When WRGY Should Have Ended

Dear Emily, 

My calendar says that today was the day you were going to fly from Asia finishing The World Race Gap Year a few days early and meeting us in the Middle East. It was planned to be a super cool family get together to help celebrate your sister finishing Uni. I'm grieving our unfortunate change of plans. 

But Mommy and I are overjoyed with you being on the Race. From the very beginning to the very end, we were so proud of you for figuring how it might work, to choosing it, to working with colleges to defer, gearing up, Training Camp and Launch and then actually being on the Race. It was a joy to watch you grow in planning and intention, choosing to do something difficult and unconventional with lots of unknowns. And seeing you on PVT - with your team and squad, serving in another country, giving us the details on your overseas home, and friends, and the mall, the bus, the empanada shop. What a trip. Little did we know, you would be home two weeks later after a short time in Cambodia. 

But instead, here we are, staying at home. Be encouraged - Jesus started something in you with the Race that is not done yet. Be challenged - you did some incredibly difficult things on the Race and those milestones will give you strength for future goals. Be bold - no one lives an incredible life by accident. 

Love 

DAD

Photo: early March 2020, before quarantine.

Decompression with Emily.

Mad Respect to Adventures

Well surprise, surprise, Emily is home. More about her later.

When we left her in Ecuador, at the very end of February, leadership at Adventures told us that they were watching the Coronavirus and Emily's squad in particular very closely, since her squad would be leaving the next day to fly to Cambodia. Just about two weeks later, Adventures started moving certain teams home. As I'm sure you know, the virus is moving, countries are closing borders and airlines reducing flights. Here's some notification timelines:

14 March 15:00 - Some Adventures teams coming home.
14 March 21:00 - All Adventures teams are coming home including Emilys.
15 March 12:00 - Itinerary sent for Emily's squad, including two day debrief near LAX.
17 March 12:00 - Debriefing cancelled, parents, please fly all Racers home from their gateway cities ASAP.

The team at Adventures worked 24x7, getting over 20 teams and 500 people home - an incredible feat. I had an incredible amount of respect for Adventures before this - this situation only multiplies it. Not to mention everything Emily experienced on the Race.

Adventures - thanks for taking care of these kids through this situation and contending for this generation to follow Jesus.

PVT - Quito, Ecuador

Deanna and I got to visit Emily last week in Quito, Ecuador as part of a Parent Vision Trip organized by the organization that runs The World Race Gap Year, Adventures in Missions. We had a great time with Em and just said goodbye to her again last weekend when we left Quito. PVT is structured so that you have a lot of time with your racer, while serving with them and the orgs that they have worked with, staying near them - in our case we were all on the campus of a seminary together, and having one full adventure day off to do as you please, all over about seven days.

I loved our time serving with partner organizations in and around Quito, including Camp Hope [a day center for disabled kids and young adults], Pan de Vida [poverty alleviation], Covi [an afterschool program] and Dunamis [trafficking rehabilitation - mutual connections with The Samaritan Woman in Baltimore.] Adventures also has a base in Quito run by the incredible Fabi and his wife, really phenomenal hosts. If you have a thing for Quito, these would be great places to start to think about partnerships - all run by native Ecuadorians. Also, Mosaic Ecuador [like from Erwin McManus] opened their doors the weekend before we got there. Emily went and took 2 friends - Shengs represent!

Quito is a beautiful city, sitting at 9350 feet above sea level with a population of about 2M people spread out over 207 square miles surrounded by mountains. I was a little sick from the altitude our first day here - we landed a few days early because we thought at least one of us would need to acclimate. The currency is the US dollar, the electrical current and plugs are the same as the US, and no one is really interested in practicing English here, which is different than a lot of places I have traveled to. Taxis and Ubers are dirt cheap. Food and lodging is moderate, depending on your taste. It was the rainy season when we were there so there was a lot of rain at some point almost every day.

For our adventure day, we visited a little town in the Andes mountain called Mindo. Mindo is advertised as the cloud forest and is about 2 hours outside of Quito. We visited a butterfly and hummingbird garden and went on a chocolate factory tour [adventure!] Interesting side note: One of the relatives of a team member on a team that we have partnered with in Italy pinged me after seeing on FB that we had been in Mindo. He worked on a well project there 10 years ago and a church community started out of that work.

