Hello friends, family, and kind supporters. I’m writing this blog to inform you that I made the decision to come off the field and leave the World Race. I’ve been home for about a month now and honestly really struggled with what and how I was going to say this to you all.
Leaving was a difficult decision for me, I prayed and thought on it for weeks. And if I’m being honest have been scared to write this because what does it mean to my supporters who funded my way for this trip? I played devil’s advocate in my head for a long time, what does it mean to persevere? What does it look like to suffer for the Lord? Am I simply giving up too early?
My decision came down to two parts: a distrust for the organization and a deterioration of my mental and emotional health. My relationship with God is the most important thing to be protective over in my life and I was no longer confident that staying in that environment was the best thing for that relationship.
It’s not necessary to get into the nitty gritty details of my distrust for the organization because that’s not the point of me writing this to you, if you’d like a better picture into this I would love to have a personal conversation about it or you can read my friend’s blog (https://andrewcarlburg.theworldrace.org/post/seeking-restoration-an-honest-look-into-what-the-world-race-is-and-why-i-left) for a deeper look. There were a number of different things that occurred, to me and to others, over my time in Honduras that led to this. The biggest personal encounter was after I got COVID a second time. There was an outbreak on our squad and mid June there were 10 of us that tested positive. The way that we were cared for but also the complete lack of communication on many levels of leadership was extremely upsetting. Both as a healthcare professional and just a person stuck in quarantine, I didn’t feel like my voice was heard or that my overall health was taken into account for the two weeks that followed. To me it felt like it didn’t matter that we were stuck in 2 small rooms with 10 people and couldn’t leave or that we had questions, the only thing that mattered was getting us all out of the country in 10 days and there wasn’t time for anything else.
This is led me to no longer trust that decisions about our trip were being made with our best interests in mind. Our next country, the one we were so desperate to get into in those two weeks that followed our results was South Africa. In case you didn’t know, in June South Africa was shutting down due to an uptake in COVID cases. Like they were in a Level 4 lockdown. It didn’t make sense to me that WR was using all their effort to get us into a country that wasn’t really safe for our physical health against COVID, especially at a time where we were living in an outbreak with a different strand. And then I got thinking, why were we in Comayagua, Honduras to begin with?
I know that I assumed the risk of traveling throughout a pandemic, I knew there was a real chance that I would get sick while on the field. But we were also assured that the safety team at Adventures in Missions (AIM) would be monitoring what COVID looked like in each country and decisions would be made accordingly. Our third country was supposed to be Peru and this was changed due to the COVID situation there. But then the decision was made for us to go to Comayagua, a city that was topping the charts for COVID cases in the world! These travel decisions, with these 2 countries in their current states just made me feel like my health and safety was no longer being taken into consideration.
As for my mental/emotional health, due to a number of circumstances we got delayed in NJ for 10 days for another quarantine in early July. It was this time to stop and reflect that I knew I wasn’t ok. I had fallen into some unhealthy thought patterns again, I felt like I had regressed on growth I’d made after my divorce, and I didn’t even want to spend any time with the Lord. After getting COVID twice, being in quarantine for 24 days, and watching a breakdown of one of my dear friends, I wasn’t ok and I realized I was in no place to be doing ministry or attempting to minister to people.
I gave my yes to God, not to the World Race. While I grew and learned a lot, it turned out that 6 months was all God had in store for me, not 11. And that’s ok.
Coming home, being in communication with friends who also decided to leave has been really good for me. I’m still not ok, but I’m doing better. I’m finding my passion for the Lord again, which is the most important thing in the end.
Dear Hailey! I’m so sorry this has been the culmination of your experience and will be praying for your complete physical, emotional, mental and spiritual healing. You ran the race you were given, until you just could not in good conscience continue. There is NO shame in that. God already knew what was ahead, and He will continue to walk beside you now. Give yourself grace, time, and allow yourself to rest in Him. Hugs!