*Repost from old blog 12/31/2021 On December 23 our whole squad left Amman to go to Wadi Rum for a short Christmas break. Wadi Rum is a desert tourist attraction that is hard to believe exists. Even when we were leaving on the 27th it still didn’t seem like the place was real, it looked like a screensaver. This is a place where a lot of films get made. If you’ve ever seen a desert movie there is a decent chance it...

*Repost from old blog 12/29/2021 One thing I have not written about on the race so far is adventure days. I’ve had adventure days where we got to go to the Black Sea, I’ve gotten to visit some castles, and sometimes they are just used as a day to not do anything. But I wanted to write about the first adventure day that we had in Jordan because it was an amazing day. I was with half of my squad when we went. The...

*Repost from old blog 12/21/2021 September last year while I was in North Carolina I was trying to decide whether I should go spend a year doing missions with YWAM or do the World Race. I felt like God wanted me to do the World Race but I wanted to do YWAM. The YWAM base that I applied for spent six months in Greece and six months in a country in the Middle East. I wanted to do it so bad. For those who don’t know,...

*Repost from old blog 12/18/2021 I haven’t posted as many blogs about Ukraine as I have in previous countries. Mostly due to some writer’s block. But we left Ukraine a few days ago and I’m now in Jordan. We’re in the Middle East! But I’m not writing about Jordan yet. Having left a few days ago I was able to spend some time reflecting on Ukraine. The idea that kept coming up over and over again while in Ukraine for...

*Repost from old blog 12/10/2021 Transcarpathia, or in Ukrainian Zakarpattia, is the southwestern part of Ukraine on the border with Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Romania. This part of the country has changed hands a lot of times throughout the centuries. It was part of Hungary for centuries, then part of Austria, and became part of Hungary again when Austria changed into Austria-Hungary. Then between the first a...

*Repost from old blog 12/4/2021 One of the biggest challenges I’ve been facing on the race is my eating. I would say the year leading up to the race I started eating less. I didn’t even realize this was really a thing I was doing until I went back home between training camp and leaving for the race. My mom pointed out to me during that time because she had noticed the way I’d been acting with food for a while. At ...

*Repost from 11/28/2021 Duane and Lisa are a couple who moved from the States to live in Mukachevo, Ukraine and they’ve lived here for three years now. They have eight kids, three of which they adopted from Ukraine before they moved to Ukraine, and two kids with special needs. They are incredibly nice and hospitable people who have opened their doors to my team, for us to be able to stay with them during our time ...

*Repost from old blogs 11/19/2021 At my month one debrief we had multiple talks about spiritual gifts. A lot of what the Bible says about spiritual gifts comes from 1 Corinthians. During one of the talks they were talking about 1 Corinthians 14. “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one unders...

*Repost from old blog 11/9/2021 Kosovo is an amazing place. My team has spent our entire time doing ministry in the second largest city, Prizren. It's extremely close to where my team was doing ministry in a small village in Albania last month. We're just on the other side of the mountain that we could see from the village. We're only about an hour from there. The people of Kosovo see themselves as entirely Alb...

*Repost from old blog 11/2/2021 I started off my time here in Kosovo struggling. You all know I’m a pretty quiet person. In these blogs that I’ve written about conversations we’ve had with the locals for the most part have just been my teammates doing the conversations. I still very much struggle with starting up conversations and contributing to conversations. I’m not even talking about having a conversation abou...