t happen…
Our 1st bus that should’ve taken 30 hours alone, ended up taking 50 hours on 3 different buses because it broke down in a Chilean dessert on the second night.
Oh and it was miserable.
I already am not good about getting sleep on travel days. I’ve concluded that I have Restless Leg Syndrome (yes, I did diagnosed myself). But in all realness, I can’t ever sleep because my legs are never comfortable on travel days. I’ll put them up because they aren’t comfortable down, and then when I’ve had them up for too long I have to put them down. But they still aren’t comfortable down, so I have to move them into weird positions that usual bother other people. And I probably keep them there for about 10 minutes before I move them again haha. I tell you all of this to not make you feel bad for me; I’ve learned to live with my suffering (<— dramatic), but to give you a more vivid image of how bad that night was for me.
We broke down around 4 pm, and it didn’t seem that bad at first. We played outside, climbed a mountain, read, listened to music, and had enough food to hold us over. But then night time rolled around, and it got COLD. And on top of that, one of my squad mates got sick and threw up on the bus, which certainly freaked out a couple people next to me. So image now, it’s about 9 o’clock at night, you’re freezing cold because you’re in the desert and they turned the bus off, you’ve got restless legs, someone who was just sitting behind you threw up, you’re hungry and on top of that you’ve got a bad case of eczema in your armpits. What do you have?
You’ve got a girl named Gabby who entered into “Quit Zone” real quick.
I am not kidding when I say that it was most likely one of the worst nights ever for me. And it continued to be until around 6 am when; finally, the next bus arrived to save us. And while the Lord stood faithful and He delivered us to Cusco, it was still hard. A lesson that I’ve been learning a lot on the race: The Lord certainly doesn’t promise that things will be easy, only that they’ll be good.
We finally made it to Cusco, Peru after a total of 75 hours on 5 different buses and 1 car that carried us across the border.
Chapter 2: Cusco, Peru
Cusco is one of my favorite cities in the world. And lucky me, I’ve been there before I came this time. It’s beautiful, and cultural, and a little cold, and the people make you want to cry because they’re just so sweet and genuine.
We got into Cusco late at night, and got to sleep in and rest before Debrief.
Debrief is a time to connect with people on the squad that you haven’t seen or really gotten to have a good conversation with since last time the whole squad was together. It’s a time to see our coaches and mentor, check in with them and glean knowledge that we can take into the rest of our race. It’s a time to refill with the Lord and to rest before entering into our next ministry scene.
And it was all those things; but for Squad L, it was also a time of sickness. Over half the squad went to the hospital. Most being diagnosed with Altitude Sickness and Salmonella. Although, a couple had parasites and amebas, and there was even a case of bronchitis and laryngitis. It was nuts. We concluded that the chicken that people ate on one of the nights we spent traveling to Peru had made the squad sick. So Debrief really was a time of rest for our squad, we had to get better. Thankfully, I didn’t get sick, at all. It was a huge blessing because I had gotten the opportunity to see friends who lived near the area, and that wouldn’t have happened had I have been in the hospital with Salmonella. The Lord is good, and He keeps his promises. He promised me that I’d be able to see the Heath family, and so I was able to.
I got a lot of rest in visiting with the Sean and Crissy. There was a lot of sweetness in getting to see familiar faces from home, a privilege that only a couple other people on the squad have gotten to experience as well. It made me realize how small of a world it is that we actually live in, and how blessed and seen I am by God. I cried a lot when I said goodbye, I want to cry now just thinking about it. It meant so much to see people that I know from home, people who had just left Statesville a week before to make the journey back to Peru, and people who were literally at one point maybe 10 miles away from my own house and my own family.
I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t think about going home that night. Because I did. And re-affirming my “Yes” a couple hours later to staying on the race with my squad, to staying in the role that the Lord had put me in was hard and it carried a lot of weight for me. I realized that in saying “No”, in saying that I wouldn’t do it any longer, I would go home being changed. I’d go home after 4 months and I’d be a different person who knew new and different things. I’d have more confidence in who the Lord created me to be, and in knowing what His voice sounded like.
