I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to write to you. Blogging is harder than it looks and most of the time I don’t have WiFi to post it. There are so many stories to tell. So many details to go over. Sometimes it’s overwhelming because I want to make my point clear so badly, I want you to understand what I’m going through. But words aren’t enough.
But, I’m all about honesty, so that’s what I’m going to give you.
First of all, I’m currently writing this in India. I definitely will not be able to post this for a while, due to being in a rural village with the closest WiFi hours away. I’ve gotten interrupted several times with food brought to me by my host family. In Indian culture, privacy is not a thing. It doesn’t matter that at the moment, I am in my team’s personal room, in my bed (aka on my sleeping pad), resting. The family of 10 will come in anyways. (I love it, but I’m also overwhelmed). We’re on day 11 of preaching with no rest days. 6 more days to go! It’s been rough and so very tiring but the Holy Spirit has been so present. Some days, we even preach 3 services in a row, all in different villages! Lots of traveling, lots of preaching, and very little sleep. But we love it so much!
You might be saying to yourself, “jordan, you’re traveling the world for a year with some of your closest friends, why would you want to go home?”
Well, sometimes I do. I’ve decided to be real with you. To tell you all the things my pictures don’t.
The World Race is hard. It’s no vacation.. it’s work. I’m living an everyday life, just in different countries. I’m a missionary, which is a job but I’m not being paid. We do ministry 5 days a week. We wake up early. We have to clean. We have to cook. (We do so many dishes!!!) We have to hand wash clothes. We have certain leadership positions in our teams that we are responsible for, which requires a lot of things to get done by certain deadlines. It’s no vacation…
Have you ever felt uncomfortable? Let’s say you’re in class and all of the sudden your professor points at you and says, “Hey! Sing a song to the entire class!” Well, the race is sorta like that. You will be uncomfortable more times than not. Whether that’s because the pastor puts you on the spot and wants you to sing a song to the entire congregation, a capella style, with no time to prepare. Or when you’re extra tired one Sunday morning because you just got done with an entire week of ministry and the pastor decides he wants YOU to tell your testimony.. your brain doesn’t work at the time, but you can’t say no. Or maybe they want you to dance, or preach, or give a message! Or if you’re lucky, maybe even a teaching!! (Because giving a message, preaching, or a teaching are all very different things)
Maybe it’s because you’re living in a rural village for the 4th month in a row while others on your squad have nice places to stay with clean water, a bed and WiFi. Maybe it’s because your electricity works only sometimes, the water is off more times than it’s on, and sometimes you run out of water for 2 weeks at a time (shout out to Botswana). Maybe you’re uncomfortable because you’re sleeping on a dirty mattress with no sheets for one month. Or maybe you’re sleeping on a sleeping pad on cement floors for 23 days in a room that looks like an underground bunker. Sometimes it’s so hot you’re literally dripping with sweat at 2AM. I say 2AM because there have been some nights I got maybe 1-3 hours of sleep due to the heat. Maybe you’re uncomfortable because the house you’re living in is so small that you can never be anywhere alone, not even the bathroom. Or maybe it’s because in India, you have to eat with your hands every meal (which i actually love but it was very uncomfortable at first). Or you have to use the famous squatty potty. Or it could be because for two months you’ve had to take what we call, “bucket showers”. All you get is a bucket of ice cold water and a cup. Happy showering!! Or maybe you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. You get some kind of illness every single month. Maybe you’re uncomfortable because you haven’t showered in days. And you’ve been wearing the same outfit for literally a week because you have no water to hand wash your clothes. Maybe you’re uncomfortable because for the first time in your life, you’re the foreigner. Everyone is pointing at you, laughing at you, and taking pictures of you. You can’t go anywhere without causing a huge scene and for one second you just want to be a normal human being, minding her own business. Maybe you’re uncomfortable AND overwhelmed because you’ve been traveling to your next country for 4 days now, and you still have a 15 hour bus ride to your ministry site. You just had to take a “shower” in the bathroom sink somewhere in the Middle East and you have no idea what time or day it is because time change is now a normal thing for you. You start to develop the “I’m just here for the ride” mentality and you start to lose all sense of reality. Maybe you’re uncomfortable AND angry because you haven’t driven your own car in 6 months. Plans aren’t your decision, they’re made for you. Maybe you’re uncomfortable AND angry because you’re trapped in a house or a compound all day everyday other than ministry because it’s not safe to leave. You feel slightly in-prisoned in your own home. Maybe you’re in pain because of all the times you have to carry your 50lb pack through the airport. Maybe you’re uncomfortable because for a month you were fed hot chocolate and a slice of cheese for dinner, after a full day of manual labor.
Sometimes I want to go home because I hate living in community. I’m surrounded by people 24/7 and can’t even go to the bathroom alone. Some months I don’t have a mirror to look into, so I have no idea how rough I look (thank god). It’s also really hard not having WiFi for 2 weeks and once you finally get it, you have 100+ notifications, 20 messages to respond to, and you don’t even know to explain to friends and family what’s been going on because you don’t even know what’s going on. Sometimes I want to go home because I am so bored. I’m in the middle of the African bush, no WiFi, no AC, the power is out and there is no running water, and my team and I are just staring at each-other.
I have never been more uncomfortable in my life. It’s month 6, I am halfway through the race, I am tired all the time, weak, and overwhelmed. I tell you this because I want to be real. You deserve my honesty.
The World Race is all of those things, but it is also so good. Words cannot explain how good it is. Blogs can never explain how good it is. But it is still very hard. One thing I’ve learned is that the race is exactly what you make it. If you want to get by doing the bare minimum, you definitely can. You can stay back from ministry. You can sleep in instead of getting up for quiet time. You can sleep and skip out on church. You are an adult and this is not church camp, you can do whatever you want. But at the end of this, my biggest fear is looking back and noticing that I didn’t change. My biggest fear is realizing i did not grow. You have to dive right into the uncomfortable. You have to run into the pain.
I still have 5 more months of this incredible journey and I can’t wait to continue embracing the uncomfortable. I will not come back the same.
***if you’ve read all the way to the bottom, I think you deserve an update on the last 2 months!
Botswana was rough. It was hot, I barely slept all month, and ministry was so different than the previous. We evangelized daily, but we lived in a village with not many people. We also lived on a farm, so there were so many animals living with us, lol. Every Wednesday we had worship night with the community, which consisted of singing really old hyms. On Friday nights we did a kid’s program followed by a movie. And on Sundays, we went to church. One Sunday we even led a 3 hour church service completely on our own! All in all, a good month. Even though there were tough times, I still learned so much about myself and the Lord.
Zambia was… different. We evangelized everyday but not to different people. The goal was to find one family I connected with and revisit them as much as I could. I did, and we gave them Christmas presents and cooked them dinner! We even gave the mother a Bible and she cried tears of joy. She said we impacted her more than we will ever know. On Fridays, we did kids ministry. Zambia was a pretty slow month and we ended up having a lot of free time, which is so difficult on the race.
Only several more days until month 7, NEPAL!! Mt. Everest, here I come!
