Since I was notified that I would be attending the world race I have been taking the necessary steps to prepare myself. I began to do things like fundraise, and research the cultures of the different countries. But, I think what has prepared me the most thus far is my little adventure from Kansas City to Arkansas to Mississippi. Me and a few friends went to Kansas City to attend The Stand conference at the International House of Prayer. We had an amazing time at that conference, but when we tried to leave we couldn’t. It started to snow, and us Mississippians were not prepared to leave on their icy roads. We decided to stay another night and decided to leave in the morning. When we tried to leave one of the cars started to smoke. We found out that her radiator was busted as well as her water pump. The total cost was $2000. The car wouldn’t be fixed until the next day, so we had to stay another night in another hotel. So that morning we got up, and heard that on the way to the car shop our friend got into a car accident. At this point, we were in amazement at the amount of things that kept happening to us. We found out she was ok, and her car was finally fixed and ready to head to Mississippi. But, it was getting close to night, and we had just found out that Arkansas had been hit by the snow storm, and that it was really bad in that area. So we decided to stay one more night and leave in the morning. Next day came and we got on the road to go, and we thought we had found an alternate route to go around Arkansas and bypass Memphis, but the GPS ended up taking us towards Memphis. So we are driving excited we are finally on our way home when bam, traffic comes to a halt. We are in the same spot for about an hour. We get a call from our other friends who are about a half a mile ahead of us, and they tell us that someone will be coming by to give us water and crackers. They tell us that we are now in an 18 hour traffic jam. Everyone in the car immediately had a mini break down. At this point we had been gone 3 days pass the time we were suppose to be gone. We were staying 6 people in a room, dealing with 6 different personalities, and at this point we were all desiring to have some type of alone time. Thankfully, we were only a mile away from an exit that had hotels. Every hotel in that city was full, but the Hampton’s allowed us to stay in there lobby. When I walked into the lobby my friend Joseph had set up chairs and the couch for us to sleep on. I believe I cried then too, because I couldn’t believe that not only were we stuck another day, but this time we were stuck in a lobby, and with strangers we didn’t know. So we all go to sleep and then morning comes. We wake up to a room full of people staring at us while they are eating breakfast lol. That was slightly embarrassing. So we figure out a way to head back north to go around Memphis to get into MS. As we are discussing this one of my friends sees a lady walk by and take a picture of her husband. Lol so she lets it go, and we get up to leave and that same lady comes back to us and says don’t leave I want to interview you all. Lol the lady taking a picture of my friend was from the Memphis news station. My first thought was, God after all we have been through you want to top it all off with us on TV lol!!!
In that never ending vacation, I learned so much about myself, and how to be around group of people for a long period of time. That experience felt like preparation for life on the race. And even though I didn’t enjoy going through that I know it prepared me for the unexpected things that will come up during the race! The verse that pops in to my mind is that “All things work out for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purposes”. God is working together every good and bad thing that is happening before I leave for the World Race, and I am pumped!!
