I am currently sitting in Starbucks, here in Vancouver. I have had some time to rest since coming to visit my brother. 

Here are my latest feelings:

 

The next morning I said good-bye to the last squad mate there and then I had to go by myself (something you are not used to doing on the World Race). I had to put my huge backpack on without any help from my squad mates, I had to stand in line by myself and simply walking around by myself felt extremely strange. 'where was everyone...?'

 

It has been culture shock coming back in Canada for sure. I have been walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk wondering why everyone is walking on the other side, I have been trying to get into the wrong side of the car, I have been trying to convert money in head (which I realize now is not needed), I have been FREEZING (it's not 30-40 degree C weather anymore), everyone is speaking like a Canadian (eh!) and I can understand what people are saying and they can understand me.

 

These past 11 months have seriously felt like 2 seconds and at the same time they have felt like 11 years. I can barely remember last January, let alone what I did 2 weeks ago, but at the same time I can live through experiences of the past year in my head so clearly. I don't understand it but I am feeling the ramifications of this interesting and crazy year...and yes, it really has been crazy. My team and squad have become my family as we've gone through this experience together. As I said 'good-bye' it almost felt like all of my other 4000 good-byes this past year; getting to know people for a short while and then saying goodbye so soon after. Even though I have said 'good-bye' so many times, it still is not easy or something to get used to.  I really don't know if I will see any of my squad or team again. You just never know...but I pray I do! In January is Searchlight where most of the squad is coming together in Georgia to process the year and figure out plans for our various dreams and passions that have been stirred up! I hope I will be going!

 

I remember one of my major concerns of going on the World Race was that I was scared to open up with people...now I long to open up and share with any one of my squad mates right now. I know this sounds horribly sad, but it's true, when you go through this experience that we have gone through on this past year, there is no one else who can really understand. I can try to explain and I WILL try to explain to my friends and family (and anyone else!), but I know that will be my next challenge as I begin to see all of you sometime soon :)

Love Anne 

Hello everyone,

This is my first blog of my last month on the World Race. AHHHH, it is so weird. 

Month 11.

 

Here is a quick list of whatTeam Tandem has been up to thus far in Malaysia:

-          - Organized activities for the children here at the home

-          - Attended Deepavali festivals

-          - Attended a charity banquet which included live music, a magic show, a 9 course meal and more.

-          - Helped out with 'shrink art' and a bouncy castle at a Little India Carnival

-          - Spoken at cell groups and led devotionals

-          - Been to prayer meetings, church meetings, one of which had 2000 people

-          - Cleaned, organized and recorded

-          - Evangelism (which has been fun and once included us washing dishes at a random restaurant!)

-          - Served at a drop-in centre and needle exchange program

-          - Coordinated a youth meeting

 

As we have been travelling around KL ministering in various locations and to various people I have seen how important the various types of ministry are.  We're in the big city, familiar with the LRT and monorail transportation systems and feel like we know the place!  It's amazing how quickly we call the place we are in "home."  It only takes less than a day for me to adjust and feel comfortable and settled in my new found home!  KL has only been my home for a couple of weeks but I feel like I've lived here for a while :)

 

We leave our ministry at the beginning of next week and then we will be having debrief with the whole squad to process the World Race before we go home. We arrive back in the States on November 19^th. I will be arriving back home to NS on December 15^th. 

I look forward to coming home but as I think about leaving this crazy year I get upset and I know it will be a huge change and will take a lot of processing when I get home. 

Alright, I know this was just a little update...but I hope to write another one soon.

BYE
Annie Akka (Sister Anne)

On Wednesday I was asked if any of us on the team would like to go to "THE FARM" for two days. Um, OF COURSE...it would feel like home :) I was very excited and after asking around Faith, Erin and I got to go! We left early Thursday morning to come back Friday night! 

We were so excitedddddddddddddddd :)

So we took the big 15-passenger van and headed 100km to Maranatha Farm which was in "The Outback" or "The Bush!" We arrived and when we first turned the corner into the gate we saw what looked to be a kangaroo!!!!!! Our first kangaroo siting in the wild! It was actually a wallaby. They look very similar. As the two days progressed we ended up seeing heaps of wallabies AND kangaroos just hopping around everywhere we went!

