Wow we are officially 2 weeks into 2020 and even more mind blowing is that we are half way through the race!! Sorry for the big gap between my last blog and this one! Since I have written last I have left Africa, switched teams, lived at the beach in Vietnam, got another tattoo (sorry mom), got kicked out of AirBnb (its a long story), and most importantly we got a team pet!!
Our pets name is Fish Harrison, he is a iFish, yes an iFish like the iDog or iCat that was popular in the 2000s. It started with a meme, which turned into a joke, which turned into a rash decision on Christmas Eve, and resulted in Bowen (the best person ever) bringing Fish Harrison all the way in America!
Everyone has called us crazy, and rolled their eyes at us but on our first day of having him I experienced my favorite and the most beautiful travel day moment on the race so far, and God chose to use a light up fish.
The travel day from Vietnam to Cambodia had been longer than expected and had a hiccup of some sort at every turn (at one point I chased a man through customs because he had taken my passport…) So by the time my team and I had reached the last leg of the journey moral was low. So when our bus was delayed another hour we all just put our headphones in and retreated into our own corners to sulk in the inconvenience. After a few minutes Fish Harrison randomly turned on in Nicole’s back pack, as she took him out to begrudgingly turn him off a little girl walked by, and her eyes lit up with curiosity when she saw him. I couldn’t tell you exactly how it happened but we all exchanged a look, then the next thing I knew I was on the ground of a random Cambodia bus stop rolling around, doing back bends, playing with a light up fish, and thanking God for the delay.
That is a huge part of the race, learning how to live in the inconvenience, and uncomfortableness. Something I thought I was pretty good at, but it took a silly light fish to teach me that you need to do more than just survive in the inconvenience, but find joy in it!
So this year I challenge you to do exactly that. Choose to look around, choose to be interruptible, choose to find the joy that the Lord has promised all of us!
