In this first installment I want to share a video of one of my favorite moments of the entire race with you. It came at the very end, just before boarding our last flight home to Los Angeles. V Squad met up with T Squad in the airport in Guangzhou, and a spontaneous worship session erupted, drawing groups of Chinese people and other travelers to watch, listen, take pictures, and film us. In the last year we have learned that worship is a weapon in the battle of spiritual warfare. If you take 84 racers who have just completed a year of traveling the world and seeing God open amazing doors through the power of praise, bring them into China, a nation known for restricting the religious expression of its citizens, and set them loose to do what would normally be illegal by openly praising God with people watching, it's pretty sweet. It's possible that this was the first and only time many of the people watching had ever heard the name of God worshipped, and even though they may not have understood the words, truth was still spoken to them. I can't imagine a better way to have ended the World Race with my squad than to break chains and invite God into a place where he is usually not asked to be.

The world is made up of stories: fairy tales for young children, witty anecdotes shared with friends, news headlines scrolling across our televisions, epic narratives of adventure and intrigue, memories of years gone by told by old, wrinkled women, or simply a Tweet. From our earliest breaths to our last days, we crave stories. They are our means of passing along information, sustaining our cultural traditions, entertaining a crowd, teaching life lessons, expressing what is in our hearts, and speaking life into situations of darkness. In a world where words have more impact than wars, stories are our greatest weapons for truth, life, and hope, and to tell good ones is to fight for those things. Stories are so powerful that they were Jesus's weapon of choice. Instead of knives or political action, he came armed with love and stories to give hope to the world.

Although it took me until recently to realize this, I've always been a story teller. As a child, I used to write plays for all the kids in our neighborhood to memorize and perform for our parents. I am the one in my family who can always be relied on for a humorous (if somewhat exaggerated) retelling of whatever I did that day over dinner. If you are friends with me, you know that I can't resist texting you something funny or special that I saw that reminds me of you. If I see a story happening, even if it's just something small, I have to share it with someone. Sometimes I can't even sleep at night because I have so many stories inside me just bubbling up to be told.

This past year on the World Race I got to live and see some amazing stories. I also had the blessing of having a built-in way to pass them along. As someone who grew up saying that I would never write for a living, being required to keep a blog for a whole year was not something I was very excited for, but I decided to commit to it anyway. I decided that if God had chosen me out of all people to be the one to travel around the world and live those stories, the least I could do was share them with whoever wanted to listen. So that's what I did. I wrote about spiritual warfare in the DR, healing in the jungles of Ecuador, God's protection of us in Peru, deadly illness in Nicaragua, seeing God move in El Salvador, my heart for the orphans of Guatemala, redemption for prostitutes in Thailand, watering seeds planted in Kenya, God's faithful provision in Uganda, standing in the gap for others in Tanzania, life in the midst of persecution in Laos, and a hope for a new future for Cambodia. 

I told stories, but not just with words. In addition to being a born story teller, I am also an artist. Though I've spent a lot of my life limiting my self-expression to left-brained intellectual pursuits, in my heart I love to make beautiful things. I love to paint, take pictures, make spaces into desirable places to spend time, and more recently, to capture what I experience on video. I hear the world in words and languages, but I see it in angles, colors, and light patterns, and my mind is constantly working on ways to capture those and share them with other people. I discovered that not only did I love to tell stories, but I loved to tell them creatively and visually. I saw God do some pretty cool things with those stories, and I realized that I could do this forever.

This year I found my voice. I realized that I have a voice that not everyone has, and that my voice, my words, and the beautiful things I make can be used to set people free, bring them hope, and give them new life. As citizens of the Kingdom who also live in a broken world, we are called to be salt and light. Salt is a catalyst, which means it makes things happen. We are also called to love justice because we serve a God who loves justice. Finally, we are called to be a city on a hill and a beacon of hope to those in darkness. So as someone who wants to makes things happen, loves justice, and desires to be an ambassador of hope what is my responsibility to the people whose stories I see and hear? I believe I am called to do more than just see and hear stories and write them down. I am called to bear witness to the pain and injustice in the world by giving a voice to the voiceless. I am called to couple my passion for justice with my love of creativity to use people's own stories to offer them change, justice, and hope for new life.

