What do you think of when you think of vacation? Comfort comes to mind. Fun. Entertaining. Relaxing. Maybe a little travel and spending some time in luxury that you might not get back home. Good food. Good company. Freedom. Doing what you want, when you want, where you want. Condo on the beach. Disney World. Trip to a big city.
That’s what I think of when I think of vacation. In fact, any time I’ve taken a vacation, it revolved around most of those things. I’m sure when you take vacations, they include most of them too.
On the very surface, the World Race might seem like a vacation to you. Travel the world. Experience different cultures. But lets go a little deeper into what the World Race is. Spontaneity. We will be living on a day-by-day or even hour-by-hour basis. Community. You know that nice, relaxing alone time you might spend on the beach sun-bathing or reading your favorite book? Sayanora. 24/7 community. We will ALWAYS be with at least one member of our team, if not all of them at all times. And I mean at all times. For safety reasons we cannot be alone. We eat together, work together, play together, sleep together, yes even go out to the bathroom together. Starting January we can kiss our alone-time goodbye. And while community sounds great, I am an introvert. I recharge by being alone. But I guess I’m going to have to get over that. Speaking of bathrooms, I’ve had bathrooms as nice as ones that include hottubs and spaciousness and walk in showers with one of those rainforest showerheads…I mean, if you’re on vacation you want to treat yourself, right? Well guess what the bathrooms look like where we’ll be going? The woods. Squatty potties. Outhouses that are basically just a tiny building with no circulation with a hole in the floor. Maybe we’ll get the luxury of a western toilet, but chances are it doesn’t flush and can’t take toilet paper, which means throwing your toilet paper in a wastebasket next to the toilet and grabbing a bucket of water to manually flush the toilet with. Sounds awesome right? Oh, but we get to travel! Yes, yes we do. Maybe more than we’ll like. Between plane rides, taxis, tuk-tuks, and 30 hour bus rides, or potentially missing our bus and having to wait another 15 hours for a bus we’ll spend 30 hours on. Not to mention these buses will be so crowded that we all will be sitting on top of each other, squished together like sardines (sounds super safe, right?). Heh, speaking of safety… I mean, when I go on vacation, I don’t have to worry about getting sick (although one time visiting my cousin in Pennsylvania I got a wicked cold that could only be remedied by cups and cups of oolong tea and throat numbing spray). But really. Nothing to worry about. On the World Race, however, there’s a chance I’ll get pretty sick. Parasites, diarrhea, malaria, typhoid, and countless other things. What about Ebola, you say? We don’t have to worry about that at least (we won’t be traveling to areas where there’s an ebola outbreak). Though I don’t think you’ve ever thought, “Yeah! Going somewhere where I have to take malaria pills everyday totally sounds like the ultimate vacation!” Oh man, and you know that lovely air conditioning we love so much? Yeah. Nada. I’ve heard from almost every Racer that we eventually succumb to a constant state of sweatiness. Sounds awesome, right?
This is all to illustrate what the World Race is not: A Vacation.
“But Savannah,” you may ask, “If it is that bad, then why are you going? And why are you asking for my help to get you there?”
Well, I’m glad you asked! Because, I believe, the positive outweighs the negative!
You see, the World Race is also a place where we will be broken. That sounds like a bad thing, right? But it’s not. I long to be broken. I long for God to break my heart constantly. We will get to minister and serve people who may have never witnessed the love of Christ. No, we cannot save everyone, but God can. We can plant seeds, though. We can love people and through that love they may eventually come to Christ. Community. Yeah, I know I spoke on this before, but I didn’t get to tell you some things… Through community, yes, we will be around each other all the time….and because of this our teammates will come to know us maybe even better than we know ourselves. And through that, we will be able to counsel each other to look more like Christ. We have to become more transparent and vulnerable with each other than perhaps we’ve ever been with anyone else, but through that we will come out on the other side looking more like Christ. We won’t only get to preach the word of God, but we will be able to serve with different ministries around the world, helping them in their mission to reach their community. We will do this for 6 days a week, getting each Saturday to ourselves to do whatever we want. Through ministry we will get to love orphans. These orphans may have no parents, or may have been abandoned by their parents, or their parents may have sent them to the orphanage, not because they didn’t want them, but because they can’t afford to even meet the most basic of their needs. These children desperately need to witness the love of Christ. We will be ministering to victims of sex trafficking; those who’ve escaped and those still in it. These women and children need to know that they are worth more than they know and that there are options other than the sex industry and there is help to escape it. We will reach those who are ill and dying, those who urgently need to hear the gospel. We will help build schools, churches, orphanages, and hospitals; and although it is unlikely we alone will get it built in the month we are there, we will help the buildings progress to completion.
I’ve heard people ask why we don’t just donate money to these ministries, as opposed to spending the money to get there, and this is why. It is not through money or food or shelter or water that people come to Christ. It is through hearing the gospel, which is preached by followers of Christ. It is the relationships with these people, with the least of these, that will show them the love of God. So many of these people don’t know what it is like to be loved, and if you don’t know what it’s like to be loved then how can you believe that there is a God who loves you; who knew you before he formed you in the womb; who knows the number of hairs you have on your head?
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, the good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!
