This blog was originally posted by Shannon Meador but since we have been on the same team for the past four months it pertains to our World Race experience thus far and it was just too good to not repost…
Only on the World Race
- Do you go into a convenience store in South Africa only to spray yourself with the tester perfume, walk out, and get back on your 35 hour bus ride
- Will your entire team get bacterial infections from eating in a garbage dump
- Do you attempt to steal an entire package of toilet paper rolls in a hotel in China
- Do you eat every meal as if it might be your last
- Will you tell everyone to get all their farts out in the Pick and Pay before getting back on the bus
- Do you get attacked by a yak in Tibet
- Do you sing praises of joy while puking excessively and your team cheers outside the bathroom door
- Do people ask to take pictures with you because you’re white
- Do you sleep on the aisle floor of an 18 hour train ride
- Do you seize every opportunity to eat, even when you have no clue what it is
- Do you live off of less than 3 USD per day for food
- Do you sit with your legs in the air on travel days to avoid “elephant feet”
- Do you receive tons of compliments on how nice you look for changing your shirt or brushing your hair
- Do you not go ANYWHERE without your water bottle – the bathroom, the grocery store, the next room… etc
- Do you long for people at restaurants to give you their scraps instead of throwing them in the trash
- Do you brush your teeth under a mango tree*
- Do you watch children play softball with limes*
- Do you learn how to make Mexican flour tortillas… in China*
- Is peanut butter a delicacy
- Do your prayers start to become a lot more desperate
- Do you take the extra sugar packets from the tables at restaurants and store them in your backpack for your oatmeal or coffee later
- Do you lose your camera and break your computer in the same week
- Do your outfits look like something that should be on “what not to wear” on a daily basis
- Do you make up your own terminology that only your teammates understand
- Do you talk really slow, loud, and simplified because you’re so used to people not speaking English
- Do you go up to a vender selling ramen in China and bawk and flap your arms like a chicken to ask if the ramen is chicken flavored*
- Does your entire perspective on money and how you spend it change
- Does feedback, honor and preference become a part of your daily life
- Do you find the prophetic meaning in everything
- Does a Buddhist Nun come up to you in a monastery, grab your hand and walk beside you with absolutely no words exchanged between the two of you
- Do you learn to live, challenge and grow with people like you would never believe
- Do you constantly ask yourself “Is this really my life?”
- Does God somehow make raising $15,000 easy
- Do you spend Halloween in China, Thanksgiving in South Africa, and Christmas in Mozambique
- Do you leave your family, home, job and FIANCE simply because God told you to
- Do you eat an 18 day old fermented duck egg*
- Do you learn how to two step in the rain in Mozambique*
- Do you take the liberty to walk in the middle of the road everywhere you go
- Do you walk for an hour to get chocolate, diet coke, and more hair for your weave
- Do you find a way to live in harmony with three other women in a concrete room about the size of your bathroom at home with all of their belongings plus 4 mosquito nets hanging from the ceiling and questionable electricity
- Do you have a candlelight dinner of dumplings with your monk friend at a restaurant in China because the power went out
- Do you have to hide from the police in a secret room in your hotel in China because it’s illegal for you to be there
- Do you play Uno while hiding from the police in China
- Does facebook become a lot less interesting
- Do you wear the equivalent of one or two weeks’ worth of clothes in the States for 11 months straight
- Do you become so much more aware of the favor of God because you have a lot less of an opportunity to “find” your own favor
- Does your definition of “missionary” completely change
- Do you realize that YOU are who God wants to use to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth
- Do you see God move in prisons, cemeteries, monasteries and dumps
- Do you hunger and thirst for God like never before
