About a week ago I posted something to my friends on social media asking for questions about the race. This blog is pretty long, so I’m just gonna go ahead and leave the Q&A’s here.
How do you hope your journey on the World Race will affect your life in America?
Before I left on the Race, I think I had a very cynical view of the world and how it operated because all I knew was my small corner of the world and had only experienced people who were from the corner I call home. I feel as if this made me a very negative person on the inside. I yearned for more, but no matter how much I reached out to the community and plugged in where I was, there was still something missing and it was that stark difference between what I knew in my head that didn’t connect with what I believed in my heart. The Race helped me connect what I have known in my head all along and put it into life and being… That I am worthy, loved, cared for, and a daughter of God and that nothing anyone thinks or does to me can change that because God has already put that stamp of approval on me and that everything I do flows from my inner being outward from that sincere and humble knowing. I am hoping that I can come home from the Race and keep putting all that I have learned about people and being known by the Lord into action, to help others be seen and really know that they are loved. I want to introduce my friends at home to the feedback culture (as hard as it is) and to keep digging into intentional community and the hearts of others, to keep creating that space when I am home and to invite people into a space where they can be free to create, love, be seen, and be themselves unashamed.
What are big and small things we can do to partner with some of the countries and ministries you came across on your Race?
Biggest thing is prayer. I believe there is nothing more powerful than prayer. The second thing would be to donate, there are a lot of organizations I worked with this year who are new and still looking for donors to help them become fully funded on a yearly basis. There are a couple ministries I have worked with here in Central America that do coffee fundraisers for their organizations and getting fair trade coffee, while extremely expensive if you are a recent college graduate, is a great way to support the countries local shops and people; plus, coffee in other countries is probably the best coffee I have ever tasted in my life, so I encourage you strongly to go buy some! Third, find a cause you’re passionate about in a third world country and raise money in one way or another for that cause right at home. Supporting from your corner of the world can make a huge impact on another part of the world. (I will give a list of the ministries I worked with that have websites for donation at the bottom of this blog).
How can we best pray for the world?
Pray for peace, understanding, and empowerment for the locals in different villages and cities. Most of the missionaries I have worked alongside are wanting to empower the locals to become self-sufficient and independent (more on this later). People are most important and so the best way you can pray for the people is for them to find grounding and empowerment to make their lives better, and for divine encounters with the right people who will help them when they are in need. (Check out this blog for a story on one of my friends in Africa who was a street kid at his lowest and because of the help of someone walking by, he became empowered to make something of himself: When Poverty Becomes Personal).
What challenged you the most?
Definitely being in intentional community with the same people 24/7. It’s like family, but in a much more intentional way of calling each other out on our junk and higher into our identities in Christ. With that being said, after a while, people’s personal quirks have gotten to me, but at the end of the day, I know that my team and I still deeply care for and love one another. Recently, feedback has been the hardest thing for me, especially the constructive stuff. I learned recently that my immediate response to any constructive feedback from certain people is to be defensive on the inside (and sometimes it comes on the outside, too – not proud of this), but once I let what my team mates have said settle in my heart after a day or two, I really take it in and pray that the Lord would work in that specific place in my heart and that He would grow me in it in His timing. Feedback is hard and it’s challenging, but it’s for the betterment of the Kingdom that I am made aware of things that don’t necessarily line up with Christ’s heart in my own being.
What did you do to keep connected to God as things were constantly in motion?
This is actually one of the harder questions for me to answer because I actually feel most connected to the Lord when I am in motion, on a plane, bus, taxi, in an airport in the middle of the night, etc… I spent a LOT of time writing this year. For a really long time, I just wrote stuff down and then I got into listening prayer, having conversations with the Lord though writing, and then I got into drawing and art; sometimes I’ll just sit in His presence in my hammock listening to worship music or just thinking about things. I’ll strum on my guitar and sing out random words or prayers. It changes from day to day how I keep connected to Him personally, but the truth is that God is literally with us everywhere we go and when you live in that connection, you begin to see that it’s not about what we do, it’s just about being with Him and His people. He just wants our hearts.
What are tangible things we can do to fight human trafficking and the sex industry?
There is an article I posted from Adventures that would be good for everyone to read. (I sat next to a man that buys girls. This is what he said). It speaks about stopping the supply and demand in the industry. This issue starts because people are broken and are looking for love. It’s important to remember that it’s not just the woman and children who are being victimized, there are two sides to every story and my bet is that children, women, and men end up in the industry because they saw people in their families making money that way or don’t believe that there is a better way to get money. The most important thing is to listen to the stories and pray for the people being affected by this issue, because they are real. The week I spent in Pattaya, Thailand is still a week I need to take a lot of time to process through, but that’s what I have right now.
