I’m home with a one piece swimsuit tan, a lot of stories, new friends who live all over the world, and a brand new understanding of how God loves us a whole dang lot. I have already been back for just over 2 weeks and time has flown. I intended to write a final blog post much sooner than this, but here we are (better late than never, right?). The transition back has been good, although I do really miss my teammates (a groupchat and facetime calls are just not the same). I’ve had some time to process a little bit and have come away really grateful to have gone on my trip. I don’t think there is anything better I could have done with this semester. I got to take a break from the ordinary routine of school, greatly widened my worldview, formed relationships with amazing people, had the opportunity to serve with incredible ministries, saw beautiful parts of the world and did adventurous things, learned so much about who I am and who God is, and most importantly, truly deepened my intimacy with the Lord.
Over the course of my three months on the race, I took a one second video every single day. They’re mashed into a compilation which you can find at this link. It’s just a little snapshot and gives a general idea of what life looked like. I have found it a little bit hard to fully explain my trip to people, but I expected that to be the case. I experienced so much and it’s difficult to put into words. And I’m still walking though discovering what it looks like to be immersed back in my environment at home with all the new things I’ve learned, ways I’ve grown, and experiences I have gone through. But I am happy to talk about it with anyone who is interested. I find it easiest to talk about when people ask specific questions and then I can give specific answers and have an understanding of what they are interested in knowing about. I do want to talk about it because I think the Lord can really be honored in telling about his goodness though this last three months, even in the hard.
Right now I am trying to get an internship for the summer and doing some babysitting in the meantime. It’s been fun to get back into the gym, eat the way I like to (which does not involve gallo pinto, haha), be home for Mother’s Day, spend time with friends, and slowly get back into things. As I write this I am sitting in Calvin’s library as everyone around me studies for exams. It’s kind of nice to have skipped a semester of that, no complaints there. But I am excited for my senior year of college and energized to get back into school after a semester and summer off.
I just want to say thanks so much to those who have followed this journey. Your encouragement and support helped me to not only be able to do the world race in the first place, but your positive responses continually prompted me to keep writing about it. I think these blogs were honestly more helpful to me than anyone else as they gave me a way to process. I would be happy to talk more about it with anyone who is interested, or if you have any questions or want to get in contact with me my email is [email protected]. To God be the glory for the ways he has worked this semester, through all of time, and will continue to forevermore.
Here are a couple more videos that some of my teammates made
