After a 12 hour bus ride from Gaborone, Botswana back to Johannesburg, South Africa, an overnight layover, then a 4 hour plane flight over the Indian Ocean, our squad arrived in Madagascar safe and sound. This month is “All Squad” month so all 40 of us are staying together.
This is the first time a World Race team has ever been to Madagascar and Madagascar was the reason most of us chose this route. I would like to take some time and share my experience so far and hopefully I can paint an accurate picture of what life looks like here and what I am feeling in my heart.
We have been here 10 days so far and there have been some very high moments and very low moments. There are the moments of sharing Jesus with somebody for the first time and that feeling of being on the mountain top- then there are also the moments when you see something driving through the city that brings you to a place of complete brokenness knowing there is nothing you can do about what you just saw.
We are staying in the capital city of Antananarivo and working with a ministry called OM Madagascar. OM Madagascar is a large ministry here and has a large number of partnerships with Churches and schools with which we are working with this month. Although we are all staying together, each of our teams is working with different ministries for the month.
All 40 of us are staying here on their ministry property together. The compound that the ministry property is on is quite nice and has an amazing view of the city from the top of a hill. The ministry prepares all 3 meals for us and we share those together each day as a squad. We were told that they love rice here when we first arrived and that has definitely proven to be true- rice is served about 3 times a day. Good thing I happen to really like rice and the food has been quite good. As long as you get past the part of watching them kill the chicken, duck, or whatever is on the menu that night right before you eat it.
The water is out almost everyday so we fill up large buckets whenever it is on and that is what we use for showering and all of our other water needs. We can’t drink the water as it is very contaminated so they boil large amounts of it each night for us to fill up our bottles with in the mornings. The power also goes out almost every day so we are putting those headlamps and lanterns to good use this month. Tonight you could hear a roar across the property as the power came back on for a minute. First time in a few days so it was quite nice!! These things become normal life on the race and day by day you realize how blessed we are for some of the things that we take for granted back home- like clean running water and electricity.
Madagascar’s population is over 22 million people and it is the 5th largest island in the world. Antananarivo is an extremely crowded city located right in the middle of the island and there are over 10 million people who live here. For those of you back home to get a visual of just how crowded this city is, picture a city about the size of Midtown/Buckhead with about double the population of the entire city of Atlanta. It is truly eye opening to drive though the city each day and see just how many people are packed in here. Not only is it a very crowded city, it also happens to sit on a bunch of mountains- making for awesome views and terrible travel conditions.
The weather here has been really good/interesting. Each day you wake up and it is very overcast and cool in the morning. It heats up during the mid day and is very humid. Then the clouds roll back in around 4:00pm and we have had some pretty intense African rain storms each day. Kinda like an Atlanta afternoon in the summer on steroids. It actually cools off very nice each night and is quite nice when you sleep. Minus the wild dogs barking, cattle running up and down the road outside the window, and chickens, roosters, etc going all night.
The first night we got here, we were made aware that they were going to be shifting a few people around and our team ended up getting changed around a bit. This caught us all by surprise and was quite difficult to handle but we trust our leaders and know that it will end up being for the best of us in the long run. With that said, we now have 6 people and Jackie is now our team leader. Obviously with just 6, our team name couldn’t continue to be “7 Strong” so we are now team “Forefront”. The name means on the front lines of battle. As you will see below, we thought it was very fitting for where we currently find ourselves.
Our team is partnering with one other team this week and we have been doing campus evangelism again here at the big University of Antananarivo. We will be doing campus evangelism this week and next week we will be working with a Church. We will be in charge of running the entire Church service next week so that will be fun as well as challenging. The last week we are all going to be out in a village camping in our tents and doing ministry in the bush- which should be an adventure as well.
Here is what our days looked like this week:
Each morning we wake up around 5:45 and breakfast is served at 6. At 6:30 we head out and hike about 15-20 minutes to catch the public transportation bus. The trip to the campus is directly across the entire city and is very long. It takes about 2:30-3 hours with traffic each way. This is definitely not the Marta bus that most of you back home are familiar with. The bus should fit about 15 people but they seem to pack 30 people in each time. As you could imagine, it makes for a very “comfortable” bus ride. It will probably be hard to believe, but the driving conditions here in the city make Atlanta look like a walk in the park. With thousands of people walking on both sides of the road, no street lights, and about as many packed in public transportation buses as you could imagine, getting to ministry each day is quite interesting. Not to mention the fact that we have to change buses a couple times and the driver doesn’t wait for everyone to get in or out- basically like a real life Jamaican Bobsled team trying to get in and out while the bus in literally moving.
