My month in Tanzania: Now I’m gonna be honest, when we first got there I was not excited. I had gotten used to asian culture since we were there for 3 months. So coming to a whole new culture wasn’t very exciting to me, especially when I heard about the possibility of bad living situations. So we got there, we pulled up to our place where we are staying and my jaw dropped. There was a brick building with no roof and looked abandoned. I was screaming inside and was trying to contain my anxiety! Then the pastor took us into his house which was to the left of that building. It was actually a house…thank you Jesus, I thought! But then when we walked inside, I found myself getting very upset. Our pastor showed us ladies where we would be sleeping. It was a small room, with a mattress where 3 of us would have to fit, and there was a dead cockroach on the floor. I was having a panic attack inside! I saw there was only one fan in this huge house and this place was blazing! I thought Lord, how am I gonna make it through this month?
My team and I have been pretty spoiled thus far with our living arrangements, so I didn’t take this one so well at first. We were really busy the first week so I was able to put our living situation to rest. The first week we were here was really exciting, we had a lot of church! Church service here is like 6 hours long and full of dancing and worship. Worship here is very different than how we worship in America and I loved it. We walked around our village talking to people about Jesus, and we then went to a pastors conference. I was on fire for the Lord and was really feeling like this was gonna be an awesome month! We then got back from the conference and things started to slow down. I mean really slow down. We have a lot of down time. I thought it was great at first to have a few off days, but then I started to go stir crazy. All I could think about all the time was how uncomfortable I was, how Hot I was, how hungry I was, how unhappy I was, how I wanted to be back home, how much I missed home, how tired I was, and how I just wanted to move on to the next month. I really started to question what I was doing here. Does God really have a purpose for me here? I came on this race to minister and serve, but yet I am sitting around…am I really making the most of my race? These thoughts really started to get me down.
I felt God telling me at the start of the month that I was stepping into a new season and that the last half of the race wasn’t going to be an easy journey for me, but it was going to bring a lot of growth. I didn’t really understand what that meant because to me, coming on the race was the start of a new season. So I asked God to show me. In Isaiah 55, God says that his ways are higher than ours and his thoughts are not our thoughts. During this month that verse really started to come to light. A lot of times we don’t understand why we go through certain trials or why things have to be the way they are, but God totally has a purpose for everything and where we are at in our life is for a reason. I didn’t quite understand why God brought me all the way from Kansas to Africa to not do ministry, but as a couple weeks went by I started to see things differently. I then began to see that God took the time that I wasn’t doing ministry to really work in my heart. God really kicked my butt into gear and told me to stop pitying myself and to be thankful. Pitying myself was exactly what I was doing. God really started to show me that where I was at was exactly where He wanted me. God meets us where we are at in our faith journey with him and uses each circumstance to make us more like Him. Since I had plenty of free time, I spent a lot of time with God each day and I was able to hear Him in a way that I never had before.
This was one of my first months on the race that I wasn’t surrounded by such a busy schedule and I was in a place that I could truly enjoy Gods beautiful creation. We were surrounded by beautiful mountains and beautiful people. The more I started to see all that I had to be thankful for, the more my heart truly began to feel thankful. My thankfulness then blossomed into a passion for prayer. God placed a passion in my heart to pray for my family back home and to fight for their hearts. He was answering my prayers for my family like crazy and brought my faith and trust in him to a whole new level. I saw that praying for others was my ministry. This month I also was starting to step into my true identity in Christ. I realize finding who I am in Christ is not something that will change overnight, but I can honestly say God is working in me and everyday He teaches me something new about myself and about who He is. He is teaching me patience and how to embrace and be thankful during this journey He is taking me on. He is teaching me how to fight off those lies satan likes to tell me and how to overcome them with truth. He is teaching me the power of prayer and how important it is that we stay in constant communication with Him. I am so thankful. My heart becomes so overjoyed when I think about how far God has brought me. From Where I was last year to where I am now. Its absolutely crazy and unbelievable! I am so blessed and so excited to finish out this race God has set before me and to give Him my all 100%. I want to finish out this race being God’s hands and feet and because God is living so abundantly inside of me, people wont see me but they will see God. I am choosing to be thankful and grateful for all God has blessed me with and where He has me right now in my journey!
