Dear Day One Mary Grace

Dear day one Mary Grace,

Welcome to one of the most incredible, challenging, wild and stretching seasons of your life. So much has led to this moment of hugging everyone and everything that is familiar and comfortable. 

There’s a lot I want to share with you, a lot I want you to know, but first let me tell you how proud I am of you. It took saying yes a million times in order to lay down nine months of your life to something so extremely unknown. You are a woman of courage, filled with the Holy Spirit allowing Him to guide your each and every step. 

I know seeing all these new faces of the 40 people you are about to live with for so many months is intimidating. I want you to know these are the people that are going to love you in some of your ugliest moments. They will call out in you what doesn’t look like Jesus and be there to hold you accountable in love. You will ugly laugh together, as well as ugly cry. These are the people you will worship your Creator, eat meals, serve, and do life with. You have a lot of fantasies and expectations in your head of what community on the race will look like, I ask you to drop those because what the Lord has in store for you through these people is so much more than what you could ever come up with in your own head. May the pressure of knowing every single person perfectly lift from your shoulders and may you know that you will learn how to pursue your squamates from the deepest well of love. 

You are going to face challenges. You are going to face triumphs. You are going to be homesick to the point it makes your heart ache, and you are going to see things that shift your heart forever. 

You will experiences country changes, right now you think you’re going to Guatemala, Cambodia, and Swaziland. Soon to find out your feet will be in South Africa and Romania for months 3-9. You will go through the biggest heartache when you discover Romania is off the table and you actually won’t be serving refugees from Ukraine. You will feel the disappointment when you are told you are being sent to South America instead of Eastern Europe. Only to fly across the ocean to Ecuador to love on 14 girls who have survived the horrors of sex trafficking. 

You will experience true bliss in worship nights and dance parties. You will learn how to celebrate people well and be a woman of hospitality. You will celebrate many birthdays and special occasions. You will learn the beauty of celebrating each day as it comes. You will host a women’s night where you allow some of the deepest struggles in your life to become a testament to the Lord’s faithfulness.

Holidays will be hard. You will be in bed with a parasite, infection in your intestine, and high fever in Guatemala the day before Thanksgiving. Christmas will be filled with many tears and heartache, wishing nothing more than to be by your Christmas tree with your family. It will be a day of grieving and experiencing the comfort of the Father. New Years will be spent watching fireworks of many Guatemalans and making declarations over your year instead of resolutions. Valentine’s will be spent being served, cooked for, and loved by the men of H squad. Easter will be your last holiday away from home. You will enjoy the sweetness of your world race family in sitting on the lawn and celebrating the most glorious day.

Ministry will be challenging but ever so sweet. You will serve at a preschool in South Africa and fall in love with every single teacher, cook, and child that walks through the door. You will affirm little girls of their beauty after them being made fun of on the playground. You will bring joy and laughter into classrooms that are void of it. You will hold sick children and dance your heart out. You will sell clothes on the streets of Chimaltenango, Guatemala to raise money for a church. There will be house visits where you sit with a mother facing suicidal thoughts and you pray over her and her children’s lives. In Ecuador you will spend hours upon hours tying up golden berry plants to raise money for Dunamis Foundation. You will dig into the side of a mountain, with raw blistery hands all the while having some of the greatest laughs and talking about the Lord’s faithfulness with your team. You will hold babies with 15 year old mothers who have been through such great trauma, reminding you of how precious life is. You will teach the Word of God in broken communities to underprivileged kids and show off your embarrassing soccer skills. You will work for 2 weeks straight doing hurricane relief in Louisiana. You will rip out moldy walls and get heat exhaustion and wake up at 4 am every morning to have the sweetest time with the Lord in the baptist church cafeteria.

You will get to see so much of this beautiful earth and go on so many adventures. You are going to hike a volcano and watch another one erupt right in front of you. You’ll hurt your knee cliff jumping in Lake Atitlan. You will get to go on a safari in Africa. You’ll go sunrise surfing in Jbay and completely eat it in the water. You’ll go to beautiful beaches and see the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen in your life. You’ll have a layover in Istanbul, Turkey. You’ll get a million bug bites in the Amazon Rainforest. You’ll get to stand exactly on the equator in Ecuador and do traditional Ecuadorian dances with families.

Living out of a backpack isn’t that bad, you get used to living with less. You’ll wear the same sweatshirt every day to the point that the ends of the sleeves start to crumble off and you’ll end the race with only one of the tshirts you started with. I know your pack is 52 pounds right now and you can barely lift it, but it will eventually be 30 pounds so don’t worry. 

Month 5 will be the hardest. You are really going to want to go home. The thought of 4 more months will make you feel sick, but I promise that there is abundant freedom and beauty at the other side of your yes. There will be a day that you understand why you passed on a cozy dorm room and a closet full of clothes. The moment you realize that the parasites, long nights, bug bites, tears, and early mornings weren’t in vain will be one of the sweetest of them all. Each month carried divine purpose and nothing done for Him will come back void. 

     You are stronger than you will ever fully realize. You will write down every single lie you have ever believed about yourself and replace it with the radical truth that Jesus says of you. You will doubt and question and struggle why the Lord would call you here. You will have revelation after revelation of the Lords love for you. You will overcome. You will teach and learn, you will weep and rejoice, you will receive and pour out. 

I want you to remember that the goal is not just to finish to say you finished, but that you are living for the eternal. You committed a season of your life, and no one ever said it would be easy. You will finish strong, you will cross the finish line. 

But it’s not just about finishing anymore. Your purpose isn’t confined into these nine months, but it will bleed into the rest of your life. Perfection is not the end goal, but you will go home with a changed heart and a readiness to bring life and hope to the United States of America. 

So get ready. You are going to see and experience the Lord in ways you never knew were even possible. 

Welcome to the World Race MG. 

Bye for now, 

Your Day 260 self