Here is the brokenness part I mentioned: Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on Earth and your heart defitenly breaks as you ride through the city each day. The air quality is as bad as any place I have ever been to and the smell of exhaust/smog is constantly hitting your face the entire ride I will never question why we do emissions testing back in the states ever again. Unfortunately, with the amount of people who live here, it is just impossible for them to keep up with the amount of waste that is being produced and the cities are filled with all the excess. We had a girl on our team accidentally step into a river today that happened to be full of feces. Not the best moment for her. The city is naturally beautiful but just can’t keep up with the amount of people and it is definitely hard to see.
Another thing that breaks my heart and you see daily is the amount of small children who will come up and beg for money. The other day we were changing buses and as we turned the corner about 6 kids ran up to us with there hands out asking for money. They were covered from head to toe in mud and dirt and I have never felt so broken in my life. I wrestle with God the entire bus rides through the city asking him why. Why do these things have to happen? Why was I chosen to live in a very wealthy area of the world and these children were chosen to literally live besides rivers full of feces in Madagascar? I havent seen things like this since I was in Haiti after the EarthQuake and it has defitnely been hard on me to see. I know God is good- His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts- Although I am heartbroken, I know He has a greater plan in all of this and I trust Him.
After we get off the bus we have another 15-20 minute hike up the hill and finally make it to the campus! Some of us have been going door to door in the dorms and doing evangelism and others have been walking around the campus doing the same thing. The first couple of days I did the dorm evangelism and this was very fun and we saw the light of Jesus shine brightly through us. We got invited in to most of the dorms and got to sit and pray with the students in their living areas. The rooms were very tiny (about 6ft by 6ft) with one bunkbed and about 4-5 people living in each. This is also harder for me to see given where I lived when I was in college- ust shows you once again at how many things we take for granted back home.
We do about 7 hours of evangelism and then we head back on the 2 hour trip back to the ministry home for team time and dinner. As you can imagine, the days are very physically exhausting and it has taken its toll on our squad. Looking forward to a few off days this weekend where we can relax.
We have seen some amazing things and have seen many people come to know Jesus for the first time. The people here are very open (for the most part) to hear what we have say. It is funny to get stared at every where you go because they don’t ever get to see many large groups of Americans. Actually, large groups of Americans rarely ever come here. Most of the people here all seem to believe in God and go to Church but haven’t chosen to put their faith in Jesus and have a relationship with Him. This is where we are primarily trying to open up to them with. I have a few stories I would love to share but I believe they are so good that they need their own post-will share soon.
God is doing awesome things through us here in Madagascar and it is amazing to think that we are laying the groundwork for future generations of world racers that may come here. With that, their is a huge task as we are on the very front lines of a serious spiritual warfare battle. When we got here, you could instantly feel the weight of the darkness fall on you. It also reminded me of the time I landed in Haiti and felt the weight of all the spiritual darkness fall on me. It can almost feel like a suffocating feeling at times.
We have found out that there is a lot of spiritual strongholds here in this city and we are battling some really heavy spiritual warfare as a squad. There is a lot of witch craft and demon spirits throughout the city. Human Sex Trafficking is also very prominent and you can feel the weight of all the oppression on you. We have had many members of our squad (including me) actually wake up during the night with the overtaking of this dark presence and it has been a huge battle we are facing. We have had to do multiple prayer walks around our compound and pray over each persons bed each night. We are having to stay in front of the battle with prayer as we know the battle has already been won there.
Unfortunately, the enemy has used sickness to try and discourage our squad this last week. We had a little outbreak and 20 of us (including myself) all got some crazy strong strand of strep throat. Lets just say it has been a struggle. After lots of prayers, a few days of packed out trips to the Doctors office, and a large amount of antibiotics, most of us are starting to get out of bed now and are getting our strength back.
The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy and he is certainly at work here in Madagascar. Good thing is- the battle has already been won and the Light & Life of Jesus will continue to shine brightly throughout the city. Every morning we wake up and literally go through the routine of putting on the full armor of God as we head out for ministry.
This feeling of brokenness is something that every world racer goes through about this time on the world race and I am definitely feeling it. It’s far from easy. If I was completely honest with myself, there are times when I just wish I could get to the person I will be on the other end without going through all the struggles. Unfortunately, I know that this is impossible. Jesus needs to brings us to places of brokenness, abandonment, and discomfort so He can work in areas He only can when we are there.
We can’t do any of this without the covering of prayers from back home. Please continue to lift up our squad as we are all in this together and we are on the front lines of everything I just mentioned. Continue to pray for the half of us that are sick and that we all continue to get healthy and get back on our feet. Also that we continue to see people encounter Jesus for the first time!
We have no internet access so please share this with anybody who would be interested in praying for our squad!! Thank you!!
Love you guys!!
Joshua 1:8-9