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For this next season of my life, God has called me to spend some time learning how to tell a better story and how to use stories to advocate for justice and bring about change. I will be starting an apprenticeship with the World Race marketing and media team in Gainesville, GA on May 7th that will last 8 months. That's right...I'm unpacking my bags, hanging my clothes up in an actual closet, and putting down some roots, at least for a little while. I will be working at the Adventures in Missions office Monday-Friday in the marketing department writing for AIM and learning to use video and photography to tell a better story. I'll be mentored by some amazing story tellers and live in community with the other apprentices. We'll be challenged as a group and as individuals to grow closer to God and move toward accomplishing the dreams he has placed on our hearts to advance the Kingdom. I'm taking this time to be still in one place and learn from some gifted people so that I will be better equipped to live out my Kingdom dream.

I have had the privilege of living an incredible story that God is writing, and I have been so honored to have all of you follow along with my journey this past year and be the ones to read and watch the stories I've told. I would be equally honored if you would continue on this journey with me of learning how to better capture stories that make a difference. I invite you to keep reading and watching, to pray for me in this next step that God has called me to, and to financially support me if God calls you to. Since almost all positions at Adventures in Missions are considered missions positions, we are all required to raise support for a living. For this apprenticeship, I need to raise $1500/month for 8 months, which will cover my rent, food, living expenses, and program costs. Donations are still tax deductible, just like they were for the World Race, and you can still donate by clicking on the Support Me tab along the left side of this blog under my picture. One time gifts are always helpful, but my greatest need in this new journey is for monthly supporters. If 60 people pledged $25/month, I would be completely funded for the whole apprenticeship. That ends up only being $200 per person over the course of 8 months. Monthly donations in any amount can be set up through the same Support Me tab. Because I only committed to this apprenticeship in the last week, I only have two weeks to get the bulk of my support raising done. I have seen God provide far more money in far less time, so I trust that he will meet my needs. I would love to talk to any of you to answer any questions you might have or simply to catch up now that I'm back in Georgia for more than a couple weeks for the first time in years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your involvement in my life and my dreams, and I hope that we can continue writing amazing stories together.

"Sacred stories are those of transformation, they are stories that draw us closer to the Lord, and they help us to see our connection to all things. There's a saying in the Jewish tradition that the shortest distance between a human and God is through a story. So if storytelling is a journey, sacred storytelling is a pilgrimage--a pilgrimage to a place called Hope."   

-Andy Fraenkel

My World Race

61 beds slept in

46 Internet networks used

41 times packing our bags

337 meals that included rice

9 UNESCO World Heritage Sites visited

(downtown Santo Domingo, old town Quito, Chan Chan, Historic Lima, Antigua Guatemala, Lake Nakuru, Stone Town in Zanzibar, Luang Prabang, Angkor Wat)

18 times together with my entire squad

9 teammates

31 modes of transportation used

0 vehicles driven

21 vehicle breakdowns/malfunctions

11 languages

(English, Spanish, Creole, Thai, Burmese, Swahili, Lugandan, Lao, Hmong, Khmu, Khmer)

2 countries where my debit card worked

16 hot showers

8 items checked off my bucket list

(straddle the Equator, get a nose ring, get a tattoo, see the Great Rift Valley, go on a safari in Africa, see the Maasai jump, visit Zanzibar, see a sunrise at Angkor Wat)

5 tattoos acquired by my team

1 parasite

13 bodies of water

(Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Ecuador waterfall, DR pool, volcanic lake in El Salvador, waterfall in Thailand, Lake Victoria, Nile River, Indian Ocean, Mekong River, Nam Song River, the Gulf of Thailand)

51 squadmates

2 safaris

9,196 photos

158 new Facebook friends

11 currencies

(USD, Dominican Peso, Nuevo Sol, Cordoba, Quetzal, Baht, Kenyan Shilling, Ugandan Shilling, Tanzanian Shilling, Lao Kip, Riel)

45 financial supporters

Countless prayer supporters

53 videos uploaded to Vimeo (with more soon to come)

119 blog entries (more on the way)

322 days

11 months

4 continents

13 countries

34 new passport stamps

17 flights

3 visas

43,792 miles traveled

Worth it. 

