Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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I have a theory about the World Race.

I am convinced that most of the WR is spent trudging and waiting.

Since I’m squad leader, I’d feel ridden with guilt if I didn’t assure you that a lot of the race is spent in actual, organized ministry. So don’t worry. But back to my point.

We trudge everywhere. Trudge to church, trudge to the hostel, trudge to the contact’s house. Trudge to the internet. To the post office. To the grocery store. Up and down hills. To everything. When you don’t have your own means of transportation and you’re either, 1. Afraid of death on public transport, OR 2. too cheap to pay for public transport- you end up doing a lot of trudging.

We wait everywhere. When you’re done trudging, you wait. Or sometimes when you’re done waiting, you trudge. You wait for contacts to show up. You wait for Africans to come to church two hours late. You wait in traffic. You wait to be fed. You wait for three hour church services to be over. You wait for dial up internet to work. You wait to be picked up. You wait for the 28 hour bus ride to be over. You wait in customs. When you don’t speak the language and don’t really understand cultural norms, you: 1. wait for someone to tell you what you’re supposed to be doing OR 2. you wait for someone to show you where to trudge.
We found a trampoline while waiting for our food at a restaurant we trudged to for an hour
Maybe that’s not a good selling point for the World Race. Or maybe it is…

Because the race is all about what you do while you’re trudging and waiting. You can choose to complain or you can choose to speak life over people. You can choose to trudge with no purpose, or you can choose to pray and heal someone on the way. You can choose to have a bad attitude or you can choose to pursue and get to know your teammates. You can hate the hills or laugh when people fall down them. You can hate on the fact that Africans show up late, or you can love the fact that you’re learning to slow your American fast-paced life down. You can wait with your ipod blasting or you can play games with orphans. You can wallow in the fact that dinner is late, or you can go learn how to cook curry chicken and help your new Indian friend make dinner. You can have a bad attitude about trudging to the grocery store, or you can be thankful for the rock solid buns you’re going to have even after eating a pound of carbs a day. You can be frustrated with broken English and not knowing what is going on, or you can embrace it and find the beauty in going with the flow and laughing about what happens.

There are great things that happen. There are big moments on the race. Playing worship in a bar in the worst red light district. Baptizing Sarah. Seeing someone healed. But most of the time you just spend doing life with people and making the little things count.

Kind of an allegory to life right? What’s that quote? Something like… it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey getting there… or something profound like that. But whether you’re on the World Race or just living life, you always have a choice to make during the times that no one really talks about or thinks about…because those are the times that build our character and provide an opportunity for the big stuff to take place.
 
Waiting around after church
So here is my theory: I am convinced that most of the WR is spent trudging and waiting, but what you do during the trudging and waiting makes or breaks you’re the 11 months you spend on the race.

or better yet. Here is my life theory.

Most of life is spent trudging or waiting. What you do during those times makes or breaks your experience.
 
“Do all the good you can, by all means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can,
at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
-John Wesley