The Past Nine Months: Two Highs and a Low

The race ended about two weeks ago. Instead of going home right away, I went to my friend’s house in Illinois for a week and then drove to my house in Michigan for the next week. I am grateful that we have each other to lean on as we adjust to our lives at home. Being together after the race helped me process the experience as we talked about the experience. As I have had some time to look back at the past nine months, I wanted to share an overview of each country in the form of a high and a low. I didn’t want to leave it at that because I could make lists of highs, so I decided to make it two highs and a low. I hope this gives you some insight into my time in each country and the reality of doing international missions.

Guatemala

Guatemala was by far my favorite country. Because I see my time there so positively, choosing only two highs and thinking of a low is hard. One of my highs was when my team lived with a family in San Antonio. Each team lived in a room on the base the entire squad stayed at. While being with the whole squad was great, I was looking forward to when each team lived somewhere else for two weeks. My team stayed with a family in the city where our ministry was located. I was super excited about this opportunity. While there, we enjoyed building relationships with the Guatemalan volunteers at our ministry, pouring into each other, looking at Christmas lights, going out to dinner, and getting a sweet treat from the bakery. Because our ministry was 45 minutes from the base, we didn’t get much opportunity to build relationships with our ministry hosts. However, when we were in San Antonio, we could talk with them after the kids left, meet at coffee shops, and go to dinner together. It was a special time when I saw those relationships grow and flourish. We also learned as a team to lean into each other. Because we weren’t at the base with the rest of the squad, we became each other’s friends as we lived in close quarters and ate the crazy meals prepared for us. We had no choice but to do everything together, so we became much closer. 

The second high I have decided to share from Guatemala is our ministry. Ministry was so sweet in Guatemala, and I cherished every moment. As we talked with our ministry host, something that became very obvious is the deep intentionality they use to go about every situation. We would talk about the role they want to play in the community and why they function and operate the way that they do. I learned to appreciate the heart behind every detail of what they do. In the mornings, we did house visits, often to the kids’ homes or with people we visited every week. In the afternoons, we played with the kids that came every day and taught them various lessons. We would teach them English and Bible stories and play soccer with them. One of my highlights was teaching a group of older kids English every Monday. It was a fun time we spent together, and I grew a lot. 

Honestly, I struggled to think of a low for Guatemala. The only low that I could think of is that we had a 6 pm curfew while we were at the base. There was a reason for this explained to us, so I understand why, yet it would have been nice if we could be out in the evenings. Not much of a low, but that’s what I can think of. 

Romania

For Romania, it makes more sense to start with my low. I struggled with our ministry because most of our time was spent on evangelism. We were not given structure for serving the church, simply sent out to connect with people and share the gospel with them. The intention was to build relationships with people and invite them to church or youth night. We didn’t see much fruit from this, but a few people came to church and youth night. Day after day, we were rejected by people. Day after day, I was feeling more exhausted and burnt out. Ministry kept getting harder to do, and I kept getting more tired. This was a significant low from Romania.

I started talking about Romania with my low because a high came from it. While I struggled with burnout, I learned to rely on God and view him as my sustainer. I started to spend more time in the Word and prayer. The more time I spent with God, the more the burnout and exhaustion faded. I began spending my free time with my Bible open, even if it was only for ten minutes. I sacrificed my sleep to stay up and read my Bible until one or two in the morning and wake up to start my time reading again. My days started and ended rooted in Scripture. I learned that God sustained me and gave me the energy to get through each day. He is my daily bread. What started as a low came to be a high because I learned more about who God is. 

Along with the same theme of being rooted in Scripture, a group of ten of us stayed up late each night to read a book of the Bible a night. While squads are in Craiova, they experience a lot of spiritual warfare. One way that we saw this was in the quality of our sleep. While we could sleep, the quality of our sleep was low, and no one was ever well-rested. I experienced this when we went to another town a few hours away and spent the night there. That night I had the best sleep in at least a month, and so did many others. As the ten of us prayed and read the Bible each night, the squad was falling asleep in the rooms around us. It was cool to fill the house that was previously full of spiritual warfare with Scripture. Our group of ten also grew close as we shared prayer requests and prayed with one another. Romania was full of Scripture and prayer.

Eswatini

Eswatini was a country where we learned to slow down our pace of life. Relationships come first, and Sabbath was a cherished gift. As we had abundant free time and nowhere to go, I discovered small new things I enjoy. My life at home is busy, and I didn’t have the time to give new things a chance to be enjoyable. I learned that I enjoy reading, watercolor, and poetry in my free time. With a few things going on in my life, I had scattered thoughts that I couldn’t organize. I took every scattered thought and arranged them into one cohesive poem. I found doing this an excellent way to process and make sense of the things I was thinking throughout the day. I started a journal to watercolor the race and write stories, which has helped me process the past nine months and think of why I love each person on the squad. I learned that watercolor is a peaceful way to process. Discovering new activities I enjoy was a highlight, and I hope to continue doing these things.

My low from Eswatini is that I was struggling. I was struggling to find joy despite the joy of the people around me. I struggled to reach out to people I know care about me. And I struggled with some of my friendships. The struggle I experienced was a low, but like Romania, a high came out of it. I struggled alone for a while, afraid to reach out and be honest with people. When I finally said something, I realized I wasn’t alone in what I was going through. I built new friendships on the foundation of honest conversations, learned that I am loved even when I am struggling, and strengthened relationships with friends I already had. I learned to be vulnerable and reach out, even when scared. So like Romania, the low resulted in a high and personal growth. God didn’t let me struggle without a purpose in it. I didn’t see it then, but he had a plan for all the hardships. The low taught me to trust God’s plan and the hard steps it includes.