Well, it has been a whirl wind of memories gone by this past week and a half!
We left for a long 3 hour hike into the foothills of the Himalayas to reach one of the most remote villages in the world, to help them build a school. There are no cars there, people don’t have shoes because there aren’t places to buy them, and there surely wasn’t electricity, privacy, a place to go to the bathroom, and the place to bathe was the river, as was our drinking water source! We forged through the river with all of our gear, we hiked steep hills, squeezed through tiny passage ways and found our destination and solace in a tree house. We ate and sang by the fire, we shivered in our sleeping bags, we played with local children and their animals.
We hauled over 200 cinder blocks from the bottom of the river to the top of the hill, and on ward we passed them down the way to the school site where we mixed cement with sand and put the walls up.
At some point of me not participating in most of that I got a bad fever, chills, hallucinations, confusion, and an extreme case of panic that I was yet again sick for the 3rd month in a row. I was only 3 weeks coming off malaria. It was setting in that I was in sheer terror of pressing on the next 4 months. Typhoid, food poisoning on thanksgiving, malaria on Christmas, and now a bacterial infection in the middle of a place where the only way out was uphill and through the river.
My team leader came to me and said they could get me out and to a hospital via a bamboo and banana tree raft they were going to build me. So raft we did. Ali and I sat back to back for 2 hours as we floated down the river, took a long taxi ride to a scary hospital, and did the necessary tests. More strong medication, food that wasn’t nourishing my body, and in only a weeks time I was going to have to make the 2 flight and long train ride to another destination. Sure, I was going to get about a week of rest but my immune system was already so weak and messed up from not properly healing from malaria that I was at major risk for getting another infection, another fever, more hospital trips. At this rate I was averaging a trip to the hospital every 2.5 weeks.
I am exhausted. I’m weak. Climbing up the stairs, doing my laundry, going for long walks (which we do on a frequent basis) is hard. It leaves no time for resting and recovering, especially when you have 10 other people with illness around you ranging from colds to bronchitis. I don’t want to crawl across the finish line in this last stretch for just the sake of being physically here. My parents are paying for hospital bills for me out here, I’m just not getting better. I cannot adequately participate in ministry. I cannot love like a missionary should be able to when I am in poor health. It is heart breaking.
So, I made the most difficult decision of my life. I tossed and turned as I tried to sleep. My stomach literally wanted to vomit when I thought of continuing on. My mom sent me lots of messages asking and reassuring me that no matter the cost of the plane ticket to just come home. You never realize how vital your health is until you don’t have it.
I woke up a few days ago, looked at my team leader in absolute peace and certainty that I had to go home.
My first thought was, my supporters, my donors, my mentors, they are going to be so disappointed. I have not experienced this from any of my fellow World Racers. I am supported, loved, and encouraged out here for my decision. It is hard. There will be many tears shed when I leave, when I eat my first meal by myself, when I arrive at the airport and see my family and friends, when I take my first real shower in months.
I want to apologize to my donors. This is completely unexpected. I want you to know that I still had money left to raise and I am over the deadline so your donations have not been wasted they have indeed pushed me over the past month in supporting me getting thus far so your dollars were stretched and used just for me!
To my mentors, family, church friends, fellow racers, I love you! I appreciate your love up until now and I know you will all help me out in my re-entry process.
There’s some exciting things on the horizon as far as mission work goes for the rest of the year. This isn’t the end of my “Race” this is just the beginning. I will be home resting for a couple of months. I will be back doing prison ministry and homeless shelter work in Detroit and I am still pressing on with plans of work in Spain at the end of the year. This is just me hitting the pause button so I can become healthy and get my body back into shape.
The Race has taken me to the shores of Ireland to help build up a church in the midst of spiritual oppression, to Ukraine where I served alongside the Blessing family and shared their love of the Jewish faith and the beautiful city and people of L’viv, to Moldova where I ran in and out of rivers from a Russian hot box and rummaging through soviet union trash, to Kenya where I fell in love with teaching orphans and got to dance in the afternoon African rain every day, to Tanzania where I hiked through banana jungles going hut to hut sharing my love of Jesus, to Mozambique where I got to dance at crusades in remote villages and pray over people who never heard the name Jesus and help ignite the fire of Africa, to Nepal where the beautiful people touched my heart and showed me how beautiful their mountains are and how to help their spiritual darkness, and now back to America where I get to share my experiences with new people and faces.
I love you all, please continue to follow me in my month 8 updates from America. After that I’ll direct you to my new blog!
All of us right when we reached our tree house destination in the remote village!
The tree house where I got sick, 2nd floor, right side
Team Leader Ali and I on our life raft to get me to the hospital!
