In case you haven’t heard, which is probably some of you, my route for the Race has been changed. Instead of going to Nicaragua and El Salvador,I will be going to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. While my heart is sort of sad to not be going to El Salvador or Nicaragua, it is 100% rejoicing in the fact that I will be going to Haiti and returning to the Dominican Republic where my heart first fell in love with the nations. It was in the Dominican Republic that God took hold of my heart and put it in line with His desire to see me serving the least of these not just in America, but across the world. I am looking forward to going back to a place that I still consider “home” after spending just a short amount of time there falling in love with the people and the culture. See my old blog to get a small glimpse into what my heart felt there: http://alyssaboyles.blogspot.com/2010/11/taken-by-love.html.
My new Route is as follows: Honduras, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Philippines, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
Since I do not know that much about each of these countries, I decided to research information about each one. I will be dedicating a blog to each country, so stay tuned so that you can see what your support may be doing to help others and so that you can pray with me that God will prepare my heart for the places that I will be going.
And now for the slightly funny story…
My students sometimes like to get me off task and talk about my life. They all know that I will be quitting at the end of the year to travel the world. In one of my classes, I had a student who is from El Salvador telling me all about what I should know before I go there. On Thursday, he can in to give me tips about the food and I had to tell him that El Salvador was no longer on my list. At this point, all my students wanted to ask me questions and see where I was going, so I pulled out the map to show them. Another student raises his had to ask me a question and our conversation went something like this:
A: Ms. Boyles I have something very exciting to say…I see you are going to Africa. If you should make it to “Nigger”…
Me: Wait a sec, you mean Niger I think.
A: Oh yeah, should you make it to Niger, I need you to stop and see my friend, well not really my friend, but a guy that I met once from there. His name is Wallow and He is tall, skinny, dark and can run really fast. Would you just please tell him that I said “hi”?
Me: Well should I happen to run into him even though I am not going there, I will get right on that, but the odds are not in my favor for that happening.
I never ever have a dull moment with my students!
