Road Jes Traveled

In the fall of 2016, shortly after announcing that I would be leaving for the World Race, I was at my weekly Rotary meeting at the Waikiki Yacht Club. I remember this night because of instead of sitting with my usual gang of Nicole, Rich, & Paul, I sat next to James Ham. I got to tell him some of my story and about the race. When I listed my route to him he told me that he had a contact in Ghana. He knew a doctor there who worked in a hospital that our Rotary club helped fund in some way, he sent an introductory email right then and there and that's where months of correspondence with Dr. Gavin Apio began. I had no idea at the time how big of an impact this would play in the months to come. As many of you know, our time in Ghana was extended. Instead of spending month 6 in Burkina Faso, we spent both months 5 and 6 in Ghana. Our last two weeks in Ghana were classified as "ATL" which stands for "Ask The Lord". This means we were not assigned a specific loc...

"Currently sitting on a blue plastic chair under a mango tree. Heat index is 101. Humidity is over 80%. Every part of my body is dirty. Every part of it is moist with sweat. I'm used to my own smell and the smell of my team by now. Every 5 seconds I am killing an ant on me or swatting a fly away. I can't keep the dirt off of my feet even with shoes on. Even a shower isn't worth looking forward to. When you replace a shower head with only a bucket of water you don't ever feel fully clean. And the second you are done you begin sweating again. And with our $4 per day food budget and lack of options at any "grocery store" or market, the term "meal" is used loosely and I don't imagine feeling full anytime soon. Even sleep is tough to feel excited about. The 7 of us lay on the floor next to each other like sardines packed together in a room with one fan and a tin roof. The Islamic music, chickens, roosters, and children form a soundtrack that...

A friend recommended that I ask God for a word for my 30th year of life. The word that keeps coming to me is OWNERSHIP. Owning my life. Owning my relationship with Him. Owning my story. My story matters.  It's mine to share. It's made me who I am today. And I am proud. It may have taken me 30 years, but this is my story. Watch below or use this link!  https://youtu.be/WINODjfWrLM Special thank you to Kelsay Singleton for sharing her passion with me and helping me share my testimony in such a beautiful way. 

I AM OBSESSED WITH THESE HUMANS!!!   But the truth is, it hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows. You used to be able to cut the tension between us with a knife. In fact, I think the rest of our squad would agree that our team was the most disunited team as we launched onto the race. But we persevered, we fought the good fight, we CHOSE to love each other. And man I'm so glad we did.   I met all of them at training camp (TC) in October 2016. In fact, I met our whole squad then. All 54 of them. 54 people is a lot. Naturally, I spent each day at TC intentionally setting aside time to build relationships. And I built some good ones. At the end of TC when they announced our teams, I looked around at the 6 people I was matched with. One of my first reactions was to burst into tears. (Sounds dramatic but we were also sleep deprived, food deprived, cold, uncomfortable, and emotionally picked apart!) I looked at them and wondered WHY? What did AIM see in them that they th...

As I pressed submit for my last blog post I was interrupted by an American voice. It was a man (Mark) and woman asking for the wifi password (I was sitting at a coffee shop). We started talking and long story short - he's a pastor from Montana here with some of his youth group. They offered to let us use their hotel showers!! After about an hour of conversation, we accepted his offer. We walked for about an hour to his hotel. We had the best showers and could not stop talking about how it was a total gift that we crossed paths. Mark wanted us to meet his friends and invited us to dinner. We ended up at a Peruvian restaurant with around 25 people. Person after person came into the restaurant, each having their own story about how they met Pastor Mark and many of them not knowing each other. So we sat there, all coming from different paths, speaking different languages, but all connected by this crazy, God-loving man, Mark! I was seated across the table from a man who works for the ...

Here's an update on life so far in Lima, Peru. As most of you know, it took us about 3 days to get here by bus. Part of this was due to flooding that has been happening along the coast of Peru. During the long drive, I'd look out of the window, half asleep, and see several feet of standing water. The floods were a bit concerning but we eventually made it here and thought the floods were far behind us. We were supposed to start working with a church on Wednesday but that morning we found out that the pastor of the church had been mugged. He was injured so badly that he had to be hospitalized. Since our plans to work with him were now postponed, we used the day to go on a prayer walk around the city, of course including the pastor in our prayers. Our walk lead us to the coast and we climbed a staircase of 200+ steps each way to get there. We got back home, tired and drenched in sweat, and realized our water was turned off. The heat has made it so difficult to sleep but we went...

