Adventures in Missions
AIM is a non-denominational Christian ministry that sends thousands of people on short term mission trips each year. Founded in 1989 by Seth Barnes, AIM organizes various length trips for students, adults, and families. AIM desires to bring the hope of Christ to the world by loving on the world. AIM also desires to empower and activate a generation by providing teaching and opportunity for those of us going out to grow and deepen our relationship and dependence on God. The longest trip AIM organizes and sends out is the World Race.
World Race
WR was dreamed up in 2005 and the first WR squad was sent out January 2006. On the World Race teams serve in 11 countries in 11 months. The original countries were chosen from Seth’s personal mission experiences, and eleven months were chosen so that the racers would be home for the holidays. Hundreds of 21-35 year-olds are sent out each year on WR squads. A beautiful part of WR is that AIM is willing to follow Holy Spirit and modify the Race or try new things. One of those new things is Fusion.
World Race Fusion
After completing his own Race in 2013, Scott Kwak felt called to Korea to organize WR Korea. Over time the vision changed to World Race Fusion, intentionally multinational squads (there have been Racers from outside of North America in the past, but the majority of Racers are from the USA). We are the first WRF squad and comprised of 19 American Racers, 3 Korean Racers, and 1 Welsh Racer. In addition, we will be joined along the way by Racers who will stay for a month or two of ministry. For example, a Vietnamese woman will be joining us for the next two months while we are in Cambodia and Vietnam. The two biggest challenges for international racers are visas and funds. WRF is working to overcome these obstacles.
Training Camp
Every WR squad goes through Training Camp, a time for meeting your squad, learning the WR policies, and being empowered through teachings. Most squads go through Training Camp in Georgia at AIM headquarters 6-8 weeks before their race. Due to our multinational team, Training Camp for us we in Thailand. This made it more intimate, and we had a better racer to leader ratio. Seth Barnes flew out to teach most of the sessions and our coaches were much more involved then most squad coaches get to be. We also got to enjoy the gorgeous Eubank Ranch.
Lots of activation, the opportunity to try out what we have been learning.
Launch
Launch typically is when the squads reunite a few days before leaving the USA. Launch is a few days of rebonding with the your team and getting excited. It’s a refresher of Training Camp. Rather than a few months between Training Camp and Launch our team did them back to back. That was our first two weeks in Thailand and why our ministry is not starting until Monday, January 19. Though we left the USA on January 1, we officially Launched on January 15.
Racer
A individual between the ages of 21-35 crazy enough to step out of their comfort zone, out of their life, to live for 11 months with a group of complete strangers who become family in 11 different countries on a shoe string budget with all of their belongings in a backpack serving God’s people, loving the least of these, and being radically changed by Holy Spirit.
Squad
The entire group of racers on a particular WR route. We are World Race Fusion and there are 23 racers on our squad. Five other squads launched in January 2015 and each of them can have as many as 50-60 racers.
Team
Each squad is broken into smaller teams. Ministry is done in teams and often the various teams in a squad will be spread out and not see each other throughout the month, only coming together at the end of the month and then to travel to the next country. Teams allow us to be open and build deeper community and relationships with a small number of people. Our squad has 4 teams and my team, Team Overcome, is 6 women.
Leadership
Our squad is truly blessed with leadership. Traveling with us for the first five months are our three Squad Leaders, alumni racers who guide us, hold us accountable, teach us the ways of the race, and ensure we having fun. Daniel, See Eun and Diane are an awesome team themselves, so encouraging and so much fun. Scott is our squad mentor. WRF is his heart, and he will be joining us periodically as we travel (we hope). Scott is our Opa, our big brother. Tim and Karen Dilbeck are our coaches. Coaches are like parents, pastors, counselors, and teachers all rolled up. Papa T. and Mama Ren are also our friends. Finally, we were joined for Training and Launch by Mary, Michelle, and Sun Ju three strong women of God who have be a part of WRF from the beginning either in Korea or Georgia. Mary trained us, Michelle lead worship (both alumni racers) and Sun Ju loved on us and spoke life into us.
Back LR: Seth, Tim, Scott, Diane, and Daniel. Front LR: Michelle, Mary, Karen, See Eun, and Sun Ju.