This is Part 3 of a series. To read Part 1, click HERE, and for Part 2, click HERE.

After my parents and I returned home from Honduras and Nicaragua, we had about 48 hours to wash our clothes and repack before leaving for Guatemala. My dad couldn't come with us this time, but my mom and I headed down to Casa Bernabe for nine days. Casa Bernabe is an orphanage outside of Guatemala City for about 180 children who have either lost their parents, been abandoned, or been abused in some way and taken away from their parents. I first went there the summer after I graduated from Wheaton College. I had applied for a program through Wheaton that sends students around the world for the summer to help missionaries with their work. We could not choose where we went or what we did, so other than mentioning that I loved Latin America, I had no idea where I would be assigned. I was put on Team Guatemala, trained for a few months at Wheaton, then sent to Rainbows of Hope, a ministry that helps children in crisis, and then sent down to Guatemala to intern at Casa Bernabe. That was the first time in my life that I had ever worked with children, so I was intimidated, but God clearly knew what he was doing because I fell in love with the kids there. That summer, which I applied for on a whim, has turned out to shape much of what I want to do with my life in the future. After coming to know and love these kids, I want to fight for justice for them and others like them in even more difficult situations around the world. I don't know exactly what that will look like, but for now I visit them whenever I can and just spend time loving on them. Of all the places I've been, Casa Bernabe is one of my absolute favorites!

It was a national holiday so they dressed the kids up in traditional Guatemalan clothes, and they performed a dance.

My family and I sponsor this sweet little girl.

He's so squishy.

This little buddy was new to Casa Bernabe the week we were there. He's very cuddly and sweet.

The tongue is always out. Always.

Stomach flu hit the baby house that week, so this little one wasn't having a very good day.

He's the best.

This is the house I first worked in when I was at Casa Bernabe with the Wheaton group. Most of the boys have moved to other houses, but a few of them are still there, and they're precious.

I love these boys so much. They love baseball, and the one on the right is the older brother of the little girl we sponsor. One of these days I'm going to get Philip down to Guatemala with me to play baseball with them.

Every trip we take to Guatemala is special in its own way. Consistency is something that these kids crave, so going back, even if it's not as often as we would like, is really important. My best friend, Kaylan, and I are heading down there next Friday, March 30th, for another visit. If you live in the Atlanta area and would like to help out Casa Bernabe, we are collecting children's belts, rain boots, ponchos, umbrellas, blue and black socks, children's books in Spanish, and bras for the teenage girls. If you have any of these things that are either new or in good condition that you would like to donate, please contact me ASAP and I'll come get them from you. We're trying to fill up two big suitcases with stuff to take down, so the more the merrier!

This blog is part of a series, so please read Part 1 first.

As I explained in Part 1 of this series, Central America has my heart. I love it there, and each visit is special for its own reasons. A few weeks ago I got to go down to Honduras and Nicaragua with my parents and their ministry, Walk Thru the Bible. The primary purpose of the trip was for my dad to teach his new series, Crucible, about the life and choices of David, at a church in Tegucigalpa and a pastors' conference in Managua. My main purpose in going was to serve as the day to day translator for my parents. 

We decided to arrive in Tegucigalpa a few days before the teaching started so that we could show my mom a little bit of Honduras. My dad has been there before, and I've been there a few times, but this was my mom's first visit. Despite a champion sinus infection courtesy of our previous trip to India, I had a great time hanging out in a city I love and showing it to my mother.

Tegucigalpa is nestled inside of the Honduran hills, and it's always a beautiful sight to get above the city.

