Every day, I have at least one moment when I say, “This is a good life” and mean it with my whole heart. These are my favorite moments. This journey continues to present invitation after invitation to see God show up in the big things and to find Him in the small things. I said a while back that there are still stories from Ecuador and India waiting to be told—stories of these moments that show His faithful character and the heart He has for the people in this world. I believe in the power of the big stories. I also believe (sometimes even more so) in the power of the small ones—the stories that might seem insignificant from the outside but impacted me so deeply, beyond what any words can tell. Both kinds deserve to be told. Sometimes, we experience something so special that we want to protect the memory by telling nobody, and I’ve had a lot of those. I’m learning the value though of letting people into these stories too in the hope that they’ll see God’s goodness through them. So as a celebration of both Ecuador and India, here are some of my favorite stories! This is a long one, but you can read it in pieces… kind of like a book of short stories 🙂
…In Ecuador…
A homeless man encountered a new kind of love. As one of our teams was waiting at the bus station, they saw a homeless man treated like nobody deserves—insulted and pushed around by some and ignored by others. As one of their first encounters with this, their hearts broke and they wrestled with what to do. When the bus arrived, its floor was freshly mopped and still wet. The team walked onto the bus, and one of our guys watched the homeless man do the same. He watched silently for a moment as the man walked to the back of the bus and laid down on the wet floor, and not a single person even looked at him. So he got up out of his seat, walked to the back of the bus, and laid down next to the man. They couldn’t understand each other’s languages but talked and smiled anyways—lost in their own world on the floor of the bus, for the whole ride. That day, he taught us all about humility and that sometimes the most powerful love looks like simply showing up. And that day, a man who is normally invisible felt seen and met the love of God.
God healed a woman who couldn’t walk. A few girls from our squad met a sweet woman named Camila, bound to a wheelchair and making a living by selling snacks on the street. Over the course of a couple weeks, they saw her and prayed for her several times. One time, the pain left her legs; another time, she was able to move her toes. God gave one of the girls a vision of Camila walking, so they believed she was healed but couldn’t communicate well enough to find out. As I was sitting in a coffee shop one day, they asked me to come translate something… that’s when I met this Camila. She was asking for money, and they said they didn’t have money to give her, but they really believed Jesus healed her legs. So we asked, “Do you want to try walking?” She answered with a hopeful nod, so the girls both held one arm and lifted her from her wheelchair, and as one shaky foot slowly followed the other, Camila walked. For the first time in her fifty years of life, she walked! As tears rolled down her cheeks, she said she knew it was Jesus who healed her, the same way He healed so many people in the Bible. Then her ten-year old son took the place of the girls and walked beside his mom with the biggest smile and teary eyes. We asked why he was so happy, and he answered, “Because now I can walk with my mom.” He had waited His whole life for this, as had she. They left that day determined to share the story with as many people as they could. God’s goodness is that He healed Camila and made a dream come true for her son. And God’s goodness is that He let us be part of it. My role was simply translating, and He could have easily used someone else for that—but He invited me in, and I saw the power of saying yes.
A war was fought for two young street girls. A group of us were in the city late one night, the kind of night where the best encounter happens last, a whole hour after we plan to leave. What began as a friendly high-five and simple conversation with two young girls turned into a night I’ll remember for the rest of my life. They told us they were hungry and asked for money, so instead, we walked hand in hand over to the food trucks. We bought them some hot dogs and made conversation as they ate. A whirlwind of emotions took over: my heart broke because they were freezing and alone, others’ because of the poverty their torn clothes showed, and still others’ because they saw that the battle was deeper—the way one of the men working looked at the girls told them he was their pimp and they were trapped in a life of slavery. And this is when the war started, because God showed us all a different piece of this story so the whole fight could be fought. Some sat talking with the men, sharing the truth of God’s love and grace. I sat with some others holding these girls, trying to learn the real story while also making sure they knew that their worth ran deeper than what people used them for. And others sat across the parking lot, crying and praying for the stories being shared with the men and the life being spoken into the girls. Hours later, the men had heard truth and their hearts seemed to change, and the girls were laughing and experiencing the joy all children are meant to know. I later wrestled why I believed what the girls said and was ready to pay for a taxi to get them home when there was clearly a deeper battle to be fought. But this is when I learned that God shows us different pieces for a reason; my role was to hold the girls as they shivered, to tell them about how much Jesus loves them, to run with them in the parking lot as they experienced a rare piece of childhood, to teach them to repeat in Spanish “I am smart, I am kind, I am important, and Jesus loves me very much,” to listen to them say they were scared and to hold back tears as I promised them God would never leave them. Meanwhile, the teammates around me fought different parts of the battle, all of which needed to be fought. Prying the girls off of us when it was time to leave and feeling so helpless to physically save them was one of the hardest things I’ve done. But this is the comfort of knowing that God loves them more than we do and stays with them when we can’t.
