WORLD RACE UPDATE: AFRICA (FEBRUARY-APRIL)
Hola family and friends!
I am currently sitting in a coffee shop in Jujuy, Argentina, thinking back on the past 8 months of my race. It has been a beautiful journey through the Lord’s goodness, His faithfulness, and His love manifested in every aspect of this world and people. It is crazy to think that there are only 3 ½ months left on the field for now. 3 more countries after Argentina, and being in the last continent on the race. The last three months (February-April) were spent in the lovely continent of Africa. There I was in Botswana, South Africa, and Swaziland. Africa was a continent full of life, joy, sorrow, and the Lord’s faithfulness. I want to take you through what those 3 months looked like in more detailed. Once again, I cannot begin to thank you enough for your prayers, encouragement, and financial support. It literally blows my mind how the Lord brings Kingdom in all of our lives by partnering with each other in these ways. Know that even on the field, I am praying for each of you. If you have any specific prayer requests, please send me an email back with those if you desire! I would love to partner with you in that way and interceding on your behalf.
From Cambodia, our last country in Asia, we flew to Johannesburg, South Africa where we were a part of something called a Regional Awakening. There were 3 other World Race Squads at this small conference for a couple days where we came together and prayed for a regional awakening over the continent of Africa, and specifically in South Africa. There we went out and did some outreach, prayed, and came together as leaders to vision cast over the continent. It was a time of rejuvenation, worship, and a lot of hosts from around the area were present so we were able to pray over them and their long-term work. After, we headed to Gaborone, Botswana which was just a bus ride away.
Gaborone, Botswana
This month our team partnered with Gaborone Community Chapel, a branch off of the Nairobi Community Chapel in Kenya. Our hosts, Lamaz and Maki Lawrence are from Kenya and have a beautiful baby girl named Zahara. We became aunties for the month and got lots of baby snuggles whenever we were at home. This month our main ministry was evangelizing on the University of Botswana campus. Our first week there was amazing: we met lots of great students on campus, held bible studies and campus ministry clubs, played cards in the common area, and basically talked to students all day. After the 1st week, there were strikes going on that ended up shutting down the campus for the rest of our month there. A lot of the students’ financial aid was cut off from the government, leaving many of them without places to stay, as they were kicked out of the dorms as well. The strikes started off as simple protests, and turned violent quickly when they started vandalizing the campus: breaking into the school stores and stealing things, throwing rocks at cars, and burning things.
We were pretty bummed out when we first heard this, because we thought, well that was supposed to be our ministry. What are we going to do for the rest of the month? The devil obviously didn’t want us here for a reason. We started doing community evangelism and going door to door. At first, this sounded awful: everything that I thought didn’t work. The Lord really taught me a lot this month though about works in general. He said, “Steph, isn’t it my works and not yours that bring others to me? Just because you don’t think this is a good method, doesn’t mean I can’t work through it.” And he did just that.
One specific day in particular, we were going door to door in this poorer part of town where 2 of my teammates and I came upon a woman named Grace. She was an older woman, with a naked little boy on her lap, feeding him pap (traditional cornmeal type food that looks like mashed potatoes). She was sitting on the rug outside of her small house on the sand, and smiled at us as we approached. She invited us to sit down on her rug and join her and her grandson. As we began talking, our translator said something to her then looked at us and said “Okay, you can tell her about Jesus now!” My teammate Jess and I looked at each other and thought, alright! Here we go! I began talking to her about her life, what her family was like, and told her what Jesus had done in my own life. Jesse began sharing the gospel with her and what that meant in her own life as well. As she was talking, I felt the Lord tell me to pray for healing over this woman. I looked for any visible ailment that I could see and I noticed a lump on her hand. After, this woman decided she wanted to accept Jesus as her savior, the joy that entered her as soon as we started talking about Jesus was something she couldn’t deny. Jess, Betsy, the translator, and myself all prayed with Grace and we gained a new sister that day. The heavens rejoiced, salvation is here. During this time, I was praying over her hand as well, thinking that the healing must need to take place there because it was all I could see. Little did I know, the Lord saw something deeper, something only he could know. She proclaimed that she had back pain before we came, and after accepting Jesus and praying, her back pain was completely gone! Hallelujah, our God healed this beautiful woman! Tears streamed down our faces as we rejoiced over the divine encounter we just experienced.
