You haven’t really heard from me in a while. I’ve been slacking on blogs and media and general and I apologize. I’ve tried to sit down and blog so many times and I just can’t get there. To all of you who supported me, and still are, I promised to keep you updated. But things have been vague and I’m just sort of realizing why.
Getting used to the Race in general is hard. Slowly stripping away old habits and pressing into a new style of community and life in general takes time. It’s a process. I mean it’s month 8 and let’s be real most of us still have no clue what we are doing. Every travel day, every country, ministry, housing situation, it’s all different. You rarely feel “settled” on the Race.
And that’s good! It’s stretching all of us. But it can be hard to wrap your head around. World Race and our squad leadership have been really good about trying to give us time and tools to process big things like team changes and continent switches (both of which will be happening again in two weeks), but in a fast paced life there’s only so much you can do. So with changes happening all the time, personally I often find it hard to sit and communicate to you where I am spiritually, what God’s doing, or even what my ministry is. I just can’t find the words! But I’m learning and still trying. Trying to process for myself and really soak in everything, but also to try and give you even just a taste of it.
Looking back now though I can see something on the Race that really disrupted me, and honestly was a little hard to recover from. It’s about when my blogs started trailing off.
It starts way back in month 3, Bolivia. My team was sent trekking, for 11 days, in the Amazon jungle. Swimming across a river, hiking 3 days up the mountain, staying with villagers 3 days, hiking two days back, and then swimming back across the river…
A LOT happened. In short, I’ve never been so aware of my need for the Lord. But immediately when we got back to the town we lived in in Bolivia, we slept one night, took a 13 hour bus to La Paz, slept one night, took a bus to Peru, slept 2 nights in Juliacca, flew to Lima, slept in the airport, flew to Miami, 14 hour layover I wasn’t emotionally ready for in the US, slept in another airport, started getting sick, flew to Atlanta, flew to Seoul, flew to Phnom Penh slept one night, and took a bus to Siem Reap. I was there 2 days before I went to the hospital with a bacterial infection and some intense dehydration.
I had about 4 seconds to process being in the jungle and then I was sick, desperately wanting to be in Asia but feeling so far from myself. I think I went a little numb. Not to say the Lord hasn’t worked since then because I can barely express how much He has. But I honestly just didn’t even know what was going on for a while. And I didn’t realize that was why until this month. I’ve been just pushing through, pushing through a lot because I haven’t felt secured to sit and process.
But it’s so important. Life will be crazy at home, too. Life is always crazy. So this is something I’m learning and can hopefully adapt when I get home. Plus I really think it’s important to let you all in!
So I’ve written a series of blogs, some recent and some looking back to let you know all that’s happened. And hope to be posting every couple of days to catch up before Africa! So stay tuned, there’s lots you don’t know. And if you want the short and sweet stuff, follow my Instagram: annielise2511 I’m going to be doing a look back on there as well.
Thanks guys!
