I Wanna Go Back to Africa

Just over ten months ago, we left the comfort of our Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to the Philippines. We entered the blast of heat and humidity, the chaos, the sea of people, many of who knew little of what it was to have more than a light bulb or maybe a small television in their house. After 17 hours of flying across the Pacific, we entered a new world totally foreign to us, we transitioned from first-world United States to a level of poverty, a way of life that was shocking. Then the smell of urine, the oppression of communism and a life of hiding because of shame, the air full of thick pollution from the nation of China trying to catch up to the rest of the world would stretch my comfort even more. Africa then brought us to a whole new level; electricity was like gold if it could be found, parts of the African culture pushed me many times to my limit of my strength to love and I just wanted to hide away from people at night. Many people lived in mud huts outside of the cities, dust filled the air and dirtied our clothes in a single day. Most roads were left to decay, often leaving us packed on top of or crushed next to each other with live chickens and smelly people for hours bumping up and down at no more than 20 miles per hour as drivers frequently slammed on their brakes or swerved to avoid potholes.

In India, though, my outlook changed. We arrived, flying from one developing country to another. As we walked through the night after flying from Kenya through Qatar to Delhi, we once again transitioned from the comforts of our airplane to seeing mothers and children sleeping on the ground. Dogs barked at us as we tried to navigate through a dark alleyway to get to our train station. And yet I immediately began to fall in love with this place; tears would flow from my eyes for days after leaving Nepal and India as we left for the developed world of Kyiv, Ukraine.

The other night we finally watched the Lion King, something I wanted to do months ago when we were in Tanzania. And I’m beginning to miss everything. I wanna go back. I miss the beauty of the people in the Philippines, I miss sharing with the boys rescued from the streets just outside of Manila desperate for yet unsure if they could trust the hope of love. I miss Kenya and Tanzania. The places and the people I miss the most were those that changed me the most, often the ones that challenged me the most, and often the ones that stretched my heart and my strength to exhaustion. But these people were also the people that I often experienced the most love with, sometimes the ones that I loved, and others that showed me incredible love.

This isn’t over; the shock is gone. There’s something so much more valuable than a life of comfort, a life of success. My heart’s still in the Himalaya. It’s still in Muslim Arusha, Tanzania. It’s still in the jungle around Mount Kilimanjaro and the desert all around it. I could stay for months sharing in the love of our mountain village in the southern jungle of Mexico. I want to share the life of Christ with our nation – the United States – calloused with comfort just like Israel was so many times throughout history. But my heart yearns to share with people in Nepal trapped in Hinduism and Buddhism. Maybe Tanzania, maybe Pakistan, maybe India!

But more than anything, I’m closer everyday to leaving everything for Jesus. I now value weakness, I now value brokenness. Paul says he considers everything rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ. Throughout history, His disciples have been tortured, have given their lives for Him. There’s a lot that scares me still about that – but I’m desperate to know the love they had to drive them to give everything! I’m desperate to know what it’s like to be weak enough to experience the love of total dependence on their creator. I’m desperate to love other people, seeing the Holy Spirit touch people in ways neither I nor they can imagine. I’m desperate to see a life I don’t even understand yet but that I can’t create, that I can’t control. A life that can only happen if I let go and give everything, all of my faith, trust, hopes, and desires to my creator.

In less than three weeks I’ll be on five flights and an overnight in an airport on my way to Michigan. And then on a drive out to Denver, and eventually somehow from there to Bozeman, Montana. I’ll be leaving so many people that I love, with my heart spread out to so many people I may never meet again. But even though it hurts to love, I want this for a lifetime. We don’t get a chance at this again. We don’t get another chance to live a life completely abandoned for Christ on this earth in this time!