My nine months overseas has come to an end and it has left me speechless. I want to write all about my adventures, heart aches, and crazy moments but how can I put everything I’ve lived through into words? The World Race has changed me. I’ve grown up and into the woman that God desires me to be. I’ve learned who I am in the Lord and on my own. I shed the skin of my old self and grew a new one. My circumstances have pushed me to my breaking point more than once. Someone told me before I left for the Race that it would be the worst year of my life and the best year of my life simultaneously. I didn’t understand then but now I do. When you live over seas, life is always unexpected. Everyday is a new day and it’s constantly changing. You never know what to expect. So imagine being placed in a foreign country with people you’ve only known about a week and being expected to do life with them. It’s challenging believe me. But in time the strangers become family and the foreign places become home. My new kind of family has given me sisters and brothers who have pushed me out of comfort zone daily. To be better. To serve better. To love better. There have been many challenging times while I’ve been away. Being away from home for nine months is harder than it seems. I’ve been sicker more times than I can count since I left America. Ive gotten bronchitis multiple times, stomach bugs multiple times, and the big one, typhoid. I’m not going to lie, when I had typhoid I wondered if I was even going to be able to make it back home I was so sick. My team got stranded in Manila (the capital of the Philippines) for two weeks over Christmas away from the place we called home. My team watched a tuk tuk have a head on collision with a van right in front of us. But despite all the hard times and heart ache, I have made it to the end. Looking back I see even more clearly how beautiful of a time this has been. I know that without leaving my comfort zone and coming on this trip that I would not be the person I am today. Just like gold is refined in fire, so are we. What is crazy is that I know I’m coming home a changed person. A person with a new perspective on life. My life has a new direction and purpose which is to follow the Lord whole heartedly and the rest will figure itself out. I now know what it means to live a life on mission. What I also know is how hard it’s going to be to come home. I’m leaving a life behind that I love and that has given me purpose. I haven’t slept in a bed by myself in nine months. I never have hot water. Showers are a rare thing. Fruit and vegetables are non existent over seas when you can only afford carbs. As Americans, we live life in such abundance. Coming back into that life will be hard. I’ve worn the same 6 outfits for nine months and I will go back to a closet full of clothes. But now it doesn’t seem fair when I’ve seen so many others without. Of course there will be challenges like there are in all things but it will also be a wonderful reuniting of me and my loved ones. Saying goodbye to the World Race will take time to heal from and i can’t wait to start the new season of life I have waiting for me at home. America here I come!