This month I also learned about the Lord’s provision and faithfulness in other ways. Holy cow. First of all, a previous World Race team had prayed for rain over this country, for they were experiencing a severe draught. This is something I had never prayed for before: being from the land of 10,000 lakes, water shortage is really nothing I’ve ever experienced in that way. This month, the Lord showered down on earth with living water, and we rejoiced over previously prayed requests that were answered in that moment. I ran through torrential downpours and laughed because man oh man, the Lord is so good.
Also, this was a month where a tragedy occurred within a married couple’s family on my squad. Her sister was in an awful, almost deadly car accident: her heartbeat was gone for 22 minutes and on the scene, they were sure she was dead: no way to bring her back, and even if so, there would be permanent brain damage. THE LORD LITERALLY BROUGHT HER BACK FROM THE DEAD. And now today, she is almost back to a full recovery, no permanent damage done whatsoever. Read the full story here:
http://andrewandalyssastapley.theworldrace.org/post/god-raised-the-dead-to-life
The Lord is so good I cannot proclaim that enough! This is a month where I will remember the word:
FAITHFULNESS
Bloemfontein, South Africa
South Africa is an amazing country full of so much diversity. With 11 different national languages, this is a country that has people from all over. With a large Dutch influence here, there is a large population of white people in this country compared to the rest of the continent. South Africa is very developed and a lot like America in a lot of ways. This month was probably the most challenging month I’ve had so far on the race. We worked with Eden Ministries, a home for the mentally challenged, homeless, and destitute. Going into this month I was very excited because this is exactly the population I worked with back home before the race. It prepared me some, but not enough for what I would witness. With only 4 staff (house cleaner, cook, nurse aid, and the hosts who ran the place), there were 110 residents that were cared for day in and day out. To the American standards, this facility looks like severe, severe neglect. It broke my heart in so many ways. To write about these feelings in full would take a novel of a book to write about. We cooked, we cleaned, we gardened, we helped with hygiene & caretaking, medication dispersal, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted in my life. Men urinated down the hallways, feces in beds, sitting in the small courtyard all day with the small breaks of medication dispersal and meals, with little to no interaction with each other. My teammate Hannah said it best: we worked among Angels this month. The kind the rest of society looks down upon, throws to the side, they are so much like the Lord that the world hates them. Shows little compassion towards. I saw this first hand in the medical aspect of their lives: tossed aside or put last when needing medical attention. A down syndrome boy was told they couldn’t do anything for an allergy he was having to a medication because he was just “born that way”. I held a man’s bleeding head, worrying he was going to die in my arms after falling and smashing his head open on a brick, and the ambulance taking their time whenever they “get calls from Eden”. I sat there praying that he would stay conscious as he began to fall asleep, blood oozing out of the top of the gauze. Sitting there with anger over the fact that I was giving him the best care he would get, even without a medical background at all, because the hospital would take their time and prioritize other things. I witnessed a woman die who tremored daily due to her illness, and had broken her hip the week before and was in so much pain. I was relieved that the Lord took her: took her away from pain, took her away from this broken world.
This was an exhausting month, but I witnessed so much joy and dignity restored to these beautiful people. So many laughs and moments of “what is my life?” For instance:
- When I stepped in human poop on the sidewalk outside of the kitchen on the way to my room
- Telling a woman in the dining center that she needed to keep her pants and shirt on when eating (then watching her just take off her pants and sit down in the chair, attempting to take off her shirt and having to hold her bra straps together so she wouldn’t take her bra off with the 40 men surrounding her in the dining center. She had a fit over this btw)
- Having to jump the barbwire fence to break into the mental health facility because we lived within the compound
- Asking if I knew of any record company’s because a man had songs he needed to produce
- When a man tried to kiss all of us by trying to grab our faces
- Having a conversation with a man who didn’t speak any English but he would just talk to me like I understood him for 15 minutes at a time
- Cleaned out poop in the beds
- Dance parties in the kitchen
The Lord taught all of us the power of loving people when we don’t get anything in return. What it looks like to fight for people when it’s hard, uncomfortable, and risky. This month was one I will look back on as challenging but I learned so much from it as well. We had full days full of hard work, but in the end it was all worth it.
The word the Lord gave me for this month for my personal life was:
PIONEER
The Lord called out my spiritual gift of leadership and what it looks like to pioneer things. What it means to be the first one to step into something. To spring forward new things and new ideas. To be BOLD in my convictions and the things the Lord is calling me to. Still figuring out what this means for my life but I know the Lord has something beautiful in store. This was also my last month with my first team L Team Sisterhood/later called Harbor, would experience team changes at the end of the month at our South Africa Debrief.
