(Over half of those are on planes, buses, and losing days from time zones)
5 countries.
(Costa Rica, El Salvador, USA, China, The Philippines)
A Whole Lot of Time Zones.
(We are only experiencing January 2nd for a few hours, whattt?!)
Yet another travel day has begun, and we are a little over half way through this crazy 4 day adventure. I am sitting in the Hong Kong airport, full of Dim Sum and drinking a Mint Mocha from Starbucks, and I cannot help but be amazed how calm I am.
Since when do those three things go together? Since when am I so comfortable to be flying around the world? When did this become normal?
This trip really does rock your world. Only the 64 people that are here with me in this airport understand what I have experienced in the past 48 hours, and only 6 of those have truly experienced a good majority of my life the past three months.
When God called me to this trip back in early June, I thought He was crazy. It went something like this:
Me: God, what do you want me to do? What can I do that will grow me and bring me closer to You?
God: Go on The World Race.
Me: Is there anything else? Like, anything else?
God: You asked what I wanted. That is what I want.
Me: Ohh boy. Alrighty then!
Give or take some time lapses, that is how it went. And though I figured that traveling the world, spreading His love with the hopeless and loving the orphans and the widows would affect me I never thought it would radically change me.
But my life will never be the same.
Or, I sure hope and pray it never will be. It would be so easy to go home from this and ignore all I have seen, all I have learned, all I have experienced.
But this is not a one week mission trip. This is living 11 months of my life for others. This is living these 11 months of my life, and the rest of my time on this earth, for God.
And now there are only eight months left.
2011 has begun. And with it a new section of the world is being revealed to us. To me.
In the next hour, we will be boarding another plane for Manila, the capital city of The Philippians. After that, five teams, including my own, will spend five more hours at that airport, then board another plane to travel to the southern most island for our month of ministry with Kids International.
I have no idea what the next month holds for us. I have no idea what the next 24 hours hold for us. But I know one thing: God will be faithful every step of the way.
Happy New Years everyone!
Love from Hong Kong, China
(Pictures will be added later. The internet is too slow to upload any.)
