L squad has been dubbed "the laboratory." With the founder of AIM as our coach, we are trying to bring kingdom not only to our ministries, but also to the World Race by trying new things out in the field in hopes of improving the experience for future Racers. This means many many different things in many different areas of our lives.
One of the newest things we are trying out, is actually something the original Racers did: RACE! When the World Race was founded, teams original raced to their next ministry locations, much like the teams do on the TV show The Amazing Race. This practice did not last very long for several reasons, but the AIM staff standing behind our squad has decided to give it another shot. Every team was given the opportunity to opt into or out of the Race. Team Tumbler opted in, after much prayer and discussion. We went back and forth on our decision for days, up until hours before the start. We had to get ourselves to Tegucigalpa, Honduras before the Race began. This was to be our "starting line." One other team would be coming from Tegucigalpa as well. The rest of the teams that were racing were starting in San Salvador, El Salvador.
We started planning two days before the Race, even though we had gotten the list of tasks about five days beforehand [see below for the list]. One of my teammates was in Tegucigalpa just a few months ago on a missions trip. She called up her contact in Tegucigalpa and got us a place to spend the night, for free! We left them with a small offering for letting us stay even though they asked for nothing. It was such a relief to have locals in Tegucigalpa show us around and help us get what we needed: food, bus tickets, taxis, etc.
We arrived in Tegucigalpa the afternoon before the Race was to start [after a five hour bus ride that turned into seven hours after breaking down on the side of the road]. My teammate really appreciated catching up with her contacts and spending the day with them. After spending the evening at the mall food court, we headed back to the church to get a good night's rest before the big day! We were also blessed by having internet at the church we stayed at. This came in handy when we received our squad leader's email telling us the Race officially started at midnight, meaning we could start tweeting then!
