Today was our last day in Zimbabwe. Our team had a “leadership development” weekend at Victoria Falls! What an amazing wonder of the world! One of the reasons why we had this mini debrief was to send off our wonderful squad leaders (from previous alumni world race squads) back home to the US. We now have 3 new raised-up squad leaders from within our squad to continue their legacy of pouring into the whole squad in discipling, serving and igniting our whole group to take charge of how we are going to finish the rest of the race! We also had a temporary team change. March will be Zam-bro-ia or “man-istry” month in Zambia where all 10 guys on our squad will form this one team and the women from the two co-ed teams will form into 2 teams of all women teams. This was an interesting switch up especially given the fact that we just got a team change at the end of month 4! I apologize for not letting you all in on that, but by the grace of God I promise to better inform you all of what my week-to-week life looks like. So yes that’s the most up to date news of what’s going on for March!
But for the sake of our short attention spans…
and to keep on topic for this particular blog, without further ado here’s a short recap of what my life in Zimbabwe entailed in living life with my team via ministry, adventure and doing normal everyday life with Jesus!
I just had to record this impromptu moment of some elementary aged (grade 5 and 6) students that we assisted during their mission day at school. As I mentioned in my last blog, we worked with elementary school students from a Christian school. Every week we would come visit them and talk to them about what Jesus says about friendship. In addition to that we assisted with “Mission Day” where the students take a field trip to different parts of the community taking the time to serve different types of people who are easily forgotten or misunderstood. Here we are on our way to a Sandra Jone’s Center, a children’s home for orphans and abandoned babies. Here are the videos of the students on the bus practicing some songs to sing to the children. I didn’t get to take a video of them actually singing to the children, but it was such a blessing to see them do that and even genuinely want to play and read to the younger children!
The next two are videos of my teammate and friend Kayla and I also playing with both the students and children.
Here is a group of young men that approached us wanting to sing some gospel songs for us right before we helped lead an evangelism outreach service at Polytech college. Our host invited these young men to come and attend and as a result they got to hear from the Holy Spirit and possibly become more involved in the Christian Community in their school:
This is probably the shortest video. This is a path a took several times walking to and from a shopping center with a quaint cafe during our off days. From our hostel to the shopping center was about a 3 and half mile walk. This particular strip reminded me the scripture in Matthew 7:14, “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” This also reminded me of the my college’s mantra to “walk a different path” Being a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ is not easy, but totally worth it!
Here’s a snippet of my team singing with this beautiful group of kids from Pelendaba Kids Club that we got to sing, play and teach them about Jesus every Saturday!
This is just a silly video of two of my teammates being siblings…Oh and that beautiful land there is what we got to call home for the month! It’s not normally that green (Zimb has had a very long period-(yearsssss) of no rain, but Zimb is just now experiencing this beautiful season of rain on rain on rain! Lord Jesus, let your rain not only make the grass green, but bear fruit in Zimb as well! The harvest fields are ripe! Thank you for allowing our team to be apart of bringing eternal life to Zimb this past month!
A typical world race week consists of 5 days of ministry, one off day and one adventure day. This is during one of our off/adventure days in Matopos National Park where the ladies of our group had a ladies day to go explore the beauty of God’s creation in the wild of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Here Kayla and I, (mostly Kayla) are being silly in finding these rhinos! Quick cool story-We were not able to find/afford any guides in touring the park for wild game (animals) and they said that people normally aren’t able to find them on their own without the guides, but God shown us favor that day and we most definitely found his beautiful creation on our own 
Thank you Jesus!
Last one! Being a cornball, as usual, here I am with my squad mate Kara exploring Victoria Falls this past weekend! Our heavenly Father is by far the best creator/artist in the universe!
So there you have it! February was filled with lessons, challenges, disappointments, surprises, encouragement, adventure, hope and fun! God is sooo good. Life is good. Life is even better with God! Will you consider living life with him today? Every day I’m being transformed into the image of his Son and it is journey worth living for.
