Daniel Kiraly-“We’re Unscripted Bro!!!”
When I signed up for the World Race, I had no idea what I was getting myself in to. I originally signed up for a traditional route but had to defer my launch date. When I was looking into the January routes the Unscripted Route jumped out to me:
“World Race: Unscripted is a World Race journey with a primary focus of cultivating a lifestyle of listening and responding to the voice of God. As an Unscripted Racer, you will minister to the people God leads you to each day – much like the early disciples did. This journey will teach you to listen for God’s voice each day, to lead you to ministry opportunities. The goal of this experience is to train you to live a mission focused lifestyle that will succeed long after your 11-month journey.”
I loved the idea of listening and responding to the voice of God. Living in America I did not need to hear his voice each day and I knew this was a huge area I could improve in my walk. Besides this short intro on what Unscripted was, I was flying blind.
Getting ready to leave people were constantly asking me the most logical question ever, “What are you going to be doing on the World Race?” I had the most illogical response, “I have no l clue. Its going to be like a ministry sampler platter.” With from what I knew of traditional routes you find out what your ministry is going to be as you go along. With the Unscripted route having no planned ministry I truly had no idea what I would be doing this year. It’s not easy to have people donate to your trip when you can’t tell them what you will be doing with their money. But I know that the Lord called me to this and He for sure provided. Now that I have been doing this Unscripted thing for a couple months, I have a whole lot more insight on what this thing really is.
When I got to training camp in January, I was expecting mostly real-world training on how to get bus tickets and set up ministry hosts. I was completely wrong. There was very little real-world training and mostly spiritual training. Living in America you rarely have to rely on the Father in your daily life but living Unscripted you must seek Him in everything you do or else you may end up sleeping outside or missing meals. Training camp was perfect preparation for this route, and it made sense now why we did not do training camp with any of the other routes launching in January. We were given many tools to open our eyes to what the Holy Spirit was trying to show us and did a bunch of exercises to make these tools come to life.
Now that we have been living life Unscripted for two months, I can give an honest answer for what we are going to be doing the rest of the year. I don’t know. We try to make plans but as quickly as we make them the Father comes behind us and changes them. The only thing I can say for certain we are going to do is seek the Fathers voice for who He wants us to encounter each day. even if we end up with “normal” ministry for a few weeks we are still going to seek His voice outside of that. It is hard to just explain but I have an amazing story for how the Holy Spirit has made Himself known to my team.
When we were in Bangkok for debrief at the end of month 1, we were given time to pray over where the Lord wanted our team to go for the month. In the two weeks we were on our own in Cambodia we were always in the same town with at least one other team if not all three. I felt like the Lord wanted us to be different. We originally felt Chang Mai but that quickly fell to the side because that’s where most of the other teams were going. Jacob started seeing visions of rice fields and seeing Vietnam. Those weren’t too crazy because there are rice fields all-over South-East Asia and Vietnam was just a couple countries over. We talked to Kylee in Bangkok about what the odds of us going to Vietnam were. We expected to get shot down right away, but she was open to the idea. She just wanted us to take a little time praying for it. The team decided to just make a short-term proposal to just head to the area of Udon Thani in North-East Thailand which was on the way to Vietnam. When we started looking for hostels there was not anything to choose from in budget, so we looked into Airbnb. Not much in budget except for a house that was big enough to sleep 5, had running water, and right next to a rice field. We knew this was right where we were supposed to be because of Jacob’s visions, and we booked the place for a couple nights. When we heard back from the Airbnb host, we got excited because she spoke great English and we thought it would be a great opportunity to minister to her. When we finally arrived in Nong Khai and made it out to her village we quickly realized why the Lord had called us to this tiny village in North-East Thailand. Everyone in Thailand holds the King in extremely high regards. If you don’t you will get arrested. Well Sarisa had her calendar of the King hanging up. Right next to it and slightly higher was a picture of the King of Kings. We ended up spending almost two weeks with the only Christian in this part of the country that we happened to meet through Airbnb because she had rice fields in the description for her house. We spent our time with her just loving her and being with her. It is hard to grow closer to the Lord when you have absolutely zero community and nowhere to go to church. As we were getting ready to leave, we still were confused about the Lord showing us Vietnam when we were not able to go to Vietnam. We took Sarisa to dinner our last night with here and she wanted to go to a Vietnamese restaurant. Funny. Well at dinner we find out that a lot of people from Vietnam fled to the Nong Khai area after the war and that her family is from Vietnam. This completed the vision the Lord had given us for ministry for the month. We expected that we were going to go to Vietnam and work in rice fields and share the gospel with a family. What the Lord had was for us to go stay near rice fields to encourage one of His precious daughters and He brought Vietnam to us. This is just one small story of how the Father has absolutely blown my mind so far on this trip just because my team and I wake up every day eager to hear His voice.
The tradition World Race routes are amazing, but the Unscripted route truly prepares you for life after the race. Back at home we are most likely going to be working secular jobs, not doing ministry for a living. We will have to listen to who the Fathers wants us to reach each day. Living Unscripted does an amazing job preparing us for hear what He has to say in our day to day lives. We spend most of our time just building relationships with people around us. We just want to love people every day. we are not here to save the world but to plant seeds because the Father will send others behind us to water them and then others to reap the harvest. After a little over two months on the World Race I feel like I have learned enough to take home and make a difference in my community. I can’t wait to see what else the Lord has for me to learn this year and I can’t wait to take what I learn and share it with everyone at home.
“Life is ministry, ministry is life.”
