I’m T-minus 11 days from my World Race experience ending and I’ll be heading back to Texas! To say that a lot has happened in the past 11 months is an understatement. I am so excited to catch up with everyone, but if you ask me, “How was your trip?”, my natural instinct would be to say, “It was really fun!”. To help you hear more than a general answer and to also keep me from taking 4 hours to tell you about the entire trip, I have come up with a list of more specific questions that you can ask me. That being said, I’d love to catch up (once I catch up on sleep) and talk about my year and also find out about your year as well!
Ask me about:
- The relationship with the girls on all 3 of my teams
- How I felt being on all-girl teams the entire Race
- What it was like to not date for a year
- How I adjusted from living by myself to living in community
- What it was like to only be by myself in the bathroom
- What it was like to carry everything I had in 2 backpacks
- How I felt moving cities/countries every few weeks
- What it was like to live off of $5 a day for food
- What God is doing in a specific country/countries
- My role as Beauty for Ashes (women’s ministry) coordinator for my squad
- Riding overnight buses from country to country
- Learning new phrases in a new language each month
- Translating Spanish for my team in South America when I barely spoke the language
- How I felt not seeing my family, friends, and pets for 11 months
- What it was like being one of the oldest people on the squad
- What it was like to put my career on pause for 11 months
- How my identity and worth changed this year
- My tentative plans for after the Race
- Not eating Chick-Fil-A for 11 months
Ukraine:
- How I felt touching down in Ukraine and starting the Race
- How VBS and overnight camp was
- My reaction when I heard people worshiping in another language for the first time
- Our host family and their children
- Our Tunnel of Love adventure day
- My birthday weekend trip to Poland
Romania:
- My role as a personal assistant for our ministry host in Romania
- What is was like to live in one house with the entire squad of 29 people
- My dog bite and what I learned from it
- Our adventure weekend in Greece
- The spiritual climate in the city we were in
Bulgaria:
- What it was like to live in a big European city
- How I tried to teach myself their alphabet
- What it was like to teach English for the first time
- How God granted my wishes in a big way
- How it felt to work with special needs people overseas versus in the United States
- Our layover in Russia and how it came full circle for me
Vietnam:
- What it was like to be in a closed country
- How I felt not having a ministry host this month
- My malaria meds giving me a 3 week stomach virus
- What it was like to miss Thanksgiving dinner with my team because I was sick
- What it was like to work the spotlights for a Christmas play
- My first time riding on a motorbike
- My renewed love of dance
- How I learned to praise God, despite my circumstances
Cambodia:
- How it was to change teams after 4 months
- What God showed me at Angkor Wat
- What it was like to work at a cafe
- Speaking in French for the first time on the Race
- How I learned to ride a bicycle in a long skirt
- How I bonded with a teenage monk over Ariana Grande
- How my team spent Christmas
Thailand:
- What it was like to paint walls and mix concrete for a school dedicated to educating children rescued from sex trafficking
- Our girls night with the Beauty for Ashes missionaries
- Prayer walks and intercession for women working in the Red Light Districts
- What it was like to have a baby elephant jump on my leg
- My new found love of Thai food
Myanmar:
- The bus station inside of someone’s home
- Our week of figuring out the spiritual climate in Yangon
- Finding Krispy Kreme donuts in a mall
- Wearing thanaka powder on my face
- The hostel we stayed at in Myanmar
- Teaching English to children versus adults
Colombia:
- Our 80+ hours of travel from Myanmar to Colombia
- My one day layover in the US
- Why I cried every time I showered
- What it was like working in a drug rehab center
- How the women in the program’s testimony affected me
- What it was like to preach the gospel on the streets while people shot up heroin in front of us
- What it was like to speak broken Spanish when no one spoke English
Ecuador:
- How I felt that my parents didn’t come to Parent Vision Trip
- Dunamis, the organization that works with girls being rescued from sex trafficking
- White water rafting near the Amazon
- The kind words our squad coaches spoke over me at debrief
- Kei, our make-shift host from Ohio
- Fracturing my foot
- Working with senior men in a group home and kids at “The Dump”
Peru:
- 4/5 of my team, including me, having a parasite on a 3 day bus trip
- My hosts from Texas
- The girls at Casa Verde orphanage
- How we connected with people through painting a mural
- How I adjusted to the altitude
- Adventure days to Rainbow Mountain and Machu Picchu
Bolivia:
- How I learned to evangelize on college campuses in a fun way
- The differences between living in Santa Cruz and Sucre
- Our trip to the Salt Flats
- Final debrief and the ending of the World Race
See you all soon and I can’t wait to catch up!
