Greetings!
I am writing this in the kitchen of my ministry hosts house in Ecuador! I’ve been thinking for a couple days on what I wanted to write about. Finally, I have settled on one topic of SO many that I could write about. So, today I’m going to tell you what the world race is really like. You can go on several different social media sources and find countless pictures of young men and women holding orphans and with dirty faces, happy giggly faces, and a world racer smiling away. There are many of those pictures floating around that glamorize living life as a missionary in foreign countries. Just to set the record straight, I’m not bashing those pictures, missionaries, or their mission. However, I would like to bring attention to the fact that not all mission work is serving dirty orphans in Africa or India.
There are many benefits to the world race and I expected so many wonderful things from the world race, but the one thing I didn’t expect from the world race is for it to be difficult. Go figure. My first week here has been one of the best and most difficult of my whole life. I say that because many things have happened this week. Once we arrived in Quito last Wednesday (has it been that long?!). We slept for about 4 hours once we got here and were up bright and early for ministry at 6am. Well, 12pm roles around and we find out there was an emergency at our ministry. Oh well. So, we figured we would try again another day and finally made contact with our ministry by Sunday. My team and I were SO excited. We didn’t totally know what we were going to do, but we figured something amazing and wonderful like evangelism. I was so excited when we finally arrived on Monday and found out that we would be teaching english! However, there was a “catch” to it. This whole week we had to hand out flyers to advertise, clean the church, and fold clothes. I was a little upset to say the least. Where were my orphans to love on? Where were the lost people we were going to evangelize to?
Well, this week I was humbled by my team and God many times. He reminded me that cleaning a church, folding clothes, and teaching english to those in the community so that they could know Jesus and have a better life because of it was just as important. Someone from my team said “I am happy to travel around the world, fold clothes, and clean a church if that’s what will serve these people and help advance the Gospel.” WOW! My jaw dropped. I had the worst attitude about our ministry, but it completely changed. I might get to work with orphans and children, which I would truly enjoy, but I am more than content serving in any way I can now.
The world race was never just about serving the orphans; serving orphans is very important, but not the only reason why I’m here. I’m here for Jesus Christ. I’m serving in any way I can, which could be folding clothes, evangelizing, or ministering to orphans. God doesn’t have restrictions on who you can serve; you can serve and share the gospel with anyone. Living across the world, being vulnerable with your team, and doing ministry that was on the top of your list is all hard. It doesn’t always look like the perfect Instagram picture, but you’re serving God in ways you can’t even imagine. You’ll growing in ways that are hardly imaginable. You’ll experience Jesus like you never had before. And you’ll have a life changing experience.
That’s what the world race is. Difficult, challenging, painful, full of tears, but also wonderful, amazing, life changing, meaningful, and so full of Jesus.