But that’s not all the Lord had for me to learn. He didn’t call me to just say yes to 4 months or to the easy stuff. He called me to say yes to the full 9 months, and to the hard things more than the easy things. So I said yes, and this time I knew fully what that weight carried. I felt it. And in saying yes, the Lord made me a promise. He promised me that I’d learn more in the next 5 months than I did in the last 4, and that things would be good. Again, he certainly didn’t promise that things would be easy (because they haven’t been so far), but by saying yes, I was grabbing onto the goodness that the Lord had for me, and I wasn’t letting that go.
Chapter 3: Trujillo, Pero
Okay, so after another 35 hours on 2 buses that took my team and team Priceless in Him from Cusco, Peru to Trujillo, Peru we had finally made it to our ministry site.
Keep in mind, we have now travelled 110 hours on the South American coast.
For month 5, Team Now would be working with Savage Ministries.
Joel and Maria Savage were our ministry hosts for the month. And for this month, we’d spend half of it without a squad leader. For me as point person, this meant extra responsibilities.
There’s not much I can tell you about this month, honestly.
It was a harder month for me emotionally, and spiritually. A lot of it, I felt like I wasn’t hearing from God. Or that I wasn’t hearing the right things from God.
For Team Now, It was a month of depth. We learned a lot about vulnerability that month. What it means to actually trust each other and to live in harmony and unity. It was a good month in the fact that we did get closer and deeper with one another. But the Lord definitely put our team in some trying situations.
I learned how to speak out my needs this month. When there were ever any times when I wasn’t feeling seen, to speak that out so that the girls on my team could make me feel seen. I learned how to step into a more prominent leadership role. What it meant for me to care for and love my team well. How to see the needs of each person individually and then for the whole team.
As for ministry, we did a lot. We painted and cleaned, we attended church 3/4 nights a week. We were involved in lots of evangelism, VBS, sports ministry, got opportunities to preach, and make close connections with some of the members of the community. We got to go to Cajamarca (a city about 2 hours away) to do ministry for a weekend. And on our last day of ministry, we even got to participate in baptisms that took place on the beach. This was probably my favorite day of ministry that we had in Trujillo.
So all in all, Trujillo was good and the food was great, It was a fast month. It felt like it went by so quick, and it was a hard month.
Chapter 4: Pacosmayo, Peru
Entering into Month 5 we found out that month 6 would be another all-squad month. The last one being in Romania, month 1. I think a lot of people on the squad weren’t too happy about another month with 30 other people. As for Team Now, I’d say that most of us were pretty excited. And if not excited, then I’d say that ready is the correct word. Unlike the rest of the squad, our team had a lot of time together with it being only us. 5 months. A lot more time than any other team got alone, really.
So again, we hoped on one more bus that took us 2 hours north of Trujillo into a smaller city called Pacosmayo.
Now up to 112 hours…
It was a lot smaller than Trujillo, but I loved it a lot more. There really wasn’t much to do in Trujillo outside of taking a taxi. You could walk to everything in Pacosmayo. And everything for me included a grocery store, a couple restaurants, and the beach.
For anyone who doesn’t know. I love the beach, I was there every chance I got outside of ministry. So really, those 3 things were enough for me. Honestly, the beach would’ve been enough all by itself. I actually went so much that the squad began to call me Moana. The beach was a huge reason why Pacosmayo was so good for me.
Um, so about a week into all-squad month Amie Beth pulled me aside and asked if I’d prayerfully consider becoming a team leader. Again, this means a couple extra responsibilities for me as this would mean that I would be entering into a leadership role.
And I think this could’ve been a hard decision for me to make; a hard yes. But almost instantly, the Lord reminded me of debrief and how hard of a yes that was. Saying yes to being a team leader was easy because God showed me that my hard yes was actually made back at debrief. That I had already said yes to the hard things.
So I said yes.
And it has been hard since saying yes. But in the hard things; the things that I haven’t necessarily wanted to do, or haven’t thought I was strong enough to do; the Lord has been my strength. I’ve been learning that when I’m in the center of what the Lord has for me, He gives me the tools to accomplish his work and in that, I am filled.
