Coming into Month 10 I was tired. I had just interviewed for a job I loved and was nervous to hear from the employer. I had ridden an old train with no heat 7 hours on a cold Moldovan night. Simply put I was experiencing the fatigue to which all racers hope they will be immune. I was 9 months down on this journey, only 2 to go, and I had no idea where the energy to make it was going to come from.
I was missing home and the familiarity of friends and family and I had no idea what to expect from Moldova (our route had recently changed to include this lovely eastern European country).
Honestly, as that cold train pulled into the station, all I really wanted was to see my close friends on the other side welcoming me, calling my name, so excited to see me and loving me so well the way they do.
Instead, we pulled into a dark, slightly deserted train station late at night and hoped the lone man in the hooded sweatshirt was for us (he was). We tiredly piled into his van (which had heat, PTL!) and made our way to his house.
When people say God gives us good, personal gifts, believe them.
As we pulled into our home for the month, I wasn’t met by my longtime friends but I was met by my name. “Cara Wood,” Larisa (our contact’s wife) called out in her thick accent as I stepped from the van. No explanation, no pronunciation practice necessary.
She knew my name in a time where that was all I really wanted. When everything was unfamiliar for the 10th time in 10 months, it was so comforting to be welcomed by name.
Our time in Moldova was slightly plagued by rain, which kept us from always being able to do all that we and our contacts had hoped but I never ceased to feel loved by the family we stayed with, to feel welcomed into their lives and at the end of the day I always got to go home to a place where everybody knew my name.
