Hugs Are Enough
“Deep unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me.” (Psalm 42:7)
Leaving Chimoio, Mozambique, was one of the hardest goodbyes for me so far but my time spent there was probably one of the hardest months for me physically and some days spiritually. There were many lessons learned this past month but the big one was learning to press into the Lord even when He feels far away, further away than I’ve ever felt Him to be before. I felt physically weak and spiritually weak most days but saw God work more tangibly than I have yet so far. Entering into a season where I’m learning to accept my weaknesses as a human being and leaning into him even when everything inside me wants to give up has been one of the toughest seasons of my life. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the details and stories about Mozambique later, but right now this is my heart.
I’ve struggled with words for this blog for about two weeks now and I’ve decided to just be completely transparent and honest with you all. This isn’t just a mission trip I’m on, this is life. We are away from everything and everyone familiar for almost a year, learning to live in super close community with people we may or may not have ever hung out with back home if it were up to us, and learning to serve and disciple each other despite our differences, because despite those differences we do have one thing in common and that’s our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Some may have already seen this coming, but with us going into our 4th month now, it’s really beginning to sink in with me that we still have 8 more months to go and the further into this thing we go the more uncomfortable it gets. While I’m serving those around me and the Lord is doing crazy things all around us in the lives of those we’re serving, he’s also beginning a new work within each of us and the transition from everything that we once knew into a foreign land, physically and spiritually speaking, gets super uncomfortable and everything inside of me naturally wants to fight it. I’ve learned this past month that our brokenness and weaknesses don’t intimidate the Lord and if he desires to work in us and through us he will, despite those weaknesses and stubborn attitudes. I’ve been reading a book by Dana Candler called Deep Unto Deep and in it she shares, “The Lord does not despise our weakness as we so often imagine. He is not caught off-guard by our frailty. Quite the contrary, as Creator and Savior, He loves and enjoys the process of our finding our strength in Him and learning to lean into Him. It is in our weakness that His strength is made perfect (2 Cor. 12:9), and it is out of weakness that we are made strong (Heb. 11:34). He has set up His kingdom with the inclusion of our weakness. “For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of God…” (2 Cor. 13:4). He is not a High Priest who cannot sympathize with us in this weakness (Heb. 4:15); He beckons us to continually lift our weak voice and our weak gaze in prayer and communion with Him.” There were days where I struggled in prayer, where I struggled to even desire to want to seek Him that day and was physically and spiritually tired and weary, but it was in the midst of those days that I saw the Lord move the most around me than I ever have before. Those days were sweet reminders from Jesus that no matter how I felt or what I did or didn’t do, He still loves me the same and accepts every part of who I am… the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I started this “race” sprinting forgetting that it’s definitely a marathon. I’ve been holding onto Hebrews 12:1 for the majority of this trip and even before I left home, asking for perseverance and endurance but this past month it was all about verses 2 and 3 for me…”fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” I was reminded more than ever of how uncomfortable Jesus was on the cross and how painful it was but he endured it because of the joy set before him. In my times of weakness or pain or being uncomfortable the Lord blessed me with endurance by redirecting my eyes and heart to the cross and on Jesus, reminding me to consider him and all that he endured. In my times of being homesick the Lord reminded me to keep on carrying my cross and gave me small glimpses of the joy set before me every time I would encounter a smiling face on the streets of Chimoio or when Holy Spirit would move and we got to witness souls being saved.
I’m sure you’re all wondering by now what we actually did while in Mozambique. We finally got to tent this past month and stayed in the front yard of one of the church member’s houses. Bucket showers, dirty water, and roosters who don’t know the difference between 1AM and 5AM made for an interesting month. I honestly loved every bit of it though because we were finally able to be immersed in the culture and walk freely on the streets as the Mozambique people were very kind and gentle and the city for the most part was relatively safe. We rode on public transportation on old buses and van taxis, even sitting next to a man holding a live chicken upside down by the feet. It became totally normal seeing people riding bicycles with crates of bananas and chickens hanging from the handlebars. We did our grocery shopping at the local market and ate fresh vegetables and fruit most days, minus the random bags of popcorn we’d buy on the streets. Getting to step into their world and live pretty close to how they lived every day was challenging but I absolutely loved it and grew so much from it.