SideNote: All of Peru and; honestly, all of South America was learning what it meant for the Lord to be my daily bread. Which was ironic for South America because we literally ate bread every morning for breakfast.
So about a week after being asked to become a team leader they gathered the 5 of us and said that in a couple of days we would have team changes. Admittedly, this was hard to hear and I cried a lot. This meant that the girls that I had lived with for 6 months wouldn’t be on my team any longer. And I automatically began to worry.
…. “what if my team doesn’t want me as their team leader. What if I’m not the right team leader for this team, and one of the other team leaders would be better. What if none of the team leaders are good enough for this new team, and it should actually be someone else. What if I can’t handle this new team and I’m with someone I don’t get along with.”
What if, what if, what if. That’s all I could think of.
A thing you should probably know is that back at training camp I didn’t want a leadership position. I never asked for it, and I definitely didn’t think that I’d be one of the people who were asked. But I was, and I said yes because I felt the Lord calling me to do so.
So a way that I coped with it originally was by telling myself that I was only right for my team of girls. Only right for Team Now. And it took a lot of Amie Beth speaking truth into me to finally realize that I had been chosen because I carry influence. And that it didn’t matter what new team I’d be placed on, because I’d still carry that same influence.
And I don’t know why I doubted the fact that God would give me a team that I could handle. But I did, and of course He gave me the best possible team for me. And all the fears, and worries, and “what if’s” that I had were instantly insignificant and sort of stupid.
I can honestly tell you that I love my team, and as soon as I read the note that said that they were my new team, I loved them.
The first team time we had together felt super easy and flowed naturally. We decided that our team’s name would be Luna because we did listening prayer and heard that we reflect the Son’s light.
That’s basically the biggest stuff that happened in Pacosmayo. We worked with Iglesia Antorcha for the month. I got to do a lot of children’s ministry, VBS, teaching Sunday school, and then even a couple other things like painting and evangelism. It was a very eventful month, but it was also one of my favorite months so far.
Chapter 5: The Awakening
Okay so you might not believe this, but our squad traveled by bus yet again to get to Ecuador. Not just 1, but 3 more buses and 26 more hours in order to get to Quito Ecuador for something called the Awakening.
(A grand total of 138 hours busing the coast of South America!!!! )
The Awakening was a time of revival, where our squad got to join 2 other squads for worship, and encouragement before heading out to India. And it was great. And on the last night, our guest speaker Karen asked every one what our idols were. So I held my hands out to ask the Lord and almost immediatly He told me that mine was my pride. Which is hard for me to admit because it’s probably the one thing that I say I hate most. Afterwards, she asked us to tell at least one person. And I didn’t that night. But the next morning she called on anyone who wanted to be brave and say yes to the Lord to come up to stage and say what they had learned.
That’s when the Lord said:
“I know she only asked you to tell one other person, but I’m asking you to share your idol with everyone”.
And I wanted to say no. I wanted to sit back and pretend like there was nothing to say yes to. But I’ve said no to the Lords call way too many times because of my pride. And I didn’t want to say no anymore. So I went up on stage, and it was hard, and I began to cry as I was talking.
But a couple hours later a guy from one of the other squads came up to me and said that what I had spoken out had affected him more than anything else he had heard at the Awakening. And in that moment I could feel God telling me that he was proud.
The Awakening was a sweet time of fellowship; kind of like a pause on the World Race without actually leaving my squad or the World Race.
Chapter 6: Travel to India – Chicago
Say what?!?? Chicago??
Yeah!! So basically, on the way to India we had a 26 hour layover in Chicago, Illinois. At the time when we heard that we’d have the layover I honestly was a little upset that we were having it in the U.S. I actually really wanted to go the full 9 months without setting foot on American soil. I quickly got over that feeling though when I realized that Chicago has TARGET!!
