Once I got on the race I couldn’t help but be surprised how normal and ordinary my days seemed. Of course almost anything that you do seems glamorous and exciting the first few months because you’re in another country but that eventually passes after month 3, 4, or 5. I realized that all the WR blogs I read shared only the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Today I will share what a good day on the world race is really like. Just know that each day will usually feel like 3 or 4 days yet the weeks will fly past.
The morning:
First things first, quiet time. Today I was a good little Christian and actually woke up in time to spend time with Jesus before breakfast. Breakfast was at 8am on a covered basketball court with 17 other people. We are lucky this month because we have a cook and we don’t have to fix 3 meals a day for 18 people. After washing my dish in a basin of water I waited to find out what work was around the property for us to do. Waiting on people is probably what we do 30% of our race.
After finding out that we were digging into the side of a hill to make it more “slopey” we realized there weren’t 18 shovels for each of us so we decided to take shifts. After waiting for the first group to get tired I read more of Romans. Around 10:30 I worked up a very decent sweat and got my first blister on the race from shoveling, stabbing, yes stabbing, and pick axing (I just made up a new verb) the dirt hill. At 12 we all ate lunch and prepared for our afternoon ministries. Today I was going with Pastor JoJo to do house visits.
The Afternoon:
The first house we went to ended up being the tribal leaders of the largest tribe in the Philippines. These men attended Pastor JoJo’s church and were in need of encouragement. We prayed for healing, encouragement, faith, and joy before we found out one of the men was a blacksmith. After ministering for about 30 minutes we all looked at daggers and swords that he had made. Two of our teammates went home because they felt sick but Meredith and I went on to another house with Pastor JoJo. The mother who lived in the next house had just had a baby 4 days before and after praying for her and her family we prayed for the newborn baby and got to name him! It was around 4 in the afternoon as this point so we took a multicab back to our camp and prepared for feedback.
The Evening:
Team time/Feedback was at 5 and today it was a difficult one. Just know coming into the race that feedback is sometimes the most amazing part of the day or the hardest. After feedback we had dinner at 6 under the covered backetball court and then go ready to leave for the campus ministry. Both WR teams and a team of Passport boys climbed into our van and drove back into town to attend Wiggle (a college ministry). We arrived and played some ice breaker games before the teaching.Afterward we hung out with some Filipino students before heading back to camp. The last few hours before bed are filled with bucket showers, movies from someone’s hard drive, worship, or whatever. I was pretty tired so I went straight to bed with my ear plugs and eye mask.
So there ya have it, a very "typical" day on the World Race.
