What are we doing here?
59 Americans ascend into Honduras.
Our beds are in an array of tents and hammocks strewn across the property of Zion’s gate.
We have access to 2 “showers”. Both of which are cold.
Our bathrooms are co-ed.
Our food is rice and beans.
We wake up early, haul rocks for 4 hours, visit random stranger’s homes for two.
We teach English in schools, paint houses, play soccer, and pray over the sick.
Our friends are drug addicts, rape victims, the homeless, the abused and the fatherless.
Our wallets are empty, many nights are sleepless, and we wonder why.
Why are we here? Why now? Why me?
There is so much joy in this place.
I love being able to always find someone to talk to. Regardless of what hour of the day it is. I love watching men and women haul rocks in broken wheel barrels to put in paths, only to stop and welcome school kids coming up the road.
I love sitting down and hearing their hearts, their journey to complete dependence on the Lord.
I love to see their hearts break for the nation- for the ones that have no one fighting for them.
I love seeing change- visible, internal, spiritual change that lights a person up from the inside out. I love seeing the realization dawn and the peace that settles when someone realizes that they’re home.
They are home despite the lack of comfort, despite loosing the things they thought they could never live without. They are home because they have realized that over hot showers and personal space there are boys and girls who are hungry for love, hungry for someone to tell them that they are fighting for them, that they are seen and valued.
I have been missing home this week. Missing the faces of those I love. Missing hugs from family. And then I read this from my journal last week…
How blessed am I?
A thousand pictures, a thousand words, a thousand memories.
Here I am in Honduras looking back over pictures taken all over the world. Children waving, airports, mountains, open sewers, and fields upon fields of rice. Baptisms in Latvia and Guatemala. New life. Abundant life.
Babies and elderly men and women of every color. Ever tribe, tongue and nation.
What is my life? What is this adventure that the Lord has called us on?
Brokenness? Worth it. Loving to the fullest? Wholly and completely worth it.
Worth the sacrifice, worth the wait, worth the pain and the anticipation.
He is worth it.
I don’t know how I got here, but I know that I trust Him.
I trust the Man that is holding me. That is leading me on. That has my hand and will not and dare not let go-even when I pull away.
I trust the God that has divinely appointed me, set me apart and called me blessed.
I trust the Spirit that speaks to me. That continues to whisper to me and speak of something more.
Want to know something crazy? I am starting to trust myself. That maybe my wanderings have not been random after all. That maybe I am not “stalling” or “lost”.
A Christmas in Vietnam, Thanksgivings in Cambodia and Thailand, Easter in Latvia and Valentine's Day in Kenya. The New Year was welcomed in my tent in Uganda (a full Ugandan revival church shouting praises across the Nile).
My God is getting bigger and my world is getting smaller.