I can’t really explain the feeling I had when we landed in the States for the first time in 7 months. It was weird, and satisfying, and exciting. I don’t really think the culture shock hit me as hard. But I will say that the sweetest thing for me was just knowing that I was walking on free soil. It wasn’t hard to say goodbye, or knowing that I was only half a days drive away from being home. At this point nothing could/would deter me from finishing this race.
The weirdest things to get re-accustomed to were having a dataplan at my fingertips, and remembering to throw the toilet paper in the toilet (opposed to the trash can).
So what did I do while I was in the States??
First and foremost, I went to Target. I needed a new watch and a couple new clothing items. Because believe me, wearing the same clothes for 6 months can get boring. I also bought some snack essentials:
Red Velvet Oreos, Sydney’s Honey Mustard Pretzels, and Starbursts Minis (only red and pink flavors).
After my shopping spree at Target, I ate Panda Express and then went back to the hotel to pack for a little bit. No I did not eat deep dish pizza, I wasn’t motivated enough to pay for the Uber.
That night we celebrated the last 30 minutes of our new teammate’s (Abby Elgard aka Kermit) birthday, with Ice Cream and sugary snacks. And then the next morning I woke up and got Chick-fil-A.
So I accidentally, definitely didn’t pick the closest one to where we were staying. And that ended up taking us into like Chicago, Chicago. So we got to see all the tall buildings. Which was really cool because I’ve never been to Chicago. It was a fun adventure that was super unexpected. I didn’t make it on time for Chick-fil-A breakfast, but that was totally okay because the drive into the city was super pretty.
Again, for y’all who know me well and know that I worked at CFA, It was essential for me that I get CFA food while being in the States.
AND IT WAS SO GOOD! I honestly forgot how good the food tasted.
So that’s how I spent my 26 hours while in Chicago. I did everything I set out to do, while still being able to get a lot of rest.
From Chicago we flew to Qatar. From Qatar to Kolkata, India, and from Kolkata to Imphal, India.
Chapter 7: Manipur, India.
It’s been about a week now, and I’m completely in love with this region. It’s funny, the place I expected to feel least like home has felt the most like home so far. North-East India is completely different from Southern India. Honestly, completely different from Northern India too. The mountains here remind me of North Carolina, with all the trees. I look out onto the view from our back porch, and I feel like I’m looking at a walkway that looks very similar to my great grandmother’s. And the weather is also very similar. Hot and then cold, and then humid and rainy. It’s been refreshing to look around and see so much green. It’s definitely not what I expected India to look like.
And the people, they steal your heart. They are genuine, and kind, and generous. And they all want to shake your hand or stop what they’re doing to smile and wave hello.
For this last week, we’ve been serving alongside an American organization called Project C.U.R.E. in hospital ministry. In the last 3 days we’ve ministered to over 3,000 people within the Manipur region. Offering medical care that most people in the area almost never get the opportunity to receive. And although we are a group of 18, 19, and 20 year olds who don’t have any history or training in the medical field, it’s been a huge blessing to work alongside the Doctors and cater to their needs; as well as being witnesses to the patients in need of medical care. I’ve gotten the opportunity to pray over patients, and love on some sweet Indian children, and serve my squad. I took on a lot of work, but the Lord has stayed faithful in his promise of rest as I’m fulfilling his plans.
At this point, I think that’s all I really have to tell. Parent Vision Trip is 9 days away, which means that in 9 days I’ll be seeing Momma and Brett. After 7 months I will finally get to see my favorite people in the whole wide world. Joy, excitement, and anxiousness are what I’m feeling. I’m ready to take on a week of ministry with them. For my parents to see the ways in which I’ve grown, and for me to see the ways in which they’ve grown. I think the thing I’m most excited about right now it just getting to hug them!!
So with that,
I’ll say thank you if you made it all the way through this blog. It was a long one. And again, I’m sorry it took so long to post. There really isn’t a good explanation for why it did. All I can say now, is that a thunderstorm at 4:30am prompted this. And thunderstorms are possibly in my top twenty list of favorite things. So I’m glad that it finally did, because I’m way past due and when’s the last time I’ve heard a thunderstorm? At least 6 months.
Thanks for reading and loving me so well!
God Bless,
Gabby