My mom with Luisa, the wife of WTB's Central American Regional Director, Alejandro Oviedo.

My parents became the attraction for a class field trip.

My parents with Luisa and her brother-in-law, Joaquin, at Cristo del Picacho.

The airstrip is just not very long...the second shortest commercial airstrip in the world actually. It makes for an adventure on every landing.

The catedral en Comayagua, home to the oldest working clock in the Americas.

My dad taught Crucible at a church in Tegucigalpa with the help of Leopoldo, probably the most gifted Spanish interpreter I've ever had the privilege of listening to and learning from.

My new friend Valeria after she gave me a sweet makeover. You can't see the neon pink eyeshadow that I'm wearing, but she was very thorough.

My dad was a big hit at the pastors' conference in Managua, Nicaragua.

There were more than 300 pastors from all over Nicaragua who came to hear Crucible.

A partnership that I'm sure will continue in the future.

In addition to translating, I also got to help Dave Ball, a contractor for Walk Thru who shoots great videos for them. Dave was very encouraging and helpful for me to spend time with as I have been formulating ideas about how I would love to use video and photography to tell stories in the future. I got to follow him around Tegucigalpa as he shot a video about WTB's work in Honduras and translate interviews as he shot them at the Managua conference. The more time I can spend observing talented story tellers and their creative processes, the better, so that was one of my favorite parts of this trip. My parents and I also really loved spending time with Alejandro Oviedo and his beautiful family. One of the best things about having a president of an international ministry for a dad is that I have grown up knowing men and women from all over the world who are spending their lives reaching their people. When we get to visit them in their countries and go along for the ride with them, it's the best.

Part 3 of this series, which is coming soon, will show you a peak into the trip my mom and I took to Guatemala a couple weeks ago to visit the friends we have and the beautiful children living at Casa Bernabe, an orphanage outside of Guatemala City that we've been involved with for the past couple years. It's one of my favorite places in the world. Gracias for reading my blog and praying for our ministry!

Like my father, I've been all over the world, and I genuinely have left many pieces of my heart with many people in many places. Sometimes I lie awake at night and want to be in five different places at one time because I know that my friends all over the world could use my help, and I miss them. Sometimes it hurts to think that if I want to gather all the people I have loved in my life in one place, I will have to wait until heaven. Even though I love what I do, scattering my heart across the world is hard, and sometimes it's difficult to feel truly at home in any one place. So that's why it's so special when I get the opportunity to return to places that I've been before and visit people who I've loved.

Even though by this point, my heart has been distributed over every continent except Antarctica, I think the biggest piece of it lies in Central America. I've loved Central America before I could even find it on a map. I remember the first time I decided that I wanted to visit that region of the world someday. I was eight years old in the third grade, and my class made shoeboxes at Christmastime for Operation Christmas Child. We filled our boxes with gifts for children in need somewhere in the world. Without knowing where they would go, we wrote notes, put in our pictures, and sent them off. A couple months later I received a letter from the girl who had received my box. Her name was Flavia and she lived in Honduras. At eight years old I had no idea where Honduras was (disclaimer: this was before my mother became a world geography teacher, so don't blame her for my ignorance), but I looked at the sticker of the beautiful blue and white starred flag that she put on her letter, and decided I would go there someday. We became pen pals for a few years, writing back and forth from Georgia to Tegucigalpa. She was learning English in school, so I could read her letters, but at the end she would always write something in Spanish, and out to the side it would say, "You should study Spanish, and one day you can read what this says." I always wished that I could understand her Spanish postscripts, and I hoped that someday I would speak her language. After a few years Flavia and I lost touched and stopped writing, but my interest in her part of the world remained. 

