Alright, it’s been awhile since I’ve done this, over 3 months in fact… so we’ll try and hit a few things that have happened along the way and hopefully I have a few more personal blogs over the next week or so.
Quite honestly, it’s been really hard to want to blog recently. It’s gotten really hard to put into words what exactly I’m experiencing with people who are not experiencing it as well. So much is happening and I want to “suck the marrow” out of everything and out of relationships with the people I’m with. I don’t want to miss a moment, esp as the clock slowly ticks down towards the end of this journey. “There and back again”,,, but what if I’m not ready to come back? What if I love this community? What if these people who were strangers less than a year ago are now family? I mean, my new team is the “Dirty Lovin’ Peterson’s” cause we truly feel like a family and want our team to be a family so we chose a family name (Peterson) and gave each other “titles” within the family (I’m grandpa, even though I’m the 2nd youngest, it’s mostly due to all the puns that are often seen as “dad” jokes and probably cause I’m a little crazy). These people are family and they will physically be leaving soon, dispersing like the mist of a waterfall, so I want every bit I can get out of my last time with them.
All that to say, the last 3 months… 4 months really, have been crazy. From Cambodia and my son “Jack” (see previous blogs) we traveled to Nepal. Nepal was probably my hardest month on the Race. The country was beautiful but I let expectations and other things I couldn’t control dictate my month instead of letting them go and controlling what I could and making it a great month. Ministry wasn’t what I expected, other issues arose, travel was hard, it was just a hard month. Nepal was such a beautiful country, there were some awesome things that happened during ministry from playing worship at this zoo/park thing and having an old man dance in the middle of our circle to sharing the Gospel with dozens of children from the school that was next door during one of our off-days. Traveling in Nepal was terrifying for most and unsettling for all. There were times where our busses felt like they were going to fall off the mountain. It was insane, but the views were fantastic.
India was next and I was on a new team. 4 people switched teams between Nepal and India and I was one of the four, so I had to transition into that in India, learning their quirks and they had to learn mine, learning how to love 6 new people… it’s not easy, loving people well is hard, it takes effort and desire, but I poured out to my new team right away. Part of my transition also included becoming field producer for my new team, which meant doing the lion’s share of the filming for the documentary that we have been working on this whole year. That was a huge transition in itself because it takes time, particularly cutting some into my free time, it makes ministry a bit different because now part of my ministry focus is documenting what my team does, but it is a huge blessing and it is oftentimes so beautiful to be behind the camera. India had it’s challenges but it was a fruitful month. In the month it was hard but as I transitioned away from India there was a lot of transformation, particularly in regards to worship. A lot of our ministry was just worshipping in preparation for the day, we would start nearly every day with worship from 10am-2pm and we would do all sorts of things. Sometimes it was just listening to worship music but we also did worship through prayer and art and praying for visions and words, we also played a lot of guitar and sang. That month has helped transform my ideas and beliefs about worship and helped emphasize the power of worship to me.
Transition to Swaziland, month 8… it was a chaotic month, with PVT (Parent Vision Trip… where parents can be invited by Racers to join them in the field for almost a week) towards the end and a debrief after that, the month with my team was only about 2 weeks long. There were a ton of different ministries my team was working with, or rather, different locations but similar ministries, so I chose to focus exclusively on filming and doing a little ministry at a hospice center and the local hospital. Filming was tough because my camera broke during travel day to Swazi. Somewhere along the way, probably on the plane (or going through the 10 million security points that made me unpack my entire media bag… not a fun process) the screen got cracked, so I filmed that month while only being able to see about 40% of my screen at the start and eventually the crack consumed my screen so that I could only see about 5% a few days before PVT. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done; there were times I was almost literally filming blind, but through it God taught me a lot about truly seeing things. I was able to see teammates more in the Truth of who they are, as God sees them; I was able to capture more than I ever imagined with what little I could see. I wish I could watch every second of footage I captured that month and just relish in what God allowed me to see and what God allowed me to capture with a broken camera. Sometimes the beauty is not in what we see but in what God reveals to us, what God allows us to see with His perfect sight. And PVT, it was great to see my dad, it was probably the best worship I’ve led/experienced in my life (partially due to the continuity of 5 days of worship in a row… AND… a lot of the parents were impacted and transformed by worship which was awesome to watch and participate in). I believe there is still much to come of my dad coming out to the field, but that’s a convo for another time.
And finally, this past month, Botswana, month 9, also… my birth month! We had team changes again, this time the whole squad, and I have been blessed with an awesome team. I still have the same team leader as the previous two months, am reunited on this new team with a former teammate and are with three other stellar people. The people on this team have gone through a lot on the Race and we are all starting to live into God’s freedom and overcome past trials and challenges and it has been beautiful in just one month to see all that God has been doing in their lives and what He is continuing to do. There was a lot of redemption of different things in Botswana on my team… old wounds, God-given gifts, even just spiritual attacks at the beginning of the month and fighting through those. The month of Botswana was a special month of redemption and God really just pouring out blessings on this new team. I am still field producer, but now there is a 2nd field producer on my team (the Squad started with 8 teams, but now there are only 7 teams, but we still maintain 8 camera bags and 8 Field Producers, so one team has 2… that’s my team!), so we get to work together, collaborate, and really try to do even better than if we were each by ourself. It was an incredible month at an incredible ministry. It was probably my favorite month of the Race and there were some hard goodbyes said, but God has a lot in store for this next month and even for post-Race, which starts in 2 short months. God is good.