My talented teammate, Kelsay, surprised me with this little video to help me fundraise. Check it out for a glimpse into my life on the race.

Team time is an intentional time each day that we spend to deepen our relationship with our team. Each day's activities vary from deep talks to fun games and everything in between. In today's team time we each shared a song that has been on our mind lately. I love music so much so I was excited to get started. As each song played, I jotted down a few lyrics that stood out to me. I didn't separate by song so all of it is mushed together into one big paragraph. The result is beautiful and my team encouraged me to publish it. So here it is - a big, mixed up, chaotic, beautiful mess. Death was arrested and my life began. Free! Free! Forever we're free! There's freedom in surrender. Lay it down and let it go. I'm painting beauty with the ashes. You're not alone. Stop holding on and just be held. I once was lost but now am found. Take this life and lay it down at the foot of the cross. Without your love I would be lost. Hallelujah love has won. Like the beauty ...

There’s a woman who is staying in the house with us. She cooks, cleans, reads her Bible, and you can very rarely find her doing anything else. No one seemed to know her name or anything about her. But we noticed her right away and see her more often than we do our host. When we began to speak to her, she seemed shocked that we expressed so much interest in her. After about a week of small talk and conversations in broken Spanish, she warmed up to us. We began inviting her to join us in meals and prayer. I invited her to sit with us at Church and asked if she could teach us how to cook and to make our favorite – café con leche. Each time we extended invitations to her, she lit up with joy and happily accepted. When she enters a room she often says "Jessica!" because for some reason mine is the only name she's learned. She told us how sometimes she hears God and once she felt Him wrap His arms around her. She’s a faithful, Godly woman. She’s the type of woman with a soft b...

We headed out to la playa (the beach) on Thursday evening to evangelize and to invite young people to a party that we hosted the following Saturday. This was our 3 rd  attempt to do this. The first two times had been rained out by massive downpours. We walked up and down the shoreline offering free hugs and passing out invitations to local children and teenagers. One of the boys from the Church youth group carried around a stereo so we had background music wherever we walked. It was awesome! I went into the night a bit nervous – evangelism is something I’m not comfortable with. And in America, we’d probably be laughed at and shooed away. But here on the island of San Andres, the people we encountered were warm and welcoming and pretty excited to see us. The weather was perfect and the whole night was a pretty incredible experience. At one point we took a break and walked out onto a pier. The sun had already set at this point but the sky lit up with stars. After we said a prayer as...

There’s a giant rock in Waimea Bay that people cliff jump off of. Many of the locals have grown up jumping off of it since they were young and you can often find a line of people of all ages and backgrounds waiting for their turn off the cliff. But not me. I’ve been to Waimea Bay countless times and twice I went with the intention to jump, but didn’t. And then I told myself that I would jump before I left for the race, but I didn’t. People often use the word  brave  to describe me. And in many ways, I do consider myself brave. Many big ways actually. But there are smaller things (that are big to me) that most people don’t know about me that make me feel the opposite of brave. Like the fact that at 29 years old, I don’t know how to ride a bike because I’m afraid I’ll fall. Or that I had to hold my breath to jump off of a ledge that was only 2 feet tall today. Or that my first time camping was at training camp for the race. Or that there’s that big rock in Waimea that I keep ...

One of the things that the race is pushing me out of is the desire to control my plans. Time and time again God has shown me that His plans are far greater than mine. And here, week 1, in San Andres, Colombia, is no different. My team and I have been incredibly blessed by our ministry location this month. We’ve been sent to a small island in the Caribbean called San Andres. When I say small, I mean it. It’s about 8 miles long and 2 miles wide. We could literally walk the entire island in a day if we wanted to. The sea around us is unlike any I have seen. They call it “el mar de 7 colores” – the sea of 7 colors – which is so fitting. The culture is a perfect mix of latin and islander – vibrant, casual, warm, and slow-paced. With my Latina and Hawaiiana background, many things feel familiar to me and I have oddly felt very at home since our arrival. We live on the second floor of a church called Centro Familiar de Alabanza (Family Center of Praise). It’s a modest home in the center of...