My squad made it to Jeffery’s Bay, South Africa just about three weeks ago after ninety-two straight hours of travel. It was actually like four days where we slept on buses, on airport floors, on planes or wherever we could, lugged around these gigantic backpacks, and had many fruitful conversations within our squad and with many strangers.
We started this trek in Atlanta, Georgia and went to Richmond, Virginia on a Greyhound bus. We had to switch buses in Richmond before continuing on to Washington D.C. and the driver for our next bus called out or just didn’t show up (we still don’t really know) so we ended up waiting in the bus station for four hours at the break of day. Let me also preface all of this by saying, a group of forty young adult backpackers don’t exactly fly under the radar when going places. Even in America, people are wonderstruck by us and can’t help but ask “what” and “why” we are doing what we are doing. It’s the most natural conversation starter ever to be able to tell them about the World Race and it’s neat how even though we might not always explicitly try to witness to people, by telling them about our gap year, we are leaving fingerprints. Now going back to the bus station, while we waited we had numerous people approach us and ask what was up. One of them was a man who was a retired veteran that smiled often despite not having all his teeth. He approached our group and started asking questions about us and we in return got to ask questions about him and his life. Just by getting to know him in fifteen minutes, he was clearly passionate about his job, had been broken down before but since experienced so much growth, and he liked just being goofy and kind. When we told him our mission and that this was for the glory or God he proudly informed us that his sister was actually a preacher and he was overjoyed to facetime her and have us meet her. So we met his sister over facetime and she actually prayed a beautiful prayer over our squad. His sister told us that he had been going through a lot mentally and it made her day that us kids took the time to pour into him.
As we were chatting with this man, one of my teammates, Morgan also had a super sweet encounter with a lady. The lady was lacking so much peace and rest in her life and struggled with forgiveness. She told Morgan that she’s tried yoga and traveling to ease her mind but it’s never been enough. Morgan suggested reading scripture and the lady said she’d never tried that because she had never owned a Bible; so Morgan actually gave this lady her Bible, all highlighted, annotated and all. The lady was very appreciative and just excited like a child to begin reading and discover the true source of peace, the Prince of Peace, Jesus.
Our bus finally arrived and it was a good day. We headed from Richmond to Washington D.C., took a bus to Union Station. From Union Station we took the metro and another shuttle to Dulles and flew out of Dulles to Qatar. We had a layover in Qatar and then had a flight to Johannesburg with another layover there; and finally our last flight was from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth. One of our ministry hosts picked us up at the airport and we drove to Jeffery’s Bay from there.
Travelling for that long, you kind of forget what day it is or where in the world you are or where you are headed, but in that I learned first off, that I am surrounded by a community of THE funniest group of people walking this earth, and also that the Race didn’t begin when I left the States or when I arrived in South Africa or Jeffery’s Bay; it started before I even left Maryland. I know for sure that these few experiences we had while travelling are the tiniest tip of the iceberg for the rest of the opportunities we’ll get to shine the light all over South Africa.
L.O.L. (lots of love),
Julia