When I was probably twelve or thirteen, my cousin Matt went down to Central America with Athletes in Action. Before he left, he asked Philip and me if we would gather baseball equipment to send down with him to donate to the kids he would be working with. I thought it was a great idea because it combined my favorite sport with the part of the world that had always most intrigued me. So Philip and I asked all our friends in the baseball and softball communities in Atlanta and rounded up quite a bit of equipment to send down with Matt. I was still young, but I remember wishing that I could go with him to meet the kids the gloves were going to and actually see what Central America was like. But that would have to wait a few more years.

When I got to high school, I had the choice to study French or Spanish. I really didn't know much about either language, but I remembered Flavia's letters and how much I wished I could read the end of them, so I decided to give Spanish a try. I was worried that I wouldn't understand and wouldn't do well in the classes, but by the end of the first class I knew I wanted to be fluent. I decided when I was fourteen that even if it was hard, I would continue studying until I was bilingual. 

I remember the first time that I got to see the look on someone's face when I spoke to them in their native language. I was sixteen, and a few of my friends and I planned and organized a day camp at our school for children in local apartments whose parents worked on days when the public schools were off. We went to their apartments to invite the kids to come, but quickly realized that most of the parents didn't speak enough English for us to explain the camp to them and get the necessary forms signed. I went back to school and asked my Spanish teacher to help me. She translated the paperwork for us and taught me all the words I would need to be able explain the camp to those parents, and the next day I went back. I was scared to actually try using the skills I had been working on, but I rang the first doorbell. A woman answered the door, looked at me, and immediately started shaking her head and trying to explain in Spanish that she did not speak English. "Espera," I said. "Wait." And, in extremely broken Spanish, I told her about Camp Star. I asked her if she would like her children to come, and she immediately grabbed the forms from me with a smile on her face. She signed up all her children, and then gathered some of the other moms to come talk to me. This time with a group of them listening, I gave my attempted description of the camp, and again they all delightedly signed their kids up. They kept smiling at me and hugging me. I thought it would be hard to convince people to entrust their children to my friends and me, but these women were so excited that I was making an effort to speak to them in the language of their hearts that they agreed to it happily. I never forgot that moment, and it continued to motivate me for years to become fluent in Spanish so that I could continue seeing that look of joy on people's faces when they realized I could communicate with them. It's never really worn off.

A few years later, when I was a sophomore at Wheaton College, I had to make a tough decision. I wasn't feeling fulfilled at school, and I realized that I either needed to transfer to a different college or change what I was doing at Wheaton. So, after years of playing the game I loved, I decided to quit softball so that I could get more involved in the ministry opportunities that had initially drawn me to Wheaton. I remember walking back to my dorm from my coach's office, feeling extremely sad and wondering why I had just chosen to stop doing the thing I loved most. I wondered if I had made the wrong choice, but when I got to my room my best friend Sarah was waiting for me with news that would confirm that I had not. She knew I was going to quit, and that I would be upset, so she had a plan to cheer me up. "Now that you have spring break free, how about we go on a mission trip?" she said. "Ok, sure," I replied, not really interested in figuring out my life at that moment. "Ok, well I signed us up for the Honduras Project meeting tonight," she told me. "Honduras? Ok, I'm in," I said. So, without actually knowing what Honduras Project was, I went to the meeting and applied for the trip. Lots of people applied for only a few spots, but both Sarah and I were chosen to go, and we started attending planning meetings and working on our Spanish. During spring break we spent ten days down in the jungle of southern Honduras digging trenches and helping install a gravity-fed water system for a village that had no access to clean water. I finally got to go to Central America, and it was there that I had my first opportunities to translate. As soon as I set foot in the part of the world that had been calling me since childhood, I felt at home. 

Since then, I have been to every Central American country except Belize and Panama. I've explored the Mayan ruins of Mexico, shared the gospel in El Salvador, met the Vice President of Honduras, basked in the sunsets of Costa Rica, listened to the stories of dying sugarcane workers in Nicaragua, and fallen in love with the children of Guatemala. Every time I go back to Central America I know I'm where I should be, and the friends I've made over the years make each trip special. 