My team along with another team worked with a freshly planted church in Chimoio called Life Church, which I absolutely loved because it reminded me of my church back home. J Each Sunday they met in the back of a sports club and held service in a small dining room. Friday evenings they met for a prayer meeting and prayed for their city and for all of Mozambique. Saturdays, which quickly became my favorite days of ministry, were dedicated to street evangelism, sharing Christ with people and spreading the word about the church. We learned pretty fast that things in Africa, especially Mozambique, don’t always go as according to planned and nothing ever starts on time. We found ourselves with quite a few off days when we weren’t doing street evangelism but knew that ministry wasn’t just a set time or organized day and that our lives are ministry regardless where we go or what we’re doing that particular day. We got the opportunity to shine a light for Christ into a Muslim man’s café which we frequented pretty regularly and even got to pray over him and he even ended up, by God’s divine order, riding on the same bus as us the day we left Chimoio. We were able to paint a few rooms at an orphanage founded by Heidi Baker’s Iris Ministries and ate lunch and hung out with the kids one Saturday. There were so many street kids and homeless people begging while we walked that it was overwhelming at first. With everyone staring everywhere we went and being the “American missionary church girls” in town, we were always being asked for money or food. I wanted to give to everyone and give everything I had but I knew I couldn’t give to everyone monetarily. There were days we would invite a homeless man to eat lunch with us, or buy food for someone on the street, but God reminded me and gave me a spirit of boldness to share and give His love, not just money, to those who were hungry and thirsty. After praying and asking what to do with all of the poverty and begging around me and what He wanted me to give, I found myself walking one day with this overwhelming sense of love and desire to just hug everyone that God placed in my path, sounds weird right. Whether she was a little girl walking barefoot with a basket of bananas on her head, an elderly lady walking the streets, or a woman sitting on the side of the street with her baby selling oranges, I found myself stopping and hugging them all. The joy in their eyes and the love I could feel flow through me from the Father became more of those glimpses and reminders of why I’m here when things get hard. Their smiles and love in their eyes and feeling their spirits being awakened and touched by the Holy Spirit washed away any feeling of discouragement, homesickness, or emptiness that I was feeling that day.
I remember the last weekend we were in Chimoio we did a prayer walk over the city that Friday evening. We weren’t going out to pray over people but to pray over the city and declare things over Chimoio in Jesus’ name as we walked. We were all split up into four teams, along with members from the church and each team walked a different route. As I was walking, the Lord placed the men of Chimoio on my heart as I started to pray, praying that they would become spiritual leaders of their household and that we would see a cultural shift as the men would come to know Christ and begin to rule their households in a godly manner. One of the girls from the other team, Christina, prayed that people would become hungry for the Lord and they would have a desire to know him. We walked praying and singing in the dark of the night but knowing that the light of Christ was shining into every dark place we were walking through and that the Lord had given us the territory we were walking on to declare His kingdom come.
The next day we returned to the same city square for street evangelism. We split up into random groups again, each group mixed with people from our teams and members from the church who spoke Portuguese and could translate for us. As the pastor sent us out on different routes again I found myself being sent on the exact same route that I had just walked and prayed over the night before. We turned a corner and the Lord told me to sit on the ground with a lady who was sitting on the sidewalk selling fruit. I sat down next to her and asked if I could pray for her and one of the guys from the church began translating for me. Our group prayed and held hands with her and when we were done I looked up and noticed one of the guys from our group talking to a group of about 5 men. They looked genuinely curious and interested in what we were doing and as the translator spoke between us the crowd grew and I heard the Lord say there were people there that needed to know who Jesus was and that they were hungry for Him. In that moment I stepped out into a deeper level of faith than I ever have before and started preaching the gospel and who Jesus was and what he’s done for me and how he desired a relationship with each one of them and that if they didn’t know who their earthly father was that it was okay because they had a Heavenly Father who loved them more than anyone in the entire world. Not just that group of about 10 men but then 2 more groups of men after that accepted Christ into their hearts as their Lord and Savior. My teammate Mallory also got to lead someone to Christ for the first time ever. I couldn’t help but start weeping while praying and then hearing them repeat the prayer after it was translated. They were sincerely hungry for Jesus and wanted to know who He was and it was tangibly evident that the Lord had gone before us and prepared their hearts and had already begun to answer our prayers from the night before. All together that day about 20 men received Christ as their Lord and Savior and the next day a few of them showed up to church where even more people accepted Christ into their hearts.
These are the days that make all of the struggles, frustrations, emotional rollercoasters, weaknesses, and weariness totally and completely worth it. These days where the Lord invites you to peer into the joy set before us all, the joy of eternity with Him and the joy of knowing Christ is our Bridegroom and he’s coming back for his Bride one day soon and he’ll do anything and everything to reach those in the ends of the earth to let them know they are fiercely and relentlessly pursued and loved by Him. This is why I’m here and this is why I’ll keep on running the race set before me.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (Hebrews 12:1-3)
