1. You don’t have to speak the same language to play together, laugh together, or even sing together.
2. Justin Bieber crosses all cultural barriers.
3. Elf in September in a sweaty, mosquito-ridden concrete room with your team is fun.
4. Motorbike races are fun.
5. Building an entire house out of dirt and water is fun.
6. 35 people and several infants in the bed of a pickup truck on the way to church…maybe not so fun.
7. “toilet,” “shower,” “bathroom” …all relative terms
8. Jesus shows up. When the HIV test goes straight to positive. At the hungry, frail widow’s house. In the eyes of the impossibly tiny, sick newborn on the hospital steps. Not only does he show up in the brokenness, he lives in it.
9. Being “ready” can mean a lot of things. Ready to leave the house in 2 hours or 20 seconds. Ready to perform your “team musical numbers” at church. Ready to trust whoever’s leading when you have absolutely no idea where they’re taking you.
10. Jump in. To the 6 AM washing of the dishes with sand. To praying over the sick when the world’s standards would say they’re well past the point of prayer. To the African dance number happening on stage, complete with screaming and heel clicking. Jump into it.
11. “Mazhungu!!” means white person. It means I have money and I’m probably stupid enough to fall for anything. It means I get yelled at and stared at and cut in line, and that my presence is announced every 15 feet. Embrace it?
12. Call me cliche, but you really don’t need all of the things you think you do. Or even half.
13. And best of all, that “Mozambique will be friends of ours for a long, long time.”