God’s overwhelming love made me cry. I spent a few weeks at an orphanage for kids with special needs, which had been a dream for a long time… I waited eleven months of my first Race to get to do this, and now was my chance. Kacie and I go to the teams we need to be with, not to the ministries we like best, so the fact that this team was there was an answered prayer. I had been asking God all week to show me how He sees these kids, but it didn’t happen. As we sat down to watch a movie with them one night, I asked Him once more. I realized though that perhaps I wasn’t meant to see that way at that moment, so I asked Him instead to show me whatever He wanted me to see. And all I saw was how deep His love is. I saw it in the way the house-moms loved these kids, in the smile on the sleeping baby’s face, and in the way one little boy sang his heart out to the movie’s soundtrack. I saw a room full of no-longer-orphans, thought about the potential being unlocked and nurtured within them, and knew it was God’s goodness that brought them there. And as I sat feeding a baby in one arm with a little girl tucked beneath my other arm, tears of thankfulness rolled down my cheeks because I saw how much He loves me. I realized that He didn’t bring me there because the team or those kids needed me but because I needed it. Because He had me in a season of learning to sit in His love, and He knows how much love I feel around those people and how long I had wanted to be somewhere exactly like that. He wanted to show me the realness of His love in the way He loves those kids and also in the way He intentionally designed that moment for me. My arms were too full of kids to dry the tears, so as they rolled down, I simply smiled and thanked God for His goodness in the simple moments like this one.
…In India…
A simple song reminded me of my grandpa and the power this journey holds. On our first day of ministry in India, we found ourselves singing Amazing Grace in front of a church filled with people. I held back the tears, because while this was my third visit to India, it felt so different than the others. The last time I was here was five years ago with a grandpa who didn’t know Jesus. Now, he’s dancing on the clouds in Heaven, and I imagined him smiling as he watched all that would unfold in these three months. In my other visits, we came to see family and to understand and help with the poverty we saw. We may have made an impact, but everyone we met who didn’t know Jesus still didn’t know Him when we left. I’ve since realized that the issue of material poverty pales in comparison to the crisis of so many people living without hope in Jesus—a hope that has reached my family in a special way and gives me a deep passion for these people. God used my first Race to help bring my grandpa (once a Hindu) to faith… the stories I experienced and shared gave him a place to ask questions, and through this, God rushed in and watered the seeds planted long ago in his heart. He believed in Jesus in perfect timing before he passed away, ten days before I came home. Guess what song always makes me think of him? Amazing Grace. I imagined him looking down in this moment, cheering us on because he knows the potential this journey has to reach others like him. And I felt a powerful purpose in being there. It’s the weighty blessing of knowing that this fight is deeper than feeding the hungry or helping the poor—this is about reaching the world with Jesus because souls and eternity are on the line. And as we sang and watched how these people praised God, I imagined others joining the back row with tears in their eyes as they praised Jesus and understood the words, “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see” for the first time. This is the power of this journey; to see even one soul saved, I would do it all again.
Three Hundred people gathered and heard about God’s love. During our time in one of the villages, we noticed two things. One, these villagers were drawn to us because most of them had never before seen white people. Two, it was a spiritually dark place, but we knew that the light we carried was stronger and felt it change the streets as we walked down them. We prayed about how to use our skin color for more than fame and how to share this light with as many people as we could. We decided to host an event on the church property, unsure what it was supposed to look like but trusting that if we got the people there, God would show up and lead it. Our hope was simply that they would come, encounter something different, and continue returning even after we left. So we went out onto the streets and invited everyone we met. We covered the evening in prayer and asked God to send the people He wanted to send, whether it was two or two hundred. And we waited for the day to arrive. When it did, people entered in masses until there were over three hundred of them—men, women, and children. We gave them tea and cookies. We sang songs and danced. I shared a message about God’s great love and told the stories of how my mom and grandpa found it. We did a skit and prayed for everyone who wanted prayer. And we lit candles, and those people turned to share the flame with those around them, until over three hundred candles were burning. As I stood there, looking up at the stars and out at the candles, it was one of those moments when I felt so grateful to be alive and was humbled to my core that God chose to use me. I wish I could tell you that the evening ended with miraculous healings or some of the many unbelievers meeting Jesus, but it didn’t. We did, however, believe with our whole hearts that seeds were planted… because we knew people felt something different there—this was the reason they listened to a thirty-minute message when they were used to much shorter sermons, and this was why every single person who got up to leave early came back. So as the evening ended and people left, we prayed that God would continue to water the seeds that He planted, long after we were gone. And He did. A few weeks after we left the village, our host told us they had a new believer get baptized! It was the wife of one of the Hindu priests… and when you think of the influence women carry in this culture and the relationships she has with the unbelievers there, think of the ripple effect this could create! It’s easy to feel discouraged when we have so little time to reach so many people who don’t know Jesus, but that evening, God reminded us that a single spark can begin a wildfire, and He showed us that we have great reason to hold onto hope.
