I’m writing this blog from a far off time and place since my
last post. So much has happened and I
haven’t been able to keep anyone posted so I want to fill you in on where I’m
a
t. We finished up our time in Malawi by
rejoining with the entire squad in the capital and sharing what God had done
during the month in the different teams. It was a great chance to reflect on our time there and hear about other
people’s ministries. The month after Malawi
was scheduled to be a month where we decided what ministry we wanted to do and
where we felt God was leading us to go. We felt God calling us to Mozambique, to a place called Mama Rita’s. We also decided to switch up teams each week
while we were there and have a new team leader each day. The night before we left for Mozambique we
found out that two people had malaria and would have to stay back until they
got better. The rest of the squad
proceeded to Mama Rita’s in hopes that the others would rejoin us quickly.
of mosquitoes….lots of rats…but the people at Mama Rita’s were amazing. While we were there another one of our squad
mates got malaria and many people battled small sicknesses. It was a hard couple weeks but we have so
many great memories from our time there and our squad really pulled together
and started to function more as a one body. Personally it was the hardest couple of weeks I’ve had on the race and
God stretched me in a lot of ways and brought me to the breaking point. I want to go into more detail about
everything but I don’t have the time to even begin to tackle it in words.
From Moz we headed back to South Africa for a debrief
period. We ended up meeting the people that
had malaria in Malawi at debrief because there was no way they were going to
get rest at Mama Rita’s so they headed to South Africa early to finish recovering.
So many times debrief is anything but restful,
but our squad ended up arriving a couple days early and we were able to take it
easy and not have to rush into all our meetings immediately. The short story of debrief is that through a
lot of prayer and discussion, we decided that things really needed to
change. So many people had gone home,
some teams were thriving, some teams were stagnant, and the lines between
leadership and others still seemed to be a problem. So what happened was everyone was put in one
room and we sought God as to who he wanted to place on new teams. Everyone was on an equal playing field and we
all had a voice in what was decided. It
could have been one messy process, but it went extremely well and everyone
showed how mature we could be in making decisions of this caliber. After the teams were finalized, each team
decided their leader, finance person and how their team would function.
has bigger things in store for all of us and I don’t want our comfort to get in
the way of that. I’m excited about what
these changes will call out of people and how it will force a lot of us to grow
in new areas.