Nsoko, Swaziland
Swaziland: the country with the highest HIV/AIDS population, with 1/3 of the population diagnosed, and many more suspected to have it due to the stigma in being tested. Many orphans reside in Swaziland, either being taken care of by gogos (grandmothers or older women) who take in multiple kids, or orphanages. Adventures in Missions does a lot of work in Swaziland so we had the opportunity to work at one of their bases throughout the month. Our ministry was specifically serving at the carepoints. Carepoints are centers where children can come to get their meal for the day, learn about the Lord through programs and short lessons, and be loved on by the volunteer gogos in the community. There are typically around 150-200 children at each carepoint, and within the whole country, they serve an average of 7,000 children per day. A lot of Feed My Starving Children type meals go to these carepoints so it was an awesome experience to be on the other end of handing out those meals and seeing it first hand. We would go to the carepoints 3 times a week to hang out and simply love on the kids. The other days of the week, we would work on administrative things like profiling, or entering new children’s info into the AIM system, or have a day fully devoted to prayer. This was by far my favorite month in Africa. I loved being around the kids all the time, having them jump on us like jungle gyms, craving to be held or cuddled, and simply just smile with. These kids stole my heart in so many ways. There may be physical poverty here but they are rich in so many other ways.
I was taken aback so many times this month over simple things I took for granted. Seeing 7 year olds taking care of their baby siblings like they are their parents: feeding them during church, taking them outside when they would cry, and walking home with them on their backs. Having young girls ask me what “struggles I have endured in the world”, if I had been raped, arrested, or if both my parents were still living. When they asked if I still had parents, they also asked if my dad had other wives and children too. They were astonished when I said that my parents had been married for 28 years and that they loved each other a lot. Kids trying to dig through the fire to find food or anything else they could get while we burned our trash. Young kids running around by themselves, coming to sit outside our house to be read a story.
This month held a lot of rest as well. Outside of the couple hours of ministry each day, we had a lot of time to rest which was a gift from the Lord. We lived with 2 other teams in a small house, so there were 20 girls under one roof. We learned on a larger scale what it looks like to live in community, and how living with 20 girls can be challenging but also extremely beautiful as well. Worship nights were some of the most beautiful things I’ve been a part of: with 20 powerhouse women’s voices singing to the heavens.
This month I saw the Lord’s faithfulness again as we prayed and worshipped for rain because of severe drought and the Lord RAINED (and REIGNED) down upon the country of Swaziland that next night. I witnessed the most beautiful lightning storm I have ever seen!
The best part of this month was that MY MOM CAME TO SWAZILAND! We had our Parent Vision Trip this month for 5 days where our parents came and joined us in ministry. The purpose of this trip is to show parents a little bit of what it is like to be on the race, and have them experience that first hand. To see what it looks like to live life on mission, to serve abroad, and to live in community. This was such a beautiful time with my mom and we had such an amazing experience serving alongside each other. Seeing my mom show her mother’s love to kids who don’t have moms brought up feelings I didn’t know my heart could feel. We got to go to the carepoints, house visits, put on some youth programs, and had a fun day of a safari! It was so good to see my mom, and made it that much more real about coming home soon!
This month the Lord taught me about rest and the word:
SOLITUDE
Intimacy with the Lord is more important than any work I will ever do. Without intimacy with him, my works mean nothing. For they are not done on my own strength, it is his strength in me alone. Solitude with the Lord is so important.
PRAYER REQUESTS
Things you can be praying for in my last 4 months of the race in South America!
- Language learning (nobody speaks English here so learning Spanish is a MUST!)
- Against complacency and complaining within our squad and team
- Endurance and staying present with where we are
- New team dynamics: unity within our new teams
- The Lord to do miraculous things among these nations
- Discipleship within these communities
- For people to see that Jesus is not a religion, it’s a relationship! (There is a strong religious push in the Latin American countries and falling back on mere rituals instead of a living relationship)
- Health/safety/warmth! (It’s our first country where it’s actually pretty chilly because its winter here!)
- Prepared hearts for going home soon
Thank you so again for your constant prayer and encouragement. It is truly what keeps me pushing through this! What a beautiful journey the Lord brings us on when we choose to say YES to Him! I will be back at the end of August, looking forward to meeting up with you all and hearing your heart/ sharing more of my heart!
Love you all,
Steph
