This afternoon I needed to get Internet to take care of some Unsung Heroes stuff, so Shannon and I planned a trip to the airport after lunch. (Interestingly, the Kigali International Airport is apparently the best place to get free Wi-Fi in this area). At the last minute, Julia decided to come with us.
At the airport, we found an empty bench outside our favorite Rwandan coffee shop and used the free public Wi-Fi to send some emails. As Shannon and I worked on UHC stuff, Julia wandered over to the coffee shop to see if she could find a cheap drink to sooth her caffeine craving. When Shannon and I were finished, we walked over to meet up with her.
We didn’t plan to stay for long because I was struggling to resist the overwhelming desire I had to get a cold drink. I can’t tell you how much I crave cold things these days… But just as we were gathering up our things to leave, a twenty-something Mzungu (white) girl walked by with a cup of ice cream, which made Julia ooh and aah.
Spending time with people I love dearly – this is life
The girl, Ziggy, looked excited to see other white girls and took Julia’s expressive observation of the ice cream as an opportunity to ask us where we were from and to where we were flying. We explained that we were actually just at the airport to use the Internet, but we’re living in Kigali for the month.
It’s conversations like this that are always a little awkward.
“Oh, so you’re here for a month then you’re going back to the States?”
“Um no, not exactly. Last month we were in Uganda. And next month we’re going to China… We’re kinda like traveling the world for eleven months and stuff.”
I gave a pretty vague explanation of the World Race, not really expecting her to know anything about it or stay engaged long enough for me to list all the countries we’ve been to so far. But she looked intrigued by my general description, so I mentioned that our program was called the World Race.
Her eyes lit up and a smile jumped across her face. “No way!” Ziggy said in her South African accent.
Riding mopeds down dirt roads – this is life (photo from Jonathan Garner)
Apparently, Ziggy is associated with a program called Global Challenge, which is based in South Africa and was started by a former Racer. The program is very similar to the Race, in that young twenty-somethings travel across the globe and do Spirit-led mission work. Ziggy worked in Guatemala on her Global Challenge, so she was excited to hear that we’d been to Guatemala in March.
As Ziggy told us various stories about her time with GC, she talked in such a way that made it clear that she lives a very Spirit-filled, Spirit-led life. We all laughed at how cool it was to run into likeminded people, people that are also trying to live out Christianity to its fullest by trusting the Lord in some crazy situations and listening for the voice of God on a regular basis.
“You know, when I first saw you guys, I knew there was something different about you. And then the Lord gave me a vision for you, Julia. So I knew I needed to come talk to you, I just didn’t know how to do that,” Ziggy said as she pointed at Julia.
When Ziggy first saw Julia sitting nearby in the cushy coffee house chairs, the Lord gave her a vision for Julia. Ziggy then got up and got ice cream, which caught Julia’s attention, which opened the door for this conversation. When Ziggy shared the vision God had given her for Julia, Julia nodded her head and said it was spot on.
Our conversation with Ziggy and her friend Nicole got me so pumped up. Ziggy talked about what it was like to come home from her Global Challenge trip and try to make sense of everything she’d learned and experienced. And what she realized is that you pretty much have a choice to go back to textbook, mediocre Christianity, or you can continue living out Christianity to its fullest as we were always intended to do.
Loving well despite language barriers – this is life
As my Race draws to an all-too-rapid close, I’ve been thinking this a lot lately. In fact, I was journaling just this morning about these exact feelings. I wrote:
Where I am now, what I’m doing – this is home. These people are home. My current lifestyle of living simply and praying for people all the time and giving feedback and leading worship almost everyday – this is more familiar and comfortable and natural to me than anything in my pre-Race life.
Hearing the voice of God, praying that people will be healed, having late-night conversations about how the Lord is moving in my life – these are normal, everyday experiences for me now. What to some people is considered a bit abnormal, has woven itself into the fabric of my daily life. The abnormal has become normal.
Walking down dirt roads with random African kiddos – this is life (photo from Julia Taylor)
I think sometimes I worry that the Race is an exception and that beyond these eleven months, the kind of life I’m living can’t really work. I worry, irrationally, that the things I’ve learned this year cannot be realistically applied to life in the States. I figure I’ll have to move abroad again if I really want to see the Lord manifest in powerful ways as I have this year.
The thing is though, this life I’m living can be replicated. It is not restricted to this experience or this program.
The Race is not a year-long exception.
It is simply an experience that launches us into a lifestyle.
Rooftop worship at sunset – this is life (photo from Jonathan Garner)
This can be my normal life for me, if I let it. But I could also let this lifestyle devolve into a mediocre, surface-level encounter with Christ once I get back home. I could stop digging deep and pursuing an exponentially fuller life in Christ. I could “backslide”. I could plateau. I could become stagnant.
But I refuse to let that happen.
Meeting Ziggy at the airport gave me so much courage and confidence to believe something that I think I’ve always known to be true, but needed a reminder about. After the Race ends and I say goodbye to O-Squad and move on to whatever the heck is next, this will still be my life. I’m still going to hear God’s voice. I’m still going to see and feel the movement of the Spirit in powerful ways. I’m still going to witness and participate in miracles.
The World Race is not an exception. It’s a lifestyle.
So here’s to the next two and a half months of letting this lifestyle sink in deeply and embed itself into my DNA. And here’s to the realization that the Lord has called us to an ever-increasing fullness of life with Him, a life that expects to see miracles in the midst of the mundane.
