Everything Gets Revealed in Tents

I am now a week into Month 7 of my Race in Nakuru, Kenya, and I have been postponing writing this last Tanzania blog. I guess because I keep wondering if God is going to reveal something else to me regarding the purpose of all my health issues in Tanzania. Each month there are challenges and celebrations that all of us go through involving ministry, community, health issues, emotional junk, etc. that enables personal growth and a deeper spiritual walk.

Africa is the poster child for American missions, so you walk into African ministry with expectations of awaiting the supernatural. If God hasn’t rocked our worlds yet on The Race, we anticipate some sort of breakage during the three months we are on the continent. We have heard previous Racers and squad leaders saying things like, “Africa is where miracles happen,” or “You will encounter crazy, dark spiritual stuff in Africa.” Amanda, my teammate, even prophesied over me that God was going to “wreck me” in Tanzania; she just didn’t know what it was going to look like. I was expecting to encounter deep spiritual stuff that would challenge my faith, force me to be more vulnerable, or make me really let down the walls that are in the process of being let down. There was definitely some of that, but, those weren’t the culminating factors for the majority of the wreckage.

 What God meant by getting my month wrecked was health issues out the wazoo. If my calculations are correct, the mosquitoes that bit me in Dar es Salaam the first and second night of being in Tanzania carried malaria; therefore, about six or seven days later, I came down with uncomplicated falciparum malaria. Thank God I didn’t need to be hospitalized for it, but I felt like I was on my death bed anyway. Whenever I get severely sick, I really try to listen to the Lord, and see what He wants to speak to me. I truly believe there is a gift in every challenge; you just have to look hard for it sometimes. As my week with malaria went on, I was a bit frustrated that God wasn’t speaking to me clearly. If He was, I sure didn’t hear much. “Lovely,” I thought, “Sick in bed and not hearing hardly anything from the Lord.” It was a miserable week to say the least.

As I started to recover about a week and a half later, I got rocked with another health issue: vertigo. I woke up early one morning and tried to roll over. Bad idea. Any plane change resulted in a horrendous headache and a sensation of the environment spinning vigorously. It is one of the most nauseating experiences ever, and because I lost my sense of equilibrium, I needed two people to carry me to the bathroom. Yes, quite debilitating and humbling. I hate when an illness takes away my ability to care for my basic needs. God was definitely reminding me to accept the help and service from the teams. Alys, Brittany, Amanda, Dan, Missy … thank you so much for nursing me back to health!

But wait … there’s more. My gut got to experience some more worms! As I recovered from the headaches and balance issues from the vertigo, at the end of the month, I came down with some weird GI issues accompanied by severe weakness and fatigue that I have not experienced on The Race thus far. At first I thought it was more amoeba or worm issues, but since I have had worms and amoebas for four out of my six months, I was pretty sure the problems weren’t of the parasite nature. I still have no idea what it was … maybe something viral?

I virtually spent the entire month in my tent and barely went to ministry. I had such little energy and motivation to do anything. I was feeling defeated by the end of the month because I value mobility, and my month in Tanzania did not allow for much of it. But, I am now pleased to say that I am on the up and up and praying I don’t get malaria anymore. So what else did God teach me? Maybe it was meant to be a month of “rest.” It clearly was not a physical rest because I rarely had quality sleep. It might have just been an unplanned Sabbath, where the Lord was teaching me to trust in Him.