As I've been telling you about in my two most recent blogs, I've been traveling with my parents and their ministry, Walk Thru the Bible, since the middle of January. We've had the joy of going to India, South Africa, and now Central America. In Part 2 of this blog, I'll share about the visit I took to check on the chunk of my heart that's hanging out between the Mexican border and the Panama Canal...

This is part two of a series I'm writing to update everyone on what my parents and I have been up to for the past two months. To read part one about our time in India, click HERE.

All of the regional directors either grew up speaking English or have learned it since beginning their ministry with Walk Thru, but sometimes when they get together all their varying accents can present a problem for their comprehension. If we're being honest, it's sometimes even hard for me to follow what is going on in the meetings, and I'm a native English speaker. Pretty quickly we realized that the director from Argentina was having trouble following what everyone was saying, and as a result his voice was not getting heard as it should in the meetings. My dad pulled me aside and asked me if I could be available to translate if he needed me to. I thought to myself, "Wow I haven't spoken a word of Spanish in eight months...I'm not sure I can just pull it out and translate right now." But then I thought about the years I had spent working hard to learn Spanish. I remembered walking into Spanish class the first day of 9th grade not knowing what to expect, and walking out 50 minutes later determined that someday I would be fluent. I went to the trouble of learning Spanish so that I could help people communicate and facilitate international ministry, so obviously I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to do both of those things with a group of leaders who I love and respect. So instead of running around taking pictures, I got to spend the week hanging out with my friend Alex being his personal translator. I didn't get all the grammar just right, and I realized that I've forgotten some things since translating on the World Race, but it was great practice and so worth it to see him able to communicate fully what he was thinking to his colleagues. The week was a great reminder of how far I've come since deciding to learn Spanish. God has honored my hard work and continues to give me cool, unexpected opportunities to use my gift to connect people and help them in their ministry. Spending the week in the Spanish side of my brain got me very excited for the next trip we had planned to Central America, which I'll tell you about in the next blog in this series.

I turned 24 somewhere over the ocean between Mumbai, India and Johannesburg, South Africa. For some people that might seem like a bummer of a birthday, but traveling is where I want to be!

Once all the regional directors rolled in we celebrated.

My dad and I spent the first day touring Soweto and learning about some of the uprisings that happened there under Apartheid.

My mom and I visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

I got to spend a little time playing with one of the staff member's adorable little boy.

My dad with Philip Tutu, the director from Ghana.

My mom and I with Elvis, the director from South Africa.

We had a typical South African braai to end the week.

After almost three weeks on the road and a lot of work, we decided to take a few days in Cape Town to relax and enjoy the beauty of South Africa. This definitely makes it high on my list of favorite cities.

We went up Table Mountain to see one of the most beautiful views I've ever seen.

Signal Hill from Table Mountain

The view of Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain

Looking out over the Twelve Apostles toward the Cape of Good Hope

The front of Table Mountain on the way down

We spent the next day exploring the Cape of Good Hope and meeting these little guys.

I've always had an adventurous spirit. Since I was little I've loved hearing stories of the early explorers who circled the tip of Africa and the end of South America. Two places I've always wanted to go were Tierra del Fuego and the Cape of Good Hope. There is something magical about standing at the end of the world with a massive ocean in front of you and a strong wind blowing. Places like this make you feel free with limitless possibilities.

Because of its changing tides, the Cape of Good Hope has been the site of many shipwrecks over the years.

There are wild ostriches roaming around out on the Cape.

Sometimes in Africa if you leave your windows open, this is what happens.

The perfect end to a great trip, that will definitely go down as one of the most beautiful days of my life.

As you may have noticed, I haven't been blogging much recently. Part of this is because something like the World Race takes a long time to process and think through, and I haven't quite had the words to summarize it, and part of this is because I've literally been all over the place traveling with my parents. For a recap of our travel plans over the past couple months, see my previous blog. Now that I'm back in the States for a few weeks I want to catch everyone up on lots of things: some stories I never told from the Race, recapping the Race, stories from the past two months, and hopefully some insight into what's next for me. This blog will be the first in a series about my time traveling with my parents and their ministry, Walk Thru the Bible.

