I am officially on The World Race! That sentence was typed and followed by a myriad of thoughts that tried to put into another sentence the emotions that also followed…. "holy smokes" and "wow" don't really do it all justice but its about all my little brain can come up with right now.
I arrived in D.C. on August 1st, found my way to the baggage claim where I was greeted by a few of my other squad mates and waited to greet the rest of them as they came in off the planes. A few hours later we were greeted by the staff and then all the sudden they disappeared and our ride showed up; about 14 of us crammed in to 3 vehicles with all our packs. I got the immense pleasure, and I really do mean pleasure because it was a pretty comfy ride, of getting to stretch out on top of a bunch of the packs in the back of a van for our trek through traffic up to Alexandria, Virginia. We arrived at a seminary's campus where we are currently camped out on the lawn. We set up home for the week, our tents, and have since been embracing this new way of life.
It has been a great, overwhelming, exciting, and so much more couple of days so far. The first evening and day it was just team leaders, finance people and our two logistics guys here. We got briefed and trained about some of the things we will be walking into in just a few short days, and then today the rest of our squad came!! This morning before the thrill of that happening though, I got to spend some sweet time with the other team leaders and staff. We had a meeting to talk about what exactly team leaders do on the world race, which was great to find out since I'm gonna have to do all of that in, oh about 3 days. I say that kind of sarcastically, but honestly I love the culture that this ministry develops through the seemingly limited and "last minute" information that we are given and the way that every "meeting" time begins with extended times of prayer and listening to God speak, and how time itself just isn't a major concern. It is very different from all things I've experienced previously, and while being nerve wracking at times, is proving to be such a freedom giving experience.
Some things I've already been hearing from the Lord and am excited to walk more into with Him are centered around jus that; the way He gives us freedom, how He loves us through it and how we love Him through it and the greater level of intimacy that it allows us. That may seem a bit over-arching, I realize a lot of things and lessons can all come out those ideas, but I'm really excited because of that; I'm confident that as these things continue to come up throughout the race I'll have more and more specific things to share with you and stories to be told. This is just the beginning, literally, of a whole plethora of new experiences for me… physically, emotionally, and spiritually… and I so look forward to diving in and attempting to coherently share all of them with you. Please note the "attempting to" ha and have grace for me when it's not just a successful attempt.
I want to give a shout out to everyone back home who is supporting me, praying for me, and loving me so much more incredibly than I could have ever asked. I want you to know that you are very much a part of this journey for me. It's gonna suck to be away from you for this time, for reals, but the Lord is giving me a joy in it by beginning to show me how through that particular type of suffering and longing for you, I'm gonna be learning a lot about how to love people in a way that He does and that I haven't really before. I'm blessed by you so much and consider it such a joy that I have many people to miss.
With that I'll end, because I'm sitting in one of the halls here on the campus and the lights just shut off on me. But i'll leave you with some pics from these last couple days 🙂
Home for the week.
Hangin, literally, out in the some hammocks during down time before the rest of our squad arrived.
Some squad mates: Kelly who is on my team, "MaBinti Wa Yesu" and Lacee who is on another team but such a wonderful lady.
Some of our guys. Mike, Drew, and Tommy also known as T-Chap. Drew and Tommy are our incredible logistics guys who will be helping navigate our squad around the whole world.