We had a weekend stopover in Bogota on the way home, which was probably too much. Deanna and I were so exhausted so we spent a lot of time at our hotel. But Bogota is a beautiful city with a mix of very modern and a classic old town. We tried to go up Monserrate but it was way too crowded so instead just hung around Bolivar Square for a few hours.

As you can imagine, we loved our time with Em and had so much fun exploring Quito and seeing a glimpse of her life on the Race. The Race has definitely stretched and grown her, we chatted about things she would have never talked about had she gone right to college.

To SquadAyyee - we love you and are praying for your last 3 months in Cambodia and that the Lord makes you strong and a force to be reckoned with for the Kingdom for your whole long lives. To the parents of the squad - job well done, you have some amazing kids that have the admiration of many. But you already knew this. Loved hanging and getting to know you.

PVT only encouraged our absolute joy with the Race.

Feb Update

Emily is almost finished with 5 months on the Race and is currently in Ecuador and we will visit her at the end of the month, which we are looking forward to. I think her experience on the Race has been full, meaning she and her team have experienced a full range of life - days that are easy and fun and days that are difficult. Ministry is joyous and tedious, people get sick, new food is fun until it's not, travel days are fun until the 24th hour. But we are very excited to see her and spend a few days with her and her team. Overall, it is what we desired for Emily - a time before college when she grew in intimacy with the Lord and grew in life experience.

In the meantime, empty nesting has been very quiet and a tad boring. But we knew it would be slow and wanted to lean into this and let this time run its course. I've been pondering three concepts of late: 1 - Residency, how when people do a 'residency,' it's a deep commitment to learning a craft and how Jesus takes up residence with us. 2 - Pilgrimage, the act of spiritual pilgrimages and the slight shift from traveling as a tourist to journeying on a pilgrimage. 3 - "to contend for" - to fast and pray and pull out all the stops for someone for something. I'm thinking about all three of these when it comes to cross cultural service with young people but not sure what it means yet. And I'm having lots of fun with my Toyota 4Runner.

[#1 and #2 from above are influences from The World Race and #3 is from the This Cultural Moment podcast.]

Maybe another update in March.

Parent Launch - The World Race Gap Year

We spent this past weekend in Atlanta participating in the Parent Launch for Emily for The World Race Gap Year. I was a teary mess most of the weekend - saying goodbye to Emily was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

We cannot say enough great things about the ethos and execution about Adventures in Missions and The World Race. Since of course this kind of thing is my jam too, I went through the weekend both making mental notes about how good their ideas were and being in total admiration of their execution of these great ideas. They really do an incredible job in preparing both the Racers and their parents - this weekend it was around 300 Racers and most of their parents. Our time as parents included sessions about insurance, risk, our journey as parents, releasing our kids, Q&A with past Racers and parents and Adventures' thinking about discipling this generation. I heard this multiple times and believe it - they love this generation.

+ The Race is not incredible every day. Some days, it is just tough work. There is fruit on the other side of brokenness and sometimes we need to be challenged to push through rather than quit early.
+ Jesus apprenticed the disciples through a journey. It was a rite of passage and these are now rare in our culture.
+ We are stewarding the collapse of the church in the US [in the context of the Nones and Gen Z.]
+ 12 percent of this generation has an anxiety disorder.
+ The Holy Spirit is still the best at giving the answers.
+ There should be a transfer of the primary voice in your kids lives from yours to the Lords. [Peterson]
+ Put what God is doing in their life above wanting them home.
+ Pay attention to stirrings in your heart this year - one of the worst things you can do is to be in the exact same place you are now when your Racer comes home.
+ Release your racer from their past experience with God. Don't expect God to move in the same way.
+ There was a worship and teaching session the night before everyone left with all the Racers and parents. It was unforgettable - I haven't seen such intensity and passion from young people in a long time.

I could not imagine a better experience for Emily after finishing high school and before college and we are so thrilled for her. Thanks for so many of you who have supported our family in this. Follow along with her updates here.