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If the World Race prepared me for one thing, it's to expect the unexpected. I'm planning to write a blog dedicated entirely to this in the future, but for now suffice it to say that we got asked to do some pretty ridiculous things that we were completely unqualified to do at the drop of a hat this past year. My team and I got pretty good and just saying yes and figuring things out as we went. So you would think that I would stop being surprised every time someone throws me a new curveball, but you would be wrong. 

My parents and I traveled to India in mid January to attend the South Asia Regional Training Conference for Walk Thru the Bible Ministries. My dad came out with a new series on the life of David called Crucible this past year, and this conference was being held for the purpose of training the most influential leaders that WTB has in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. They all came together in Khandala, India, a couple hour outside of Mumbai. In the past it was only the men who came because they were the ones actually being trained, but this year was special. When asked last year what one thing they most wished for the next year, the men unanimously requested that their wives be invited to attend the conference so that they could really understand the work their husbands are doing and be able to support them more fully by becoming part of their mission. So the staff from WTB in the States donated money to pay for the wives to come to this year's conference. My father taught Crucible to everyone, and then during the sessions specifically dedicated to training them how to teach it, my mother took the women downstairs and taught them about how to help their husbands with their ministry. They were all so appreciative of being able to be there together. One recently married couple even thanked Walk Thru the Bible for providing the honeymoon that they had never been able to afford. (Note: This particular couple is from the Himalayas and had to travel five days by train each way to attend this conference which was by no means a honeymoon. That's right...they traveled for twice as long as the conference actually lasted.) All in all it was a beautiful time for these couples to come together and grow in their vision and ministry together.

So at this point you're probably wondering what I was referring to with all that talk about curveballs and surprises. This looks like it was just a great conference full of happy couples and lots of learning. Well it was...but what do you think happens when you invite twenty something men from all over South Asia to bring their wives who rarely travel with them? You guessed it...they bring along the kids too. 

Rewind to the first day of the conference when my parents, Chris Tiegreen, WTB's Communications Director, and I were standing in front of everyone being introduced. They explained that my dad would be teaching the men, my mother the women, and to my complete shock, that Miss Emily would be taking all the children for children's class for the entire week. My dad didn't even know there were going to be any children at the conference, so of course I had no idea that I would be teaching them all week. I came to India planning to follow Chris around and learn about photography from him, but apparently God didn't think that was a big enough challenge. So, with about 90 seconds of notice I was handed thirtyish children and expected to come up with a VBS plan for six hours a day. No problem, right? I've been asked to do way more outrageous things in the past year. Except this time I didn't have my team with me. I suddenly intensely missed my six teammates and all the gifts and experience they bring to the table. Where was Joy to corral everyone? Where was Brent, the elementary P.E. teacher to come up with endless ways to entertain the kids? Where were all of them? Not in India. I quickly realized that Step #1 needed to be crowd control. No one ever told me how many children I was responsible for not losing, and we were decently close to a very tall cliff that dropped straight off into a valley, and BONUS...was inhabited by a colony of wild monkeys who I was informed "will attack if provoked." So losing a child was not an option.

I got down the hill to the pavilion where Children's Class was to take place, and I must admit I was still expecting five more adults to magically appear to help me, but instead I was met with my fifteen-year-old translator who promptly asked me every World Racer's favorite question, "What is the plan that you have for us?" There seems to be a widespread misconception around the world that when an American missionary shows up they must automatically have an awesome plan for everyone's lives. False. After years of anthropology classes, cross-cultural ministry training, and travel experience, I've learned one thing: you can't always make a plan and try to make it happen. And yet that is precisely what seemingly everyone expects from us.