What seemed like an inconvenience became a divine encounter. Partway into our time in India, our whole squad gathered together for a week of debriefing. Our people were quick to notice and befriend Boppi, the man who cooked our meals. He told us he was Hindu but believed in Jesus too—because he claimed all gods are the same. As the week went on, however, and Boppi heard our stories and came to our sessions, we could tell he was curious. We never forced our faith on him or told him what he needed to believe; we simply continued to invite him into our lives. Sharing the Gospel through words is powerful, but sometimes sharing it through actions leaves an even greater impact… when we don’t just tell people of God’s love but allow them to experience it through us. One day, some of our Racers wanted to attend a local church, and Boppi—being the kind man he is—took them there. He says that as soon as they began praying, he felt something different and knew he wanted what they had. Because this is a beautiful difference in Christianity: the Holy Spirit lives inside believers and changes them; He’s living and real and fills us with the peace, joy, and love that Boppi felt. Through it all, God was working faith in his heart. On our last day together, Boppi asked us for a Bible, we prayed for him, and we left. We arrived at the train station with barely enough time to catch our train, only to find out it was delayed. What began as a thirty-minute delay quickly turned into seven hours. About six hours in, we were frustrated, wondering why we were still sitting on the platform when we should have already been at our destination. This is when Boppi showed up. After a long conversation and prayer with someone from our group, Boppi said he wanted to follow Jesus. We suddenly knew why we were still there. And we praised God that He saved yet another soul, that the Kingdom was expanded by one more! [Picture: Boppi sharing his testimony at church on our last day of ministry in India]
God encouraged me through a beautiful vision. As I mentioned before, it can be discouraging when we are surrounded by so many unbelievers and we have such little time with them to share Jesus. This was the nature of all of India because we moved around so often. In the last few years, God has given me an eternal perspective—this idea that even the best things in this world aren’t going to last, but eternity is forever. What I care about most is people being saved, so it’s hard to not actually see it happening and to wonder if what we’re doing is making a lasting difference. One day, we were sitting in church as one of our girls shared her testimony, and God gave me a really cool picture. Jesus was standing in the front of the church, proud of us and thankful that we filled the role He asked us to fill. As He stood there smiling, He planted seeds in heart after heart after heart of the people sitting there listening. And each time He planted a new seed, He smiled at us and said, “There’s another one… and another… and another.” That evening, He reminded me that sometimes we’re simply called to help plant the seeds and may never actually see the fruit. It’s like when I look at an orange tree… I don’t know the person who planted it, but I know for sure that it’s alive and real. So we must keep planting seeds, trusting God to water them, and believing the fruit will grow when it’s time.
A hard goodbye was flooded with peace that gave me a glimpse of forever. During our last week of ministry in India, we spent time at an orphanage. It’s really hard to explain the feeling of getting to hold a child whose family threw her aside, or to watch your friends running with kids and letting them experience the goodness of childhood that I believe every kid deserves—the kind that brings out the beautiful sound of belly laughter, or to look a teenager in the eyes and tell her she’s seen and loved when the world has done its very best to make her feel invisible. The best way I can describe it is that it’s what might happen if love, gratitude, humility, heartbreak, and joy were all shoved into a container too small to hold them and bubbled over. Leaving them was especially hard because of how deeply our hearts are capable of loving in just four days and because we watched these kids come alive during this short time and imagined the goodness that could happen if we stayed. But on the night we left, we were able to look into their teary eyes and confidently say, “I’ll see you in Heaven.” Because each one of these kids knows Jesus, and this is where an indescribable peace came from. Goodbyes are hard, and on the World Race, we say a whole lot of them all the time. But this was yet another reminder of the song we’ve heard sung so many times: “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be! When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory!” I have friends like these all over the world now, and someday Heaven will be an even more beautiful reunion than what I imagine. [Picture: One of the brave, young girls from the orphanage who has been through more in her eight years than I have in my twenty-five]
If you made it all the way to the end of this, thank you. It’s a great blessing to have people who are so invested in this journey and to get to share with them what God is doing around the world. I deeply believe that these experiences are not meant only for those of us living them but also for each person who reads their stories. I think it’s easy for people to believe that I’m living this incredible life that looks far different from what their own life does or will ever look like. That’s only half true. This is an incredible life, and I’m reminded of it every day. But stories like these aren’t happening only because I’m on this trip. One of the biggest things all this time abroad has taught me is that it’s not about the place… we can live fully alive and filled with purpose wherever we are. Each one of these stories happened because we stopped to really see people we could have passed by, said “yes” to God when we didn’t have to, and chose to see Him in the moments that seemed small. The world needs more stories like these—the kind where love wins, strangers find hope, and heart after heart is touched by the goodness of God. And I believe more of them can be written because the characters in these stories are people like you and me. I challenge you to make these stories real in your own communities… Learn to see God everywhere so His love first engulfs you. Because He is present in each moment of our lives—big and small ones alike. If we don’t see Him, perhaps we must simply train our eyes to look differently or teach our hearts to have a bit more faith that He’s there. And as you receive, give. Live interruptible lives that allow you to stop for people and share this same love with them. Because I promise you, stories like these are changing the world.
Our squad has been in Zambia for about a week now, and my heart is happy 🙂 I’m excited to find God in a thousand more moments like these. Please be praying for our squad and the people here, and stay tuned for more stories!
