IM BACK! Prepare yourself to be absolutely overwhelmed with the amount of blogs. I have 3 months of stories that I’m finally taking time to write down (thanks long bus rides in Mongolia), and I really want to make sure I don’t miss anything about this incredible, challenging, hard, wonderful journey we commonly refer to as “the race”. Instead of picking up where I left off in Indonesia (which I fully plan on doing just as fast as my little fingers can type), I want to break for a minute and tell you guys about an amazing time that happened just within the past week or so. Just to preface, it’s will sound a little dramatic, but this story is 100% true. First, context.
If I haven’t already mentioned this, I am serving the squad in a capacity called “squad logistics coordinator” with my teammate Whitney. This basically means we are the folks who try to get our squad from point A to point B and figure out the details of travel in between. I’m probably going to dedicate an entire blog to just talking about this role and what that looks like day to day, but that is not for right now. Back to the story. After our debrief in Myanmar (we will get there, I promise) the plan was for the squad to break up into groups of 4 or 5 and overland travel through China, from the south in Kunming and Shanghai to meet up as a squad in Beijing after about 2 weeks. I had spent a good chunk of time and energy planning out a route from Yangon, Myanmar to Kunming, China and was excited for the prospect of covering a lot of ground in China (look at a map, it’s a long way from Kunming to Beijing). So, we get to debrief, and are informed that another option is now on the table…
Cambodia.
Cambodia?
The situation was presented like this– AIM was planning an event at their newest overseas base, a kingdom-business-guesthouse called Overflow in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The staff at Overflow had sent an SOS to the main office in Gainesville, saying that they were very much in need of help getting ready for and during “The Awakening”. The Awakening was designed to bring people together and be a time of refreshment and refocusing, a spiritual awakening. 3 full squads, the long-term team from India, Cambodian pastors and ministry contacts and hosts, AIM main office staff, and the long term team at Overflow would all be in attendance. And us. At least, some of us. Since we were in the same neck of the woods, at least by World Race standards (two countries away), we were asked if we could come help.
Our leadership laid all of this out in front of us and let us decide individually what we wanted to do, what we were feeling led to. I prayed about it and really felt the Lord saying, “This one is up to you man, I don’t care which way you pick, it’s going to be good either way”.
Come on God! Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it! How am I supposed to pick between two awesome things, both of which I really want to do and feel would be great. I don’t know why I found myself complaining, it’s really an awesome spot to be in, but that doesn’t make choosing any easier. So, I talked to some people about it, and in the end, it came down to the fact that this Awakening thing is happening once, at least in this place and with this specific group of people, and I have a ten year Chinese visa. I can come back any time I want. So I, and 6 others, decided to make the trek to Cambodia. And dang, I’m glad I did.
We rented this minivan from Yangon to Mae Sot, Thailand, and spent a day and a half there? Details are fuzzy, even just two weeks out. From Mae Sot, we took another bus to Bangkok, spent a few hours at the bus station, and took yet another bus to Siem Reap. Quite a bit of travel, but everything was so easy, and the busses were much nicer than expected, and honestly, overland travel is pretty great. Its cheaper than flying, often more comfortable than flying (well, maybe often is a stretch), less security to go through than an airport (your 3.6 oz tube of toothpaste is not considered to be a dangerous weapon on a bus), you get to see more of the country that you are actually in, and you get to travel with local people, how they travel. We arrived in Cambodia, made our way to Overflow and crashed for the evening. We spent the next several days working on small (and some not so small, looking at you, moldy wall and green pool) projects around the guesthouse. The work was tedious at times, but our team was awesome and really took a lot of pride in doing the small things well, doing everything with excellence. We had fun, and it was so fulfilling to come alongside another ministry and help bear their burdens and reduce their stress. Emily, the manager for Overflow and a member of the LTM team in Cambodia, is awesome and it was just a blessing getting to meet her and partner with and serve her well. When you have this much fun doing work, fun is just extra fun. We got to swim in their pool, see Ankor Wat, and eat homemade corn dogs. CORN DOGS. IN CAMBODIA! The Lord just really knows how to speak to my soul is all I’m saying.
After about a week of preparation, it was time for the Awakening to begin. We greeted all of the teams and local pastors, had some sweet reunions with our friends from S-Squad (we were together at training camp and launch) and got to make some new friends with O-Squad (going into month 8) and I-Squad (going into month 10). It was amazing seeing the Lord bring people together from all walks of life, all different places on the race and around the world, and all with different experiences and perspectives to share. It was a really neat picture of what the church can look like. We prayed together, we ate together, we worshipped together, we worked together and we played together. We “did life together”. I am so grateful for the Awakening and what it meant to me, it was just an amazing time of connection with Papa.