So, in a matter of seconds I attempted to come up with something. We sang some songs (which I was attempting to translate from Spanish to English in my head so that the translator could put them into Hindi...clearly the most efficient way we could do things), memorized some verses (Note: this combination of children spoke probably seven to ten different languages so I was unable to determine if they actually memorized the verses), and played some games. The kids decided I was cool and named me Dede, which is Hindi for Older Sister. We had some fun for awhile, then it was business time when I was expected to actually teach a lesson. I glanced down at the spreadsheet schedule they had given me (yes, it's very formal...think former British colony) and saw under Possible Itinerary for Children's Class: Walk Thru the Old Testament Seminar. So although they had neglected to mention to my father beforehand that I would be teaching this class everyday, they had left me suggestions of what I should teach. Excellent, except that I'm not remotely trained to teach that seminar and haven't actually attended one since I was about twelve years old. But minor details like that won't stop me...I'm a World Racer, I've worked with way less. So I plunge straight into the OT Seminar.

The Walk Thru the Old Testament Seminar is supposed to take about five hours to teach, so ideally that would have used up quite a few sessions. Except that I really only know the 77 handsigns that teach the main people, events, and places of the Old Testament, but I don't know all the things that you're supposed to teach between each handsign. So instead of five hours, it would probably take me about thirty minutes to teach the entire thing. I got all the kids together and started in on the book of Genesis. We were zipping along, and their brilliant little minds were absorbing those handsigns at record pace. In about ten minutes we made it all the way from Creation to the exile in Egypt. That's about 23 handsigns, and they were doing them all perfectly. I must admit that at this point I did think to myself, "Well I know I'm not called to teaching, but I'm not so bad at this!" And that's when reality struck. I asked them all to stand up and review what they had learned so far. A little girl in the second row raised her hand. "Dede," she said, "I am afraid that you have forgotten Tigris and Euphrates." And then it hit me...I'm not really an awesome teacher...these kids already know this entire seminar. They've just been playing along reviewing it because I asked them to. I asked them, "How many of you already know this?" All of them raised their hands. Of course they know it...their fathers are the trainers for all of South Asia. I asked them to show me the whole thing, and they stood to their feet and properly recited all 77 handsigns, including Tigris and Euphrates. 

So my awesome lesson plan turned out not to be so awesome and also only lasted about fifteen minutes. As I struggled to come up with something else to teach, a very eager boy in the front row raised his hand so hard I thought his shoulder might pop out of socket. He excitedly asked me, "Dede, may we please have a Bible quiz?" "What kind of Bible quiz?" I asked him, wondering how exactly I was going to come up with questions off the top of my head. "Oh you know," he replied, "the basics...like who can name the twelve sons of Jacob in order the fastest!" Before I could tell him that I could not do that, another boy behind him stood to attention and commenced naming them rapidly. "No!" the first boy shouted, "Reuben was born before Naphtali! You have made a mistake!" At that point all I could think about was how quickly my father would be asking for a refund on the eighteen years of Christian school education he had paid for when he found out that I was the least biblically literate person in a roomful of children. I've taught VBS's all over the world, but this was hands down the most intelligent, knowledgeable group of kids I've ever met. 

Once I realized that there wasn't much I knew that they didn't, I decided it was time to relax, stop trying to come up with a lesson plan, and just hang out with them. For the rest of the week we just sang songs, played games, and read Bible verses. They asked me things about the States and about my travels, and they taught me some Hindi words. They took me on a tour of the cliff so I could see the monkeys, and I let them play with my camera. We played blindfolded tag, and I was it for at least half an hour because they are all very small and fast and I was blindfolded (and afraid of walking off aforementioned cliff). They performed some of their native songs and dances at the nightly cultural celebrations and came to sit in my lap while their friends performed. Once I stopped trying to be the perfect teacher and come up with something new and informative to teach them, we all had a great time hanging out together and got to actually be Dede to them for a week. 

We had a great time in India getting to know new friends from all over India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. My parents and I are looking forward to the next time we can go back to that beautiful part of the world and spend time with our friends again. My next update in this series will be about our time in South Africa, but for now I'll leave you with a few more of my favorite pictures from our time in India. Thanks for still following my blog and praying for my family, me, and our ministry!