I fell completely in love with Madagascar. I have never experience the blending of so many cultures. Madagascar is literally one huge melting pot. The best way for me to describe it as the following, Asian and African Island life living along with French influence. I was daily overwhelmed (in a good way) with the sights, sounds, people and food. Though I will be traveling to many more countries, I think this one wins for most unique! And sadly, I do not have too many photos because stealing/pick pocketing is a huge problem there. And I just didn’t want to rick it. Anyways……
Our ministry while in Antananarivo, Madagascar in was very different from previous months. My team was setup to do campus ministry for the first two weeks of our time there. The purpose of campus ministry is to share the gospel with the students and really anyone who is hanging around the campus. The main university is huge. At least 25,000 students attend every year. Along with just talking with students on campus we would we also would invite them
to an English/Bible study club that we hosted in the afternoon.
Campus ministry was really out of my comfort zone, so I thought. I have always been drawn to children ministry. It’s my go to. And I just really love it! But I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this type of evangelism ministry too. In the words of fellow racer and friend Katy M “sneaky Jesus”! A basic day of campus ministry was long and pretty exhausting.
Breakfast was served at 6:30am. If you weren’t there by 6:31am, you weren’t getting any food. Don’t mess with a squad of hungry savages (sorry guys, I love you but it is true). We usually left the ministry site at 7:40am. My team as well as Team Deep Well would pile into the van and get ready for the commute. Traffic is absolutely HORRIBLE in Madagascar! I’m not exaggerating at all. The drive would take us anywhere from an hour to 2 hour. And I’m sure if you googled the real distance it would be about 30 mins real time. Also the roads are all over the place. It always made for an interesting drive!
Once we got to the little church located near the campus grounds, we would gather together for a time of prayer and worship. We would spend about an hour praising our Creator. I enjoyed this time because it gave the space to prepare our hearts and minds to go out and share Jesus.
With the university being so larger, there was plenty of people around to start conversions with. This is what surprised me the most, how easy it was to just start talking to people. Some times we talked with students for five minutes and sometimes we sat with them for an hour or so. I saw that it doesn’t matter how short or long your conversation is with a person, the Lord works outside of the time clock. He can lead you and give you the words to have a great conversation that can show and share his love.
I saw a lot of spiritual growth myself because of campus ministry. It was a really good month for my walk with the Lord. The month as a whole had a lot of other difficult moments, for our team and for our squad. Yet the journey keeps going and the Lord keeping moving.
much love,
hw
