What Did and Didn’t Happen – The End of My Race

Today would have been the last day of my race. I would have landed in DC and spent one more night with my team before going home and seeing my family for the first time in nine months. When I was planning this blog, I was expecting to write about everything that happened since I last wrote, but then I realized that that can be summed up in just a few sentences, so instead of focusing mainly on what didn’t happen, I’m going to focus on what DID happen, and share one or two of my favorite memories from each country.

What DIDN’T happen: my squad and I did not get to finish our last two and a half months of the race in Swaziland like we had anticipated. Basically, only twelve days after arriving in Africa we were told that because of borders closing due to COVID we would be leaving the next day to begin our return trip to the states. We were obviously heartbroken, but AIM made the right decision because just a few days after we left, leaving Swaziland became impossible. After a horribly long travel day (a seven hour bus ride, a two night stay in Johannesburg, a twelve hour plane ride to Turkey, a nine hour layover, and finally a fifteen hour flight into Atlanta) we arrived back in the states on March 18. And just like that, our race had ended.

What DID happen … in Costa Rica

“searching for a witch doctor and finding Jesus” – I already wrote a pretty lengthy blog post about our time in the jungles of Tallamanca in Costa Rica. Something that happened while we were there that I didn’t specifically get to be a part of but has encouraged me so much is that, while our guys team was headed into town with our ministry host to get more filtered water and TP, they came across these three elderly women walking with canes, and asked if they needed a ride. Long story short, these women had come by foot from Panama looking for a witch doctor to heal some of their physical ailments. After talking with and praying for these women, all three of them prayed the salvation prayer! Every time I think about that story I am blown away. Thanks God!

“a glimpse of heaven” – during our month one debrief in Jaco, we had a worship night in the meeting room of the hostel that we were staying in. At one point I opened my eyes and realized that about 15 people were standing in the doorway, watching us and listening to us worship. A large group stayed for probably twenty minutes, and a few even stuck around to hear a few minutes of the message that our mentor gave us that night. It’s so cool to me that those people had come to the hostel with no intentions other than to party, but had to stop dead in their tracks when they encountered Jesus.

What DID happen … in Cambodia

“see you in big house” – my all time favorite memory from the race happened during our last day of ministry at the school we taught at in Cambodia. The week before in Bible class, we had taught the students hand motions to the song “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline (if you haven’t heard it you should give it a quick listen). The song is a children’s song comparing heaven to a big house, and talks about what we might be doing there and who we might be doing it with. Before leaving school every day, the students walk by, bow, and say “goodbye teacher, see you tomorrow”. However, the students knew that this would be our last day there. One of the Primary Two students whose English name is Alexander came up to me, hesitated for a second to try to find the words in English, and said, “goodbye teacher, see you in Big House”. When I say that I didn’t stop crying for hours, I actually didn’t. I have no doubt that I will see that boy in heaven one day, and maybe we can dance along to that song together for old time’s sake.

“it’s raining!!” – the whole time that we were in Cambodia, it rained one time. It was the week before we left, and it was about 10 o’clock at night. We were all in bed when my teammate Louisa nudged me and said, “I think it’s raining!” We looked out the window and it was POURING. We all ran out of our room and up the stairs to the roof, with one of the other girl’s teams right behind us. We all stood in the rain for the five minutes that it lasted, breathing the fresh air and thanking God for answering our prayers for rain that we had been praying since Christmas.

“the Gospel in a tuk tuk” – on our way into the city for the gal-entine’s weekend trip that my team had planned, four of us piled into one tuk tuk whose driver spoke excellent English. At first we just exchanged small talk, but somewhere along the 45 minute drive the topic of religion was brought up. The man said that he had believed in Jesus when he was younger, but had lost his faith because he had never seen or heard Jesus, and had converted back to Buddhism. Subtly and respectfully, we brought up that we were in Cambodia as missionaries, and shared the basics of the gospel little by little. When we got out of the tuk tuk, we hadn’t changed his mind, but I think about this man often and pray that he would encounter God in a way that makes him return to the knowledge of the gospel that he has in his heart.

 What DID happen … in Swaziland

Every single day that we spent in Africa was my favorite, so I’ll just give you an overview of what everyday life looked like. I woke up at 5:45 and ran and did a small workout with two of my teammates every morning. After we showered and made breakfast, I would have quiet time in the hammocks until it was time to pack our lunches and leave for ministry at 10. We rode about half an hour into the mountains to get to our care point, where we got to love on a group of 10-20 kids who came to get a meal of rice every day. We helped the cook make the rice, pushed the children on the swings, got to know the shepherd of our care point, and did house visits to the different “homesteads” that are spread out in the surrounding area. My favorite house visit that we did was to a mom, her child, and her child’s great-great-grandmother. The Coco’s (the swazi word for great-grandmother) eyes lit up when we prayed over them and their homestead. Something really funny that happened was that on our last day of ministry, without us knowing it would be our last day, we spent it mopping chicken poop off of the playground where the chickens like to roost at night. Not what I would have expected my last ministry day to look like, but hey, ministry was hardly ever what you expected.

I want to finish this blog by saying thank you to each and every person who supported me, prayed for me, read my blogs, and ultimately made all of these memories and cool Jesus moments possible. Thank you for partnering with me to bring Kingdom here on earth. This does not mark the end of my world race journey, and there will be another blog coming soon about that. Until then, thank you again, and I hope you enjoyed journeying back over the last crazy nine months of my life with me.

Blessings,

Nicole