Today, as I’m sitting here in my hotel room on the first day of my final debrief of the World Race, my heart hurts. It’s one of those deep aches that comes from somewhere way down in the soul. And as I look back on my last three months in Zambia, I know that it hurts because it matters. These last three months matter, the relationships I formed, the conversations I had, the friends I made, the things I did; they affected me immensely.
Many of you probably don’t know how I spent the last third of my Race, and that’s because I’ve been busy. I’ve been busy being engaged, busy showing up for my own life. I haven’t been taking very many pictures and I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been busy with living life and spending time with the people in front of me. I’m sorry I haven’t kept you all more up to date. If you want, I can fill you in now.
For the first two months here in Zambia, my team and I taught at a primary school called AGABF Trust. I taught Spanish to my class of grade 7 students, who ranged in age from 11 to 14 years old. They were precious lil nuggets who learned quickly and sassed much.
[Chimuka,”Teacher Samantha” (aka me), and Mwiya]
Then, school let out for their winter holiday so we couldn’t teach classes because there were no students. So we started spending our morning volunteering at the local Old People’s Home. It was literally called “Maramba Old People’s Home”. There we sat and talked with people, painted their nails, and put lotion on their dry, weather-beaten skin. That’s where I met Nakola, who ignored me every morning when I greeted her for almost three weeks. Until one morning when we listened to music and she watched me crochet. Then the next day she smiled as she greeted me with “mochabwangee” and held my hand and we watched videos of laughing babies and looked at pictures of my baby nephew (thank you for having a real cute child Sarah). Nakola, like a true grandmother, loves babies. Seeing the joy on her face brought joy to my heart. Basically there was just much joy. So many joys.
[Nakola, who looked at this picture after it was taken and said “Oh, beautiful!”]
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So those were my mornings. But my heart was truly captured in the evenings on the soccer field, which here in Zambia we call the football grounds.
From the beginning of our time here, our house of 21 people would go to the grounds to play soccer and hang out with the kids in our neighborhood for a couple hours. Some people would play, some would sit on the sidelines with the kids who either didn’t want to play or were too young. Both groups had a lot of fun. After the game we would sing songs with all the kids and tell them a bible story.
But the Lord did not bring me to that field for the children. From the beginning, there were a couple of older boys who would join us in our game. They would show up and join different sides, and they were good. It turns out that they were part of a local football (soccer) team that had practice at the grounds right after we left it, so they would show up early and play with us for fun before playing for real with their team. After a while we became friends. Then, my squad leader Moe and my squadmate Abbie and I invited them to do a bible study with us. They told us they didn’t have bibles. We told them that wasn’t a problem. So we started studying the bible before soccer everyday, and we usually had at least three guys who would show up. Our little group soon grew from three guys to five or six who would come on a regular basis and we found bibles for them. As we spent more time with these guys, it was clear to Abbie and I that THIS was why the Lord brought us here. It was for these teenage boys who, at our very first bible study, told us straight out that they drank alcohol and did drugs. The Lord was calling them to Him. Even after Moe had to leave to go to the other house, Abbie and I continued investing in these boys. We studied the bible, we played card games, we sat in their living rooms and watched Sofia the First with them, they came to our house’s Wednesday night worship sessions. Abbie and I joined their soccer team, which included attending practice every night and going to games on weekends. We ran laps and ran up and down hills and walked ALL over town because the boys don’t see any reason to take a taxi when you can just walk for 45 minutes and reach your destination anyway. Abbie and I watched God change these young men right before our eyes. We watched them grow in patience, gentleness, boldness, grace, faith, hope, love, kindness, self control, joy, knowledge, and so much more. Their lives became about more than themselves. They began to take more of a coaching position with the kids who came to play for fun everyday, and they began to show up with questions for Abbie and I, questions about the bible and about God and about His grace and about His love for them. They realized that they don’t have to become their fathers, that they have the ability to choose their own future, that they can become more than the expectations set for them.
[Shaiko, Abbie, Felix, and I on our last day]
[That one time I joined a Zambian boys soccer team. Front row from left: Andy, Ackson, Patrick. Top row from left: Gift, Isaac, me, Leon, and Collins]
[at Felix’s house, with Ackson, Felix, and Shaiko]
[Sunday Funday with Gfit, Abbie, me, Isaac, Daniel, Ackson, and Shaiko. They’re too cool to take smiling pictures after church, apparently]
[Collins and Ackson decided to get baptized while we were at Victoria Falls]
These are my boys. This is my Zambia. I have followed these boys through endless footpaths from one end of Livingstone to another. I picked them up from the hospital at the crack of dawn after they had been there all night praying because one of them had an allergic reaction and should have died because he was in anaphylactic shock for two hours before receiving care. I was there when two of them decided they wanted to be baptized. I have fought with headmasters to get them into school. I have spent countless hours in the market looking for school supplies and uniforms, because I don’t care what anyone says, shopping with teenage boys is infinitely more exhausting than shopping with girls. I have watched them grow from punk kids into young men who desire God’s best. They taught me so much. They taught me about dedication and perseverance, and what it really and truly means that we serve a God of second chances; a God who can take us in our brokenness and our rebellion and make something beautiful out of us for His kingdom. I have poured out my heart and my soul and I have seen the Lord work in wonderous ways. So yesterday, as Abbie and I were sitting in Ackson’s living room watching children’s cartoons with them for the last time, I felt the weight of leaving. And I cried the whole way home.
And then, as I read my emails this morning, I had one that contained this quote:
“You know you’re alive when love hurts and you understand that God wants you to continue doing it because He does the same for you. “
I knew in that moment that Jesus was speaking to me. Sometimes I question my life. I question my purpose and I question whether anything I do matters. I frequently wonder what God thinks of me; if I’m just taking up oxygen or if I’m being the hands and feet of Jesus. But right now, as my heart stings, I know that it hurts because it matters. It hurts because I took everything I have and left it on the table. And that’s all I can do. And even through it all, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
I want to thank everyone who has been a part of this journey with me. Thank you for your donations, your prayers, your time. Thank you for reading my blogs and liking my social media posts. Thank you for always reminding me that this life is not something we do alone, we are all connected to each other and we’re all here to build each other up for the good of the Kingdom. I appreciate you. Let’s hang out sometime?
