12 hours ago, I wanted to go home, but then I remembered why I was here.
Sometimes, living abroad for extended periods of time can be difficult. More often than not, it’s beautiful.
We are less than two weeks into our new teams and we are doing ATL in a country that wasn’t even our route when I signed up. We are on an island that Adventures has never been to before in Indonesia.
This month has been hard, and beautiful in so many ways.
We have partnered with a workstay program in Masamba for part of this month. A lot of this week so far has been getting to know the locals that we adventure with.
We went camping last night, and to be honest, I have a love hate relationship with camping. I never went camping until I was a junior in college. When I went camping, I didn’t have to set up the tent, I slept on an air mattress, and never had to cook my own food (it was a blast and I was living large thanks to the Huizinga fam). I love being able to fall asleep listening to the crickets.
In going to Training Camp and in coming on the Race, I like camping, but we haven’t had the most ideal camping situations so far. At TC, it was 40 degrees and raining for most of our time in Georgia. We slept in our tents inside Month 1 of the Race, so there were no crickets and no stars.
For our camping adventure last night, we were all stoked to get to go into the mountains. We traveled and traveled and then we get to a mud hill where vehicles cannot go any farther – so off we go, climbing a mountain. (TC fitness hike for the win). By the time we make it to the top, there is a beautiful view and some storm clouds rolling. We spent the evening cooking and spending time with our new friends inside the cabin by the campsite. We spoke in each other’s languages (just a tiny bit) and loved each other well. We went to bed after a short rainstorm and all was well. I could hear the crickets and laughter as I fell asleep.
Around 4:30 this morning, I woke up to rain on my tent. I thought to myself, “it’ll pass soon, like typical Southeast Asia.” So I rolled over and went back to sleep. For the next 4 hours, I woke up every hour to the sound of the rain on my tent. As I laid in my tent, I continued to pray that the rain would stop so that my tent would dry before I had to pack it up in the morning. After 4 hours of continuous rain that wasn’t ceasing, I laid in bed, and for the first time in 6 months, I truly wanted to go home. I wanted nothing to do with staying on the Race, nothing to do with camping, nothing to do with the muddy mountain that I was going to have to climb down.
Up until this point, I had missed home multiple times, but if someone had offered me a free plane ticket home, I wouldn’t have taken it. This morning, I was in a place where all I wanted was the comforts of home. I wanted my mom, I wanted a dry bed in a dry house, I wanted a hot cup of coffee and a blanket to sit under while I listened to the rain.
On the verge of tears, I sat in my tent, packing up my stuff. As I packed everything into my backpack, I came extremely close to messaging my family telling them that I wanted to go home. I fought off the tears and took everything but my tent to the cabin. I was wet, my stuff was wet, and I was dreading the fact that I had to interact with people and then hike down a mountain, not expecting the rain to slow until the following morning.
I sat on the porch, doing everything I could to be conversational and to not bust out in tears over anything and everything, praying that the rain would stop long enough to get home.
When the rain finally did slow down (thank you Jesus), we hurried up and packed our tents, took a small number of selfies (small based on our time in Indonesia so far), and headed down the muddy mountain.
While walking down the mountain, I began to feel a release of the sadness that I was holding onto in my tent. I still wanted to be home a little bit because I wanted to be comfortable, but there I was in the uncomfortable.
We make it home and I head straight for the river to get rid of the mud. I was still in a mood, but I was in a better place than I had been an hour earlier. I spent some time with my team today and some time with Jesus and by 4 pm, I was almost better. After dinner, we spent a little bit of time with our host before playing some intense rounds of Nertz with some of our Indonesian friends.
The joy on their faces as they continued to play reminded me of why we are here. They wanted to spend time with us, and I was in a mood all day long, not even wanting to be there. I sat on the floor reminded of the reasons why I came on the Race to begin with. I didn’t come for me, I came for Jesus, I came for our Muslim friends so that they could get a glimpse of Jesus in the way we loved them, I came to become more like Jesus. And going home wasn’t going to do any of that. Even my desire to go home wasn’t going to do that.
Is it okay that I missed home and missed what I had grown up with for over 23 years? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I am supposed to sit in it forever. God gave us the ability to feel, but I needed to remind myself that sitting in my (somewhat selfish) desire is not where he wanted me to stay. He wanted me to be loving the people around me and showing them Christ in my every action.
(Written Sunday, June 9)
