There is nothing more uncomfortable than sitting around with a bunch of teenage boys you don’t know.
Not to mention that it’s hot, they don’t speak English, and, oh yeah, you’re in Africa.
I am currently living in Machava, a small town outside of Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, where the average temperature is upwards of 80 or 90 every day, and the power turns off sporadically in the evenings without warning.
Getting here was an adventure in itself – a 15 hours plane ride to South Africa, a bus ride to a hostel, another bus ride the next morning to the border, and finally, after crossing through with fresh stamps in my passports, a short ride in the front seat to our ministry site. After nearly 36 hours of travel, we settled in at Beacon of Hope, a ministry for teenage boys that teaches them to be men of God.
Our first day at the ministry was unstructured, as we were still getting settled and trying to recover. I found myself really desiring to spend time with these ten boys. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Portuguese, I don’t play sports well, and I am a female, so I am not necessarily the ideal candidate for teaching these boys to be men of God. But I decided to give it a shot. I spent most of the first few days just sitting with them, playing with them, and trying to learn Portuguese words.
I remember thinking the first day we arrived,
“What the heck am I doing here?”
I was feeling so overwhelmed by the travel day, trying to adjust to the time change, the weather, the food, the people, everything. It was a lot to process, and I kept asking myself “What did I get myself into?”
One of the boys, Daniel, loves to sing. Many of the other boys love to sing too, so they taught me a worship song in Portuguese. One of my absolute favorite moments this past week was sitting with a few of the boys and listening to them sing, then realizing that they were singing “Here I Am to Worship” in Portuguese, so I began to sing along.
As I sat there and sang with these incredible, polite young men, worshiping our Lord together in different languages, I started to understand what I am here for:
Here I am to worship,
Here I am to bow down,
Here I am to say that You’re my God.
So what would it look like for me to ask God every day – what am I doing here?
And what would it look like for me to actually wait for an answer?
