I would like to apologize for slacking on posting blogs recently. I realized the other day that it has been since before Christmas since I last posted something. I’m going to do my best to catch you all up on my journey since then in the next couple of days. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year by they way! How are those New Year resolutions going for you?
Flash back to December…
Team Zeal was assigned to do Unsung Heroes for the month. That means our job for the month was to find new contacts for the World Race to send teams to. We are able to find some solid contacts pretty quickly and our team started talking about the possibility of doing some relief work for the victims of the typhoon that hit south of where we were in Manila. We get the thumbs up to move on it and do all the needed work to make the relief trip happen. We get to Tacloban and it still looks like a war zone. There were positive signs of things shifting from relief to recovery though. A big chunk of what we did was passing out a rice soup mixture called lugau to the areas that were still in need of meals. We also talked, listened, and prayed for people. (I played a lot of basketball with people too.) It was hard to see the conditions people were living in and hearing their stories of losing loved ones and how they survived. The biggest thing I took away from them was their gratefulness and their joy. Despite their circumstances, they chose to have good attitudes and hold on to hope.
I had to leave my team early to travel back to Illinois for Christmas for my baby sister Tori’s wedding. I was super excited to get to see my family and girlfriend for Christmas but also sad to leave my team. It was a strange feeling to travel alone after getting use to always having someone with me. (One of the rules on the World Race is that you never go anywhere alone.) I really didn’t realize how comfortable I had become to having at least one person always by my side. In reality it is usually more that one person always by your side, typically I have five (my team) or thirty-nine (my squad during debrief and travel).
After the longest Christmas Eve of my life (I flew out of Manila at 10:30pm on December 24 (jumped in my time machine) flew for about 12 hours and landed in Los Angeles at about 6:30pm on December 24) I was sitting in LAX people watching and reflecting on my trip. I’m not much of a poem kind of guy, but I felt like I should write about how I was feeling and this is what I wrote..
T’is the night before Christmas
And I’m in LAX
Everyone is trying to get somewhere
They all look so stressed
I just came from Tacloban
It’s still such a mess
Typhoon Yolanda ripped through it
And left the people in distress
But they choose to smile and be joyful
As they say thank you and Merry Christmas
Here people are rude and scowl
As they curse under their breaths
They don’t know how good they have it
And how much they’re truly blessed
So please find your loved ones
And be sure they’re hugged and kissed
You never know when time is up
And love is not something to be missed
That’s why we celebrate this season
Not because of Santa’s list
But because God loved us so much
That He sent us his perfect gift
All you have to do is accept Jesus
And your life will eternally shift.