Maranatha Farm has many pigs of ALL sizes, cows, 3 horses and a pig that was raised up like a dog who likes to beg for food and come in the kitchen (which is in the barn)! Our main job for the two days, however, was to build a fence! We worked with the farm worker (who was basically an Australian cowboy who rides horses and catches wild buffalo and used to ride bulls in the rodeo!) and put up a barbed wire fence that was more than a kilometer long!! We had to slam down the pickets manually, tie the barbed wire fence to the pickets and fasten droppers in between the pickets. Add to resume: Fence-builder!

We worked all day the first day and then again the second day and finally finished the fence at 5:45pm only to find out that they were taking down the next section of an old fence and so they will be starting that section on Monday! We worked in the outback, which has little trees all over the place which means no shade. It was around 40 degrees Celsius and you became thirsty only seconds after finishing a glass of water. I put on so much sunscreen, wore a big straw hat and a long sleeve plaid shirt that they provided! I looked like a true Aussie on the farm :)

I was so proud of all the hard work we did and the finished product looked quite nice! To reward ourselves we went down to the creek, not to go swimming but to go look for "heaps of crocs." The water looked so nice and I would have loved to go swimming. Even though we didn't see any crocodiles for the first 15 minutes, the water is full of them! We did see one on the way back through the creek. We saw only his eyes just above the water. Very scary!

The two days at the farm were very enjoyable and it felt like a real Australian Outback experience! I hope the fence serves them well :)

AND I had the best mango I've ever had in my life. It was called "Kensington Pride." Very tasty! There are mango trees all over the place here!

- Aussie Annie

I AM IN AUSTRALIA!!!

Here is a little bit about our month so far in Darwin:

Our squad took a bus from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and then flew to Darwin, Australia. We are just outside of the city working at a Christian Outreach Centre. It is a fundraising centre to support missionaries all around the world. They provide accommodations for the aboriginals who have to come into Darwin for medical reasons. We have helped in every part of the organization to keep it running. We actually came at a perfect time because the last two weeks have been vacation for the children so many of the staff have been gone on holidays. We have been helping with office work, yard work, working in the kitchen, laundry and we have basically taken over cleaning "Harmony House" where we get to say "housekeepingggggg" and then proceed in cleaning the rooms from top to bottom.

It is a different ministry from the other months but we always say when we arrive at a new ministry site "we want to help you wherever you need help" and so that is what we are doing and one verse which can easily be applied here to remind ourselves is Colossians 3:23-24 "You are serving the Lord Christ." 

I'm not sure if all of you know this yet, but this month is women's month and man's month. So all of the 11 men on the squad are together this month and the women have separated into 3 different teams. There are 9 of us on my team. They call us "a bunch of sheilas." It has been really fun being with just girls, doing things like baking cupcakes, making music videos, eating spoonfuls of frosting and crocheting every moment we get to make really great winter hats (and yes it is really hot here right now, about 35 degrees Celsius). 

One thing I am trying to remember this month is to rest in the Lord and also to not let the month go to waste. It is very hot here and we are doing hard work and I AM tired a lot because it is MONTH 10 of our trip :) But I have been convicted about using my time wisely. I am reminded to seek God first and to use this rare month to speak into my teammates lives and lift them up into who God has created them to be. I know that God has me leading this group of girls for some reason this month.

Now, I will tell you something about each person on my team this month:

Tabi loves folding laundry and has been using her laundry skills as she helps with laundry every day. I have realized this month that she has a very particular way of folding both fitted sheets and flat sheets. I have never seen a fitted sheet folded so nicely before in my life! 

Faith has been showing her natural gift of meeting anyone and becoming best friends with them so easily. She has learned some Indonesian since being here and also has been speaking Thai with a women here who spent 13 years in Thailand and I think she has also spoken Mandarin with a woman from China.

Erin has really impressed me with her fan-cleaning skills. Last week we had the privilege of cleaning the fans in the rooms and Erin did a smashing job and didn't even get very grossed out. Erin and I also majorly cleaned up a yard of leaves, rubbish, and even some cutlery.

