Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” Ever since I stepped foot on a plane to Atlanta my dreams came true and my new life began. Month one is now over and I already have a taste of what it means to live life abundantly. Each moment I am awake brings with it a sense of novelty, challenge, and adventure. I often find myself asking the questions, “Is this real? Is this really my life? Am I dreaming right now?” I have always dreamed of traveling the world, seeing the nations and meeting its people, but most importantly advancing the Kingdom. Well, my dreams came true and I get to live them out day after day. In this blog I will give you a small taste of what my life has looked like on the World Race, as my team and I begin to advance the Kingdom and how in the last month we brought the good news to the beautiful nation of Bolivia.
My team and I spent the month of July living in the small town of Uyuni, Bolivia. It’s a cold little town that runs off of tourism due to its close location to Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. We stayed at a compound that belonged to a women from the local church.
While our living conditions were rather simple, we had all we needed to get by. We had beds to sleep in, a small kitchen with a little propane stove to prepare meals (no refrigerator though), buckets to hand wash our laundry, and an outhouse with a gravity toilet to conduct our daily business in. For those of you who are not familiar with what a gravity toilet is, it is just like a regular toilet although instead of pushing down a flusher, you fill a bucket with water and pour it down the hole. This is where the saying “I have to go number one or number two” comes from, although sometimes a number two requires more than two buckets so I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. There were no showers and since it was freezing the entire month even taking a bucket shower was off the table so we would occasionally go to the local bathhouse and pay 10 bolivianos (less than $2) to use the showers for 15 minutes. We went to the local open-air market for our food and prepared all the meals ourselves. We had a few pets we shared our space with who we absolutely adored, well some of us more than others. We had a dog named Dulce, a chicken named Arlene, and a rooster named Hank. Hank was our alarm clock. Life in Uyuni was great and we truly got a taste of what it was like to live an authentic Bolivian life.
We had a great first month with regards to our ministry. We partnered with the local church named Asambleas de Dios de Bolivia (Assemblies of God). Here we teamed up with the pastor and led youth groups, contributed to church services by preaching and playing music, participated in street evangelism, taught English to the local kids, prayed over people in the local hospital, and even made house visits to sick/bedridden individuals to offer prayer for them.
One day we went to the home of a lady named Rita who had been sick and bedridden for over 8 years. Going to her home and praying for not only her but her family was like living out a scene from the bible. On another occasion our entire team was invited to a house for tea. This was the beginning of an amazing relationship with two individuals named Vicki and Roberto. Roberto runs a local Christian radio station and after interviewing a few of my teammates he invited us over for tea. The time spent with them was unreal and the two of them touched my heart in a way I never thought possible. Their love for the Gospel and their eagerness to learn spoke volumes and the Holy Spirit was clearly alive in them at any given moment. I could write an entire blog about them and go on and on about how they impacted my life in such a profound way but I will refrain from doing so. I will speak more about them in my next blog called, “I Know Where Jesus Lives” so stay tuned. Another piece of ministry we engaged in over the month was some good old fashioned manual labor. Our team helped clean out the church yard which was no easy task. There was a giant mound of dirt filled with plastic bottles and trash that needed to be flattened and cleared. After a few days and hours of blood, sweat, and tears, the dirt was flattened and the trash and bottles cleared. While we were doing this, my teammate Chris and I helped a man by the name of Ricardo build some tables for the kids and youth. This was a very rewarding task however strenuous it may have been. All in all ministry went really well and I can say with certainty that our team left a huge mark on the hearts of those we came in contact with.
Aside from doing ministry we got to spend some time having fun and exploring the beautiful countryside. Not too far outside of town is a train cemetery. Here there are tons of old, broken down trains and train cars to climb on and take pictures of. The best way to describe it is a giant playground for adults.
On one of our off days the entire team took land cruisers out to Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. What a remarkable place those salt flats are. We spent the day taking awesome and funny photos, kicking the soccer ball around, and we even had a beautiful memorial service for our departed teammate, Anastasia. The time spent at the salt flats was surreal and I won’t go too much into detail because the photos can speak for themselves.
All in all month one on the World Race has been spectacular. It has been filled with adventure, wonder, challenges, struggles, pain, brokenness, joy, and growth. I have learned to abandon comfort and jump right into the eye of the storm with the full confidence of knowing God is leading the way in every situation I step into. I have also learned to embrace pain and give thanks for it because it is through that brokenness that God will show up and make himself known. He will use it to build you up and make you stronger. He will use that pain to mold you into the person you were always called to be. This month was fun, it was exciting, and it was a total blast, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. It brought many challenges and gave me the opportunity to grow in them, walking away stronger and wiser. I look forward to the joys, struggles, and pains of the next month and in the year to come. So ends month 1 on the World race, BRING IT ON PERU!!!
PARTNER WITH ME!
As I continue on this race, one of my biggest challenges I will face is the financial one that is necessary to continue and finish this race. I am almost half way to being fully funded and I need your help and support to reach my next deadline. I will have to have raised $11,000 by October 1st and with your prayer and support I know God will provide and make it a reality. I have from now until October 1st to raise $3,500 so if God has placed it on your heart, I strongly encourage you to partner up with me and give what your heart is telling you to give. As you have just read I am living out my dreams and nothing in the world would mean more to me than to have you come along this journey with me. If you would like to donate funds and become a part of this radical journey God has placed me on then click the Support Me tab on the left side of my blog. Your support means more to me then you could ever imagine.
Thank you to all who have already given or are choosing to give, it is not everyday one can say they are living in dreams awake but because of you and your support I am blessed to say I can.
