Key Terms
AIM: Adventures in Missions, the missions organization I am partnering with to do the World Race
Squad: The larger group of people that I’ll be traveling from country to country with around the world.
Squad Coach: For lack of a better word, a sort of life coach that the squad can use as a resource. Our coaches, Amy and Clint, however, go way beyond this definition.
Squad Mentor: In the case for my squad, he’s the guy that makes the final call in anything pertaining to our trip. Also serves as a source of guidance and direction. Our mentor, Chris, once again goes way beyond this definition.
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Since this is what I’m considering my first official World Race Blog, now that I am officially on my way to my first country, let me set the tone for the blogs I’ll be writing this year.
I’m writing blogs for me, and for you, the reader. I’m writing for me because blogs can serve as an awesome reminder to myself of what I’m doing, learning, and experiencing. I’m writing blogs for you because what I’m doing, learning, and experiencing is something I want to share with my friends, family, and whoever else cares to stumble upon my writing. I’m not sharing just for the sake of sharing, but because the journey I’m going extends beyond me and the people I’m immediately with, all the way back home to community that commissioned me out. This journey was made possible not just by my own doings, but huges amounts of generous financial, prayer, and emotional support from everyone back home, along with the provisions of God.
I promise never to lie or embellish, although I may have to be vague or change some names from time to for reasons concerning safety. I’ll do my best to always share the experience I’m going through rather than preach.
Please leave comment! But, along the lines of safety concerns, please don’t publish on social media or comment on my blogs with any specific names of countries, cities, or other information I may have shared with you in the past. Not every place I’m going will require this level caution, but I would prefer to play it safe.
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I’ve been in quite a few places since I left California on January 1st, and it’s been a blast. For the first 36 hours I had the awesome opportunity to fly out to Orlando and hang out with my good friend Matt Houston. We didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend together, so we chose to make the most of it by going to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Much to my surprise, it was almost exactly like Disneyland; the layout is the same, their rides are named the same, and it has the same general feeling of Disney happiness in the air. I guess the biggest difference is that Magic Kingdom is in a swamp, while Disneyland is in the middle of the a sprawling city. They should consider putting a Disney park in a more scenic location.
After Disneyland and saying bye to Matt, I took an overnight bus to Atlanta, then got shuttled, along with most of the rest of my squad, by AIM staff to Gainesville start my squad’s pre-launch training. It’s called pre-launch because most squads have an two day series of events called “World Race Launch” in January where they have the opportunity to reconnect with their squad, receive some last minute training, and do final preparations before they leave. My squad is a bit of a special squad and pilot program, so we had pre-launch as well, which started 4 days before the actual launch.
The pre-launch training was, admittedly, a bit intense, but I loved every minute of it; I’ve been so ready to move forward with my life that I was really eager to learn everything they were willing to teach me. That being said, it was a lot of soft skills and I’m pretty bad and taking notes on those kinds of things, so I can’t really relay anything that I learned. Let’s just assume I internalized it all.
One thing about pre-launch that I was really touched by was the generosity of our Squad Coaches and Squad Mentor. Both of them invited our entire squad (36 people) to their homes and gave us food and/or drink. No one asked them to do this and it’s not any sort of AIM custom to do so either, but nevertheless they chose to establish personal relationships with us in lieu of a formal relationship defined strictly by an organization.
I feel extremely well blessed, cared for, and trained by AIM. I’m thankful for what they’ve done for me and my squad so far, as well as their continued support a facilitation in the future.
As of right me and my whole squad are in transit. I’m sitting on a plane with the rest of my squad on the second leg of our four leg journey to get to our first ministry location in South Asia. It’s going to be a total of roughly 50 hours of transit from Atlanta to Chicago to Los Angeles to China to our South Asian location. I’m feeling great.
