Happy Independance Day, America!
After months of gradual preparation for The World Race, on Saturday morning my parents dropped me off in Minneapolis and I boarded a 06.00 flight for Fort Lauderdale. I met up with the ten other team leaders in Miami, as well as our three squad leaders. By the end of the day, we all found ourselves together in the Dominican Republic, minus one backpack.
For the team leaders, our first morning was spent praying together and getting into the right mindset for eleven months on the field. The World Race is a strong communicty with a distinct culture, and part of that culture is teaching ourselves to lean on each other and those in support us – most immediately, our squad leaders – instead of trying to do things on our own. The importance of this has begun to sink in over the past twenty-four hours. It´s easy to be at home and tell you all things like, ¨I love my team and we´re really going to need each other this next year¨, and it´s another thing to know that these brothers and sisters really are the only ones I will be able to constantly turn to. God is going to stretch me during these next few months, and He´s going to offer me a chance to give up a lot of things that I might have allowed to define me during the past few years.
I so enjoyed spending time with those of you I was able to visit during the past few months, and there are many more of you I wanted to visit. Thank you all for helping prepare me for this journey, and for choosing to be a part of it by reading this blog. The chapter has finally begun, and I am certain it will become an awesome piece in the story of my life.
