The first thing they tell you when you arrive at World Race
training camp is, “Check your expectations at the door.” Everything-including
your route, your ministry sites, your tourism plans, your self perceptions,
your agenda that you came to fulfill, your role on your team, and your actual
team itself-can and will change.
The first activity you do at training camp is designed to teach you to
surrender these expectations to God and relinquish control of literally
everything for the year. Having allegedly learned all these lessons back in
October at said training camp, one would think that I would be ready and
willing to embrace all forms of life-altering change. Wrong.
If you know me, you know that coping with change has never
been my strong suite. Even though I’m generally an adventurous person, I thrive
on routine and predictability. The World Race is, by definition, the absence of
routine and predictability. Thus, I find myself here at the end of month two of
the race facing my first big change and having to decide how I will react.
Back in the Dominican Republic, in a time of group prophecy,
one of my squadmates told me to prepare myself for a bigger coat. This prophecy
references the story of Samuel in the Bible. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, could not
have children, and she prayed that God would give her a child, who she would
then dedicate to his service. Samuel was born, and Hannah gave him to Eli at
the temple to be raised in the Lord’s service. Each year when Hannah and her
husband came to offer the annual sacrifices, she would bring Samuel a new tunic
to replace the one he had been wearing. The tunic, or coat, represents the new
season in life that Samuel was stepping into and the new role he had to fill.
By the end of the year, his old coat was likely very tight, possibly so tight
that he would have had to peel it off. But the new coat that Hannah brought him
would have had to be too big to leave room for a year of growth. Getting the
old coat off was a struggle, but it was necessary because Samuel had outgrown
it, and it was constricting his growth. The new coat was something that felt
too big for him, and perhaps overwhelmed him, but that left him room to grow
and fill it.
When I received this prophecy I knew that eventually,
sometime during the race, I would be asked to step into a bigger role than I
thought myself capable of. I just didn’t think it would be so soon.
After two months together, Team Kaleo found out during
debrief in Quito that our team would be changing. We have grown to love each
other very much, have learned a lot from one another, and have thoroughly
enjoyed our time as a family. Finding out we would be splitting up was really
hard to hear, but it’s for the best. We didn’t come on the race to be
comfortable, and that’s what we had become. We have taught each other so much,
but now it’s time to embrace some new teammates and learn from them.
The team changes are as follows:
Our team leader, Tiffany, will be stepping down as leader,
and in her place we will be led by Jeremiah Jackson, formerly on Team
Deliverance. Tiffany will be staying on Team Kaleo, but Hailey will be going
over to Team Deliverance. Also, Team Kaleo and Team Deliverance will be
switching finance people, which means that Rosa will be going to Team Deliverance
and Katie Chestnutt will be coming to Team Kaleo. Please continue to pray for
Hailey and Rosa as they join their new team, and please also pray for Jeremiah
and Katie, as they are now my teammates!
So, you may ask, what exactly is this new coat that I’m
being asked to wear? Well, although I will miss both Hailey and Rosa
tremendously, and I will miss the team dynamic that Kaleo has been blessed
with, the part of the team change that most affected me initially was realizing
that with Rosa’s departure, I am now Team Kaleo’s only translator. We have
three months left in Latin America, and as far as I know now, I will be
translating them without a partner. Over the past two months, Rosa and I have
formed a wonderful partnership where we can learn from each other and be one
another’s human dictionary. Anytime I get tired of thinking in two languages,
or when I don’t know how to say something, I can simply turn to Rosa and she
can take over. Realizing that I’m going to lose that hit me hard.
Even though I studied Spanish for almost eight years, I have
always struggled with my confidence in the language. I have always wanted to be
fluent enough to be a translator for international ministries, but I have never
really believed that I can do it on my own. Almost every time that I have been
in a Spanish-speaking environment, I have had someone else who is more skilled
to rely on. Many of my friends are native speakers or have lived in Latin
America, and I constantly measure my ability against theirs. Spanish is Rosa’s
first language, and I was always secretly relieved that if I messed anything up
she could fix it. But now, for the first time ever, it’s just me. The rest of
my teammates are trying really hard to improve their Spanish, but as far as
official translating goes, I’ll be the only one.
My first reaction to this news was to panic a little bit. My
confidence level hasn’t been at its highest after I struggled to understand
basic conversations in the Dominican Republic. When they first told us about
the team changes I started to cry because I was overwhelmed with the
possibility of my own inadequacies affecting the team’s ministry potential. I
felt so much pressure to know everything about Spanish, to never get tired of
thinking in two languages, and to always have the energy to meet new people,
sift through logistical changes, and establish relationships. I thought of all
the times in the past two months when I got tired of translating, and that was
with two of us. One day in Ecuador, we had church services all day, and Rosa
and I calculated that we translated for at least thirteen hours that day. The
prospect of doing that on my own was more than I could imagine. Instead of
seeing this expanded role as a bigger coat to grow into, I saw it as something
overwhelming and more than I was capable of.
Throughout debrief I struggled to convince myself that I
could do it without Rosa. My teammates reassured me that I speak enough Spanish
and that they didn’t expect me to be perfect, but it didn’t make me feel much
better. My biggest critic has always been myself, and my word trumped theirs in
my head. Finally, during our last team debrief meeting, I broke down. I told
them all how scared I was feeling about not measuring up, and they told me that
I’m putting too much of my identity in being good enough, smart enough, and
competent enough. I’ve always been a perfectionist, and my Spanish is like the
ultimate expression of that self-critical habit. I want to say every single
phrase perfectly, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that I try my
best, and that instead of running from this new challenge, I step into it
willingly and embrace it. It dawned on me that, as someone who hates regrets, I
don’t want to make it to the end of month five when we are leaving Latin
America, and realize that I had a voice that few other people on our squad
have, but that I wasted it because I was too afraid of making a mistake to use
it. I have always wanted to be the voice for people who have no voice, but
every time I get the chance, my own fear of failure gets in the way and
prevents me from speaking.
I decided during debrief that even if it’s exhausting, even
if I don’t feel like I’m doing a good job, and even if I get tired of the sound
of my own voice all day, I’m going to be the best translator for Team Kaleo
that I can be. I want to empower the rest of my teammates to use their voices
by being the vehicle through which they can speak. My squad parents explained
to me that with Rosa’s departure, I will be forced to view God as my teammate
instead of her. When I get stuck on a word, or when I’m so tired that I can’t
sort out the two languages anymore, I will have to rely only on him to give me
strength and intelligence. God knows that I’ve always wanted to be a translator,
and he also knows that until I’m forced to do it on my own I’ll never believe
that I’m ready. So he gave me this new-very large-coat. Even though this is not
the style of coat that I thought I ordered, this is the one I’m getting, and
this is the one I have to wear and grow into.
So, I give you one last picture of the original Team Kaleo. We love you Hailey and Rosa, and we’ll miss you!
And now, I present Team Kaleo Version 2.0 (AKA TK 2.0), also known as Team Tocino (Team Bacon…we crave it constantly)
