4 Hard Lessons Learned After 4 Months on the Race

After spending four months on the mission field in Central American nations, I’ve determined that the lens through which I view the world has shifted drastically since I stepped off of American soil. The growth I experienced in Guatemala, the refining I experienced in Honduras, the joy I experienced in Costa Rica, and the freedom I experienced in Nicaragua allowed me to come away from the first four months of my journey here with more understanding about what my purpose is in this world than I have ever had before in my life. But even in the growth, the refining, the joy, and the freedom I’ve experienced, each month has had significantly hard challenges that led to hard lessons learned in this season of my life. With that in mind, here are four lessons I’ve learned that have changed the trajectory of my experience on the mission field and my life as a whole forever…

1. Discomfort challenges our obedience.

The World Race is many things: Adventurous, challenging, thrilling, and so much more. But more than anything, I can say that I’ve recognized that this journey is uncomfortable…in the best possible way. Every part of myself has been challenged in this season in ways that I have never experienced outside of the field. I’ve been challenged mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually more than anything else since saying “yes” to serving for 11 months out of the comfort of my life back home. And through the many challenges I’ve faced in my time in Central America, my obedience to the Lord was often tested at every turn. In Honduras for instance, our second month on the Race, I was faced with struggle after struggle that redefined my dependency on the Lord in all circumstances. Living on the side of a very isolated mountain village, my experience was a whirlwind of hardship, growth, pain, joy, physical deterioration and spiritual maturing.

And each day I experienced the discomfort of my circumstances, I made the nearly impossible choice of stepping closer to the comfort of God’s presence. The Lord allowed me to go through that incredibly difficult season of refinement that allowed me to see the significance and the reward of following after Him with everything inside of me. And the hardships only broke off the areas of my heart that leaned too heavily on the dependency of comfortable conditions in this world.

2. Growth can look a lot like standing still.

One of the hardest parts of being on the Race during a pandemic has been the slowness of some ministry months. We have experienced months of condensed, jam-packed ministry that had us waking up at sunrise and going to bed feeling the weight and tiredness of a hard-day’s work. On the opposite end, we have had ministry that felt much slower, easily making us wonder whether or not we were contributing much to any fruit being produced in the communities and ministries we were sent to serve in. But even in the inconsistency of ministry during a pandemic, God has proven time and time again that whatever season He’s allowing us to walk in has been set before us for an opportunity to grow in a way that we may never have without it.

Through the slowness, He’s teaching the necessity of stillness after coming from an American society that has engrained in us a hurriedness and restlessness geared towards a false idea of what success actually is. God is rearranging our heart postures to understand that if we only minister to a single child in a full twelve hour day by playing some made-up game in a village, that moment can be just as valuable as working for ten straight hours doing construction on a destroyed building in a community. Through this stillness, I have seen the Lord move and have heard Him speak with more clarity than I ever experienced before in my life. I can only hope that the growth I’ve gained in standing still can be extended to the fast-paced lifestyles of those I’m surrounded by when returning back to the States.

3. It’s not about the place. It’s about the people.

Being a Racer during a year of endless Covid restrictions and complications has allowed me to be able to adjust to change at a moment’s notice. Originally, my squad was scheduled to travel to Central America, South America, and Southeast Asia. Soon, plans for Southeast Asia were canceled, and we were informed of our route change to Africa after a few months in South America. And soon after that, our route changed yet again from traveling to South America to spending 3 months in Eastern Europe. Even while being in Europe, the nations we have been scheduled to serve in have changed over the past month. And while this inconsistency is difficult in many ways, and not having a clear idea of what to expect next can be hard to fathom, I have learned that the nation we serve in doesn’t matter nearly as much as the people we get to serve.

No matter where we have gotten the luxury of traveling to in the last five months, I have seen God move in incredible ways in the communities and people in every nation I’ve stepped into. I have seen the hearts of beautiful servants in God’s Kingdom. I have seen smiles and heard laughter from the voices of children who live in conditions that one could never comprehend having joy within. I have seen the faces of hope and the faces of despondency each day of my journey here, and I have recognized that differences of language, skin color, culture, tradition, etc. aren’t the things that matter most to the Lord. And in that, as followers of Christ, we should at all times have the willingness to go wherever He sends us with the realization that the people in every nation, city, town, and home are in significant need of the hope that we carry within us.

4. Saying yes to Jesus today means saying yes every day, every moment, for the rest of my life.

One thing the Lord reminded me of in my first month in Guatemala was that obeying Him in deciding to come on the Race was only one step towards saying yes to all He had for me later to come. It’s easy to believe that when we trust God with one major area of our lives, that’s the greatest extent of trust we’ll need to step into in that season. But while that initial “big yes” to the Lord is what may catapult you into the plans He’s established for your life, it’s the tiny daily yeses that really seal in our dependency on Him.

In this season on the Race, I have learned that each and every day I have to say a new yes to Him. If it’s saying yes to waking up at 6am to pray each morning, or saying yes to speaking to a complete stranger who doesn’t speak my language about the Gospel, or saying yes to spending time in community on a day where all I want is to be alone…all of these steps of obedience is setting the stage for what obedience to the Father looks like for the rest of my life.

There are probably a thousand things I have learned in my five month journey on the field so far. Not all of them will I even recognize until possibly years from now, long after I’ve returned home. But I pray that the many challenges I’ve faced and the many lessons I now have under my belt will establish a foundation of strength and dependency on the Lord that I likely never would have obtained without them.

And my prayer for you who are reading this is that whatever hardships you have faced, whether on or off of the field, you will step into the growth that will surely come from them when you say yes to whatever God has for you next.

Please continue praying for me and my team as we continue on this mission after God’s heart.

You Are Loved,

Aliseya