Natalie and I like to read the Chronicles of Narnia together in an English accent and also speak in an English accent all day every day. She speaks very properly while also adding some Australian phrases in there from time to time. Natalie has also proved herself to be an excellent kitchen aid to feed the many who come to eat 5 meals a day here at the centre.

Andrea has been working in the office this past week and I just happened to be in the office once while she picked up the phone. She answered it so well and it sounded as if she had been working there for years! She has also found her new found obsession with crocheting.

Allison was on my first team and it has been great being on her team again. She has been amazing me with her counseling skills as we can talk with her any time about the future and the stress that comes with that. I also have been amused by her love for cats; we have a next-door neighbour cat which she has just succeeding in petting.

Elaina has also shown her office receptionist skills but also her baking abilities and gift of hospitality as we baked around 50 chocolate cupcakes. They were very tasty! It has been awesome to discuss and quote with Elaina excellent subjects such as Anne of Green Gables and The Sound of Music!

Rachael has used her typing skills to type up reports and Bible Studies in the office. We have also made an excellent housekeeping team with a worker here as Rachel has been a very speedy sheet-changer! She has also become the leader in separating the food we get to feed the pigs at the farm!

And that's about it for now. The next blog is about my two days spent at "The Farm." 

Thank you for reading :)

- Aussie Annie

At the beginning of them month, we spent 5 days in Siem Reap at debrief. We had those days for refueling, resting, teaching sessions and have meetings as team leaders and also as a team with our squad leaders and staff from the States. It was a very nice rest. We actually stayed at a hotel and it was so nice!!!!! There was air conditioning, complimentary buffet breakfast and a POOL!!! We couldn't believe it :) 

 

A few friends and I went for a bike ride to Ankor Wat (really old temples in Siem Reap), apparently one of the World's Wonders. We rented bikes for 1 dollar and biked around the temples and saw the meticulus details of the temples and the trees and roots overgrown over the old buildings. It was interesting. The bike ride was really fun too!! 



We met a group of Cambodians who were there for a school trip from their university and many of them knew english but I was also able to speak to one of them in FRENCH! haha. Fantastic! 

Another VERY exciting part of that day was that we were biking along and I heard a volleyball hit someone's arms through the trees. I made everyone stop and turn into the place where I heard it and there were a whole bunch of guys playing volleyball!!!!!! We stopped and I got to play with them for a few minutes...they were quite good. A highlight for sure!

 

We left Siem Reap and then headed to our ministry site in Kampong Chhnang. It took us two days to get there because we stopped in one city to stay overnight at another site by the same organization we are working with this month, Transform Asia. We also had a great day there going around the city with one of the contacts from the States and we stopped at a little street vender (my favourite) and her specialty was bugs and snakes. So we ate a huge bug (not the best) and then tried snake!! So, there you have it, I have eaten snake. It didn't actually taste like much and it had absolutely no meat. It was just skin and bone. I guess I ate snake skin! YUM...

 

We travelled the next day, finally our 4th and last bus ride. We met our wonderful contacts from Tennessee! They took us to our ministry site and that is where we are now! We are working at a New Development Centre which has been around since the 90s. It is a training centre for women who have been saved from the sex trade. Many of them do not have an education so we have been teaching them english and computer. At the centre they learn sewing, cosmotology and we have been teaching them jewelery-making. Many of them know no english or any computer knowledge so we have started from the very basics. It is challenging but also a lot of fun and encouraging. We also have been teaching some girls and children guitar and keyboard! 

 

Even through all of this, which was so hard for me even to read about, I have noticed that Cambodians love to laugh! Just today I went to the market and said my usual "Swoi-se-dye" to every person I saw (it means hello) and one lady just burst out laughing. I probably say it wrong, but still they like to laugh. At the centre where we live, we are often tickled by the children or any of the girls we know! It's really funny :) We have access to bicycles here so I have been riding almost every day. It is so much fun to ride down to the market or up the road to the coconut trees and rice fields. I say "swoi-se-dye" to everyone and they all say it back and the children all say "hello, what's your name" not knowing the meaning of "what's your name" because I ask them the same question and they don't answer! ahaha. 

Biking, pinapples, volleyball, green scenery, the market, rice for every meal, friendly people, laughing and smiling = yes, Cambodia is great!

-ANNE!