Community Living
to sum it up, there wasn’t a moment where i wasn’t growing in teamwork.Sharing Space
I was on the field for 272 days and there wasn’t one day that I spent alone. There was a two-day period where I got to sleep in a room by myself, but other than that I was with people all day, every day.
On the World Race, you have a “squad” and it is broken up into teams. My squad consisted of 50 girls between the ages 18-21 and three squad leaders who had done the race previously. We were broken up into 8 teams and I had two different teams over the course of the nine months.
Team Ekklesia
My first team consisted of six girls:
Madeline from Athens, Georgia. Katie from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Desiree from Standish, Maine. Demi from Olathe, Kansas. Rachel from Burnet, Texas.
Together we lived in Kampong Cham, Cambodia for one month with a family of 6— our Cambodian parents Rocky & Iris, their son Aeri, their cousin Canaan, and our Cambodian grandparents Mema and Jonie.
We also lived in Chaiyaphum, Thailand for two months with a family of 7- our Thai parent Raem and Naan, their two kids Nation and Asia and their foster children Tipp, Naomi, Paul and Yut.
Team Ohana
My second team and I lived for each other for the next six months of the race.
Joell from Delta, Colorado. Sonja from Santa Cruz, California. Madison from Dripping Springs, Texas. Tiffany from Samford, Florida. And then Madeline and I stayed together on a team—so, yes, I did spend the whole race with her. Out of those 272 days, only 2 were spent apart. T W O.
We lived in Limbe, Blantyre, Malawi for three months with our Malawian parents Pastor Philip and Lilian and our three “brothers”, Philip Jr., Caleb and Joshua and our two pets, Bean-Man the dog (named because they found her eating their bean plants in the back of the house) & Cracker the black cat. And also their friends Christopher, Precious, and Sam who lived at our house on and off.
In Guatemala we lived in Antigua for two months in a house with another team of 7, next door to our ministry partners Luis and Marisela and our “house mom” Doris.
My final month of the race I lived in Chichicastenago, Guatemala in what we called the “Cement Palace” with a total of 4 teams down the street from our host family Juan, Evelyn and their son Isaac. Twenty-two girls, all living together, sleeping in tents under a slab of cement with minimal running water and rare electricity experiencing such close community and some of the best ministry and memories of my life.
Open Communication
We shared small rooms. We woke up right next to each other, went to sleep right next to each other. Laughed, cried, and just about everything in between. We sat down every day for “team time” where we got to participate in feedback. Which is an opportunity to speak life and truth into each other's lives. When you are living in such close quarters with each other it is essential and truly a necessity to have space to be real and honest. As we sat together we got to encourage one another and highlight the fruit in each other's lives— praising accomplishments & moments of stepping out in boldness and faith. We also had the space to call each other higher when a teammate wasn’t living in a way that was healthy and life-bringing. As a community, it was our job to push each other to be the best version of ourselves and if we didn’t call things out we were doing each other such a disservice.
I learned the importance of clear and open communication. It is vital to a groups health to speak truth in love and share how you’re feeling and doing and ask one another questions to grow and become better every day. I had 272 days of sleepovers with strangers that became friends that became sisters and it was the most growing & rewarding experience of my life thus far.
