Hi! My name is Natasha Raines.
I attended the World Race: Gap Year program with AIM in 2019.
My squad and I had the privilege of living in Thailand, Malaysia, India, and Costa Rica for our time on the Race.
Thailand:
-Stayed for two months in AIM’s hostel base. Worked with Agape Home sanding, painting, and playing with kids. Best adventure day was an overnight trek in the jungle. We hiked thirteen miles in two days, saw three to four different waterfalls, fed elephants in the river, and went bamboo rafting! It was so much fun! Celebrated Halloween here.
Malaysia:
-Stayed for one month in the home of our host. Worked with the local church preaching, praying, teaching in a school for special needs kids, participated in house church, helped out with an early Christmas Day for the kids, and danced in the traditional dresses for one of the pastor’s music videos! You can find the video on YouTube called “Thuthigalin Paathirarey”. Best adventure day was a weekend in Georgetown on Penang Island. We toured different shops, walked through tons of beautiful street art, and went to a pop-up art festival that was absolutely amazing. Celebrated Thanksgiving here.
India:
-Stayed for three months in a school/college. Worked on helping build a hospital, painted a school, sang in churches, taught in schools, participated in dance competitions, prayer-walked, lots of ATL (ask the Lord), helped cook in the kitchen, went to a rehab center weekly, helped out in a hospital and prayed for people, worshipped in front of the hospital, helped out with a yard sale, mud-fished, and much more. This is where we had PVT (parent vision trip). I personally did not take an adventure day in India, but a fun fact, we spent Valentine’s Day on a fifteen hour bus ride! Celebrated Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s here.
Costa Rica:
-Stayed for two weeks in the AIM base. Worked with a ministry for one day handing out flyers and praying for a lady who was sick, taught English to an intimate number of people our own age who in return helped us with our Spanish, participated in an ATL day, and had a day of yoga class. I also did not have an adventure day here because of the brevity of our time there. We left early due to covid. Ended up celebrating Easter at home instead of C.R.
After coming home I worked for myself doing landscaping for a group of ladies.
