We are sending out squad after squad this fall, and every one of them gets a different opening chapter. Gap Year Squad 4 may have the most striking one of all. They are beginning their year in a place that is still digging out from a hurricane.

Over the next nine months, Squad 4 will live and serve across six countries: Jamaica, Italy, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia. Their story starts in western Jamaica, at our Adventures base, working shoulder to shoulder with our Adventures Relief team in communities that Hurricane Melissa turned upside down. Whether you raised one of these young adults, poured into them somewhere along the way, or simply love watching a new squad launch, this is your invitation to stand behind them. There is real power in a crowd that prays.

They Begin in Jamaica

When Hurricane Melissa tore through western Jamaica, it took more than roofs. It left behind grief, fear, and families trying to rebuild lives that had been upended in a single night.

That is exactly where our Adventures Relief team has planted itself. Led by Chris and Sarah Horvath, the team lives by a motto that tells you most of what you need to know about them: bringing Kingdom into chaos. Week after week they mobilize volunteers to repair roofs and homes across the region, and Squad 4 is about to join that work. But spend any time with this team and you learn something fast. The roof was never really the point.

Kayon

When the storm ripped the roof off her family's home, she could not afford to replace it, so she did what she could. In the days after Melissa she walked through the debris, gathered up damaged sheets of zinc scattered across her community, and started rebuilding the roof with her own two hands. By the time our volunteers reached her, she had already pieced most of it back together through sheer determination, with only one vulnerable section left open to the rain. The team finished the repair with her. And when it was done, the biggest change was not the roof overhead. It was Kayon. The weight of the storm no longer defined her, because she finally knew she had not been forgotten.

Jerry

He barely spoke a word when the team met him, working quietly beside them to repair the roof of his mother Sandy's home. He was not talkative, and he rarely smiled, but he showed up, and he worked. So the team kept inviting him back. One project became two. Two became ten. Before long Jerry was showing up even when his own family's home had nothing to do with it. Today he is learning construction, helping repair houses across his community, and growing into someone who may one day lead volunteers himself. His sister says the man who used to stand on the edge of every conversation now laughs with the team and plays with the neighborhood kids like he has known them all his life. These days, Jerry wears a cross around his neck.

This is what happens at this base. A repaired roof becomes an open door to a relationship, and a relationship becomes an open door to a changed life. God is raising up leaders like Jerry from inside the very communities the team came to serve.

I cannot think of a better place for a young person to begin a year of following Jesus. On their very first assignment, Squad 4 will see the Gospel and a hammer held in the same hand. They will learn, before they ever board the next flight, that showing up and doing humble work and paying attention to one hurting person is how God tends to change the world, and how He tends to change the one holding the hammer too.

Who Is on Squad 4

Who Is Leading Them

These young adults are not going alone. A team of leaders travels the whole route with them, sharing the meals and the long days, running the debriefs, sitting with them when Jamaica is hard and beautiful at the same time, and coaching them to hear God's voice for themselves.

Would You Pray for Them

Nothing you can do for this squad matters more than prayer. The requests below come straight from the team.

General

- Unity on the squad!! That they would keep Christ at the center of their relationships and that they would rationally and biblically resolve conflict.

- An abundance of opportunities to serve and eyes to see those opportunities outside of structured ministry.

- The Word of God to come alive to them every day!

- Relationship built with God in the secret place to be what overflows into everything.

Specific

Ella Thoma: that the Lord will give me boldness and confidence in my identity in Him, to come out of my shell and walk in who He has made me to be. As for the squad, that He will unify us and be the center of all the relationships we build.

Ayslee Berreto: No sickness and team unity!!

Woods Parker: That I can have a true hunger for the bible.

Madelyn Rogers: For me to be steadfast in my time with the Lord, especially leading up to launch and on the race!

Weston Hilty: For confidence and boldness to share my faith, and also discipline to live it out, and emotional and spiritual maturity over the squad!

Shayley Taylor: For a calm heart and mind leading up to travels to training, at camp, and on the race! And that I would understand the true Gospel more & more, going beyond head knowledge and into heart knowledge.

Emily McMillan: That I would keep my eyes fixed on Jesus above everything and in that comparison, fear, and anything competing for my attention will begin to fade away. For boldness in sharing the Gospel!! That I would trust the Holy Spirit completely, obey quickly, and know that because God has called me, he will also equip me!

Evie Oglesby: That I can grow mentally and spiritually before the race! To forget about the unimportant things and earnestly strive towards the one true king

Conrad Reiling: Prayer that I am more receptive and listen more to what God is trying to tell me or teach me. Pray that I would trust God and let Him handle everything and let me put everything in his hands instead of trying to control things and handle them myself.

Ellie Fawcett: Prayers for humility for each person as we experience different cultures and situations. For our whole squad and separate teams so be unified as one body of Christ. When spiritual warfare comes our way, we detect it and stand strong against it in Christ!

Carlee Baker:

- That we would remain sensitive and unhardened to the voice of the Lord and to one another.

- That we would walk in unity as Christ and God the Father walk in as expressed in Luke 17.

- That we would grow in deeper intimacy with our Beloved.

- That the Lord would open the eyes of our hearts to perceive Him rightly and break our hearts for what breaks His.

- That we would allow Him to put to death things in our lives that don't allow us to see Him rightly. (Isaiah 6:1)

Keep Up With Their Story

You will not be left guessing about how they are doing. Squad 4 will post from the field all year, sharing what they see, what wrecks them, and what God is teaching them as it happens. Reading those updates is a bigger encouragement to a young missionary than you might imagine; nothing lifts them like knowing people back home are paying attention and praying.

Search for any participant here: worldrace.org/blog/

Pray for them. Read what they write. Send a note when a story moves you. You are not watching this year from the sidelines. You are part of it.

Thank you for standing with them. It matters more than you know.