How effective is this particular missions program? How has it impacted the people you serve in comparison to other smaller scale missions?
Our American host in Honduras put it this way and it might sound harsh, but I agree: Oftentimes, week long mission trips will bring markers, pencils, other school supplies, and toys to another country to give out to families for free thinking they are helping. Since week long trips happen so often there is almost an overabundance of supplies to leave in local villages. However, a majority of the time and what I didn’t know until we had this conversation with our hosts is that the government in a country will give parents the allotted money to buy that supplies for their children to go to school. When Americans come in and give that stuff out for free, it leaves the parents with all the money the government gave them for their kid, therefore fueling the alcohol/drug use and constant cycle of abuse we always hear about in the home.
A lot of my year has been a go-between of visiting long-term partners with Adventures and also visiting and helping out new hosts that the organization has recently found in the past couple years. The new hosts I worked with and really connected with sound like they are looking to keep partnering with Adventures long-term, and I believe that is what Adventures hopes for when they find new contacts. The long-term partners I spoke to have expressed how helpful and meaningful it is for them to have racers and passport trips come on a consistent basis. These hosts are also local people who have been doing ministry where they live for years, so it is good for them to have teams come in and help where needed. From what I have observed and seen all year, though, both the American/Canadian hosts and local hosts that Adventures partners with do the best they can to empower locals to get up and live a better lifestyle for themselves. Over the course of this year, I have come to believe that empowering people is the whole heart of Mission Work immediately after sharing the love of Christ with each individual we encounter.
After traveling the world, what is your opinion on those who say we should start ministering to our neighbors in America… the homeless, hungry, orphaned, etc…?
Yes. If it’s one thing I have learned and grown exponentially in this year, it’s about how to have a Kingdom Mindset wherever I go and allowing the spirit to lead me. I think that there are people who are called to leave America and serve overseas long term and there are people who are called to remain and stay exactly where they are to do ministry at home. But ministry isn’t an on/off switch. It’s an every-moment-of-every-day thing that doesn’t get turned off, which is why we constantly have to be walking in line and in step with the Lord and where He is leading us. When I get home, I personally am going to be on alert wherever I go for the spirit’s leading. If it’s to talk with someone random in a grocery store, to smile at a stranger, sit next to a homeless man, etc.. I’d take it to the Lord in prayer and seek Him on it if it requires time and thought. However, if an opportunity is right in front of me to share Christ’s love, I’m more apt to just go and do it now. I think it’s a matter of finding what makes you come alive, what your talents and gifts are, and walking with the Lord in those things. If your heart is for the homeless, go. If it is for the hungry, feed. If it is for the orphaned, seek them out. You don’t have to leave your corner of the world to make impact wherever you are, which leads to your next question…
I believe that we serve where God calls us, so what is some advice you have for those who feel the call to be missionaries?
Serve where God calls you. If you feel a tug to International Missions, go on a Weeklong Vision Trip to see what it may look like and feel like. If you still feel called after that, seek out a longer-term opportunity like the World Race, Passport, or other mission opportunities that are out there. If your season is to wait, wait actively until God says go. Chase Peace and Seek Kingdom wherever you are, because it is everywhere. Even though it helped me to leave and see more of the world to have that broader kingdom mindset, that option isn’t for everyone and that is okay. As long as we are walking with the Lord and where He wants us to go and be, that is what is important, and that is what we need to be doing with love and joy no matter where we are on the globe.
Check out these websites if you’d like to donate to any of the ministries I worked with this year. I encourage you to look through their websites and pray over each one, but if there is one that particularly sticks out to you, take a leap of faith and pray about donating! (Note: Some of the missions I worked with don’t have websites, but these are the ones that do).
Suubi House; Uganda, Africa – http://suubihouse.org
HOPEthiopia; Ethiopia, Africa – http://www.hopethiopia.com
Sarah’s Covenant Homes; India – http://www.schindia.com
Tamar Center; Pattaya, Thailand – http://www.tamarcenter.org/en
Guatemalan Coffee from Guate Java in Antigua – http://gcwcoffee.highwire.com/products/coffee?pagesize=12
Leadership Mission International; Honduras – http://leadershipmissioninternational.org
Vision Nicaragua; Nicaragua – http://visionnicaragua.org
See you all REAL SOON!!
~Ashley
