On Sunday, May 3, my new team and I had a 16 hour bus ride. It was supposed to be 12 hours, but TIA (This is Africa). We left Southern Mozambique at 3am to head to a village near Beira in the Central part of the country. I tried to get some sleep before the sun rose at 5:30am. I wrote a bit of my experience down. This is how it went…
“As I sit here, I feel sorry for the people around me. From the man in front of me who’s head I kept grabbing, mistaking it for his head rest, to the man next to me who I kept flinching and elbowing, to Alyssa’s feet who I stepped on and kicked too many times for me to count. It’s is for real, a struggle bus.”
As I wrote this, the African sun was rising. I turned my music onto random shuffle and the song “Here I am to Worship” came on first. It’s says
“Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness, open my eyes, let me see. Beauty that made this heart adore You, hope of a life spent with You. Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down. Here I am to say that You’re my God. You’re all together lovely, all together worthy, all together wonderful to me”
These words speak so true to my life. God has done such great things. He has taken me from darkness to light. He has open my eyes to see what He has for me in the future. He is altogether lovely and altogether worthy of all the praise and glory.
As time passes on, I find myself falling more and more in love with Jesus. I have spent the last 4.5 months traveling the world representing the Kingdom of God. I have met amazing people and seen God’s beauty in places I would never have expected me to go. God keeps taking me on adventures with Him.
One of the best things for me on the World Race is that I am living in community with other people who are hungry for the things of God as well. We spend our whole days with these same 5 or 6 people. We see all their victories and get to rejoice with them in it. We see all their flaws and get to walk with them through it. Some days are harder than others and we will rub each other the wrong way, but then we talk through it and keep moving forward. The body of Christ is an amazing thing and is so crucial for a believer to live in. You don’t have to travel the world for 11 months to do it either. There are believers everywhere around the world who God has gifted to build each other up. I find it incredible that for every group of believers, God has placed the gifts and personalities in each other to rub each other both the right and wrong way.
Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”.
I have found this verse to be very true. I have been sharpened so much in the past few months. This growth all seems normal to me, as if I haven’t changed a whole lot. Although, I have a strong feeling that I will be a very different person by the time I get back in December. In fact, I would be very disappointed if I came back the same person. God has been transforming me back into the way He originally designed me. I have been learning more of what a son of God looks like and walking in that. It’s both exciting and challenging.
At times it is a “Struggle Bus” and at times it’s as if I am on a roller coaster ride and all I have to do is hold on tight and enjoy the ride. No matter what situation I am in, I know that God is right there with Me. I can be on a 16 hour bus ride through Mozambique or on a Safari in South Africa (Which I got to do and was really fun!). Wherever I am and whatever I do, I know that God is always with me and I can enjoy life because of Him.
