This is a journal entry from my time in Peru that I’d like to share with you all. I hope to give you a glimpse of what life on the Race looks like for me! There have definitely been moments when I miss my ‘normal’ life back in the States, but I have never felt more alive and full and used by God than I do on days like this. It’s a wonderful life, y’all.
19 febrero 2015
Today, I feel like a World Racer. I can’t put into words exactly what that means because it means so much….all I know is that my heart is full, my soul feels alive, and my eyes are full of that light that means I’m doing something that I was made for. And the most crazy and beautiful thing about it is that this is my LIFE. My real, actual, life and I get to wake up tomorrow and feel this way all over again. Jesus, You are so good to me.
It all started literally from the moment that I woke up this morning….I was sweating, sprawled out on a lumpy mattress that barely managed to keep my face off of the dusty, hairball-infested floor. I made my way down the treacherous stairs of our compound and shared breakfast with 55 of my favorite people on a cement floor. The same floor where we handwash our clothes and hang out with friends and host Vacation Bible School for the neighborhood children and set up the pulpit every night for church and yell at the dogs for peeing right next to our water bottles and help our ministry host make supplies for the upcoming school year and…let’s just say that it’s a well-loved slab of concrete.
Today my morning ministry assignment was manual labor, and our first assignment was to steal some tires. Okay, it wasn’t exactly stealing… But we did trek into the nearby ghetto sandlot and casually grabbed a dozen old tires from the unofficial public trash pile and roll them down the dusty streets of Trujillo, Peru all the way back to our compound/school/church. (They see me rollin, they hatin. Patrollin and tryna catch me stealin tires…my clever remix/theme song for Operation Obtain Tires! Ha). It was quite the sight.
Upon our triumphant return, half of the group set to work digging trenches for our tires to line the entryway to the school while the other half grabbed as many shovels and buckets as we could find and set to work moving rocks into road. Literally. There was a huge pile of rubble outside of the entrance to the school that our host wanted us to get rid of to make the place look more inviting….and in Peru, the way you get rid of a pile of rubble is to push it all into the middle of the road and then dump buckets of sand over the rocks until it appears to be remotely flat and then wait to see if the cab drivers are willing to drive over your new “road.” If not, you add more sand. So there we were, dripping in sweat and breathing in mouthfulls of dust when all of a sudden a little girl from our English class the day before walked up and held out a small piece of bread with two slices of banana toward one of my squadmates. Jenn smiled and thanked the precious little girl, then turned and immediately offered each of us a piece of her treat. When our little Peruvian angel saw Jenn’s willingness to share even the little that she had been given, she immediately ran back to her house and came out with a handful of bread which she began tearing into pieces and offering to every single World Racer who was working outside. After the bread was gone, she ran back and came out with an armful of bruised, but still delicious, fruit that likely came from her family’s tree just across the street. We accepted her gifts with tears in our eyes and so much love in our hearts for this sweet Daughter of God. As she ran off for the last time and I picked my shovel up once again, it hit me- today, I feel like a World Racer.