Ok, so I think I have finally done enough set-up to actually tell the story I wanted to tell.
It was the last day of the Awakening, and by the afternoon it was really setting in that we had only hours left in this space, with this group of people. Gary Black, a leader from AIM who did most of the teaching, (also one of the dudes who helped get the race off the ground back in the day) gathered the men from all of the squads together for “man time” on the roof. We talked about what it means to be a man, a real man, a man after God’s own heart. He told us about a book called “Adam’s Return” and encouraged us to check it out. I confess I have not yet, but I haven’t forgotten about it yet either, so there is hope.
We talked about the four archetypes of men – the warrior, the sage, the lover, and the king. The warrior is a man who is passionate, dangerous, and fierce. The sage is a man of wisdom and knowledge. The lover is a man of gentleness, depth and heart. The king is a rare man, for he is all of these and has learned how to live in a balance of the three. We broke up into groups, shared our experiences thus far on the race and prayed big prayers for one another. We ended the time in worship. Men who are reading this, I don’t know if you have ever experienced times of worship with only other men, but I can say first hand that there is something powerful to it. There is something powerful that the Lord honors when we communally check our pride at the door, open our hearts up and come and sit at the throne together. As our time of worship was drawing to an end, I walked over to the edge of the roof. Did I mention we were on a roof? Well it’s important for this next part. So I walk over to the balcony, and I’m staring out at this storm that is building on the horizon. I don’t know what it is about rooftops, but some of my most intimate moments with the Father have started with me standing on the top of a building. I’m fixated on the storm thats rolling in, watching it build and head our way, and the Lord speaks to me.
He says to me, “Sam, I’m about to send you into some storms. Storms are dangerous, and they can be scary places when you are in the midst of them. But the beauty of storms is that they bring rain to the dry places, they bring rejuvenation and life. And you don’t need to fear, because I’m going to be with you in the storms.”
Whoa. Ok.
As I’m thinking over all of this, Eric is winding down the worship set and I feel Holy Spirit tugging on my heart to share the word I just received with the group. This is a big step of faith for me. I mean, a few months ago I really couldn’t tell you a time in my life where the Lord had just “given me a word” to put it in AIM phraseology. That definitely trends towards the more charismatic side of the spectrum, but God has been showing me throughout my race that He is much, much bigger than the box I put him in so I could try to understand Him.
A god that we can fully understand, that we can fully comprehend isn’t much of a god.
So I stepped out in faith and shared with the guys. It was met with mostly silence, but I think it was just a greater understanding of exactly what it is the Lord is calling us to. One of the themes of the weekend was suffering, and I think we all understood the seriousness of what these next stormy seasons could look like. We said one final prayer as group, then began heading down off the roof.
But I wasn’t done. And I didn’t think God was done with me either. I stayed and sang and worshipped and prayed, the whole time fixed on this storm that had been building and blowing in for some time. In the middle of all of this, Emily shouts up to me from the ground, “Sam, is that you? You look like a king in his castle!” Remember the four archetypes? Yeah, that was a pretty cool moment God using someone else to speak truth about how he sees me and who He says I am. (This moment was especially cool, since I had been walking through some identity stuff, really diving into who I am and who He has made me to be, and really being in a place of confusion overall.) So that moment comes and goes, I continue praying and worshipping and watching. The storm is coming closer and closer, and I pray this:
“God, rain down on this dry and weary heart!”
And it begins to sprinkle.
And the rain picks up.
And it keeps raining harder and harder.
And pretty soon I’m standing in the middle of a south-east Asian thunderstorm, an absolute downpour (in the South we would call this one a gulley-warsher.
I sang at the top of my lungs, I got down on my face and prayed. I prayed for things that scare me, for things that I know He has put in my heart, but that are way too big for me to do on my own. I danced around like a fool, I yelled out like no one was watching.
Because no one was watching. They were inside, like sane people.
But not me. I’m on the roof, totally exposed, shivering, soaked to the bone, thinking I’m about to get hypothermia, and I’m experiencing a closeness with my God that I have felt only a few times in my life.
When I think about the decision I made, to go to Cambodia instead of sticking with the plans that I had made, I’m thankful. Even though I know China would have been cool, and there was a lot of neat testimony from the groups that did go, I wouldn’t trade those moments of intimacy for 100 years in China.
