Hey guys!
The other week I did something that I will remember for the rest of my life.
I didn’t heal anyone or do anything super cool or even see anything amazing. We didn’t sit on the edge of one of the largest waterfalls or go on some crazy adventures. We didn’t meet anyone famous or discover something incredible.
All we did was say yes.
What happened after that yes is an afternoon I’ll never forget.
Long before January 25, 2018 we said yes. Actually I said yes on May 4, 2017 (the day before my birthday) to becoming a racer. Going on the World Race doesn’t just mean you volunteer for 9 months. It’s so much more.
Being a racer is choosing into a community of strangers who become family. It’s taking ice cold bucket showers and walking 6 miles to ministry. It’s sucoming our bodies to parasites, dehydration, mono, staph, fungal infections, and yes someone even got a form of leprosy. It’s dressing up to go to the grocery store because it’s the only time we can dress like we do in America. It’s washing your clothes in buckets and cooking stur fry over a charcoal stovewith a headlamp cause rolling blackouts are a daily accurance.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we say yes to testing ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually every day for nine months? Why do we say yes to what most people would say no to?
We say yes because this is what God has called us here in Malawi, Africa to do. We say yes because we weren’t called to be comfortable. We say yes because we choose Jesus and this is what Jesus has chosen for us. We say yes because our lives our not ours to say no to, they are Gods and we say yes because when he calls us we come. We do what he asks. We live as campaigners and representatives of the gospel.
Last Thursday I said yes again. Don’t worry Mom and Dad I didn’t sign up for another 9 month mission trip. 😉 No, last Thursday I said yes to a simple question.
“Would you like you stay?”
“Yes”
So, every Thursday and Friday we go into a local neighborhood and play soccer with a neighborhood soccer team. 100 or so other kids come to watch as well. For about 3 hours we play soccer with these guys from this neighborhood. Let me tell you, they take their soccer seriously.
We usually warm up for about an hour, if we forget the soccer balls, play several 10 minute games, then we play with the kids, tell them a bible story, and give a testimony.
But a few days ago we go there and they had already warmed up so we got right to playing. In the first 5 minutes I kicked the ball (with chacos on, very bad idea) and my big toenail broke the top half off. My team was saying it was okay to sit but I wanted to keep playing because the week before I was sick and couldn’t play. So I said I was good and kept playing.
Just when the second game was starting, I felt my favorite thing in Africa. A small drop had landed on my shoulder. Then it happened.
“We thought it was rain, turns it was {hail}. We were tripping around {blinded} by it.”
~Catching fire reference for all my nerd friends. Hehehe
It was coming down fast and hard. One second there was just a cloudy sky and no rain and the next thing we know we were being pelted with rain and hail. All of the bystanders grabbed the smaller children and ran into their homes. The rain was like one continuous sheet that lasted for about 2 hours. Pelting down on us. Beating into our eyes. Turning that red African dirt beneath our feet into several little rivers of mud. We were slipping and sliding, running into one another and kicking the ball totally in the wrong direction.
After a few minutes some of the soccer players even left. That blazing African heat had turned into a cold rainy afternoon. The soccer players were shivering because they weren’t used to the cold weather. We however were loving it considering there is snow where most of us live.
While most people would say “No, we don’t want to say, most of the kids have left and the rain is hurting and we cant play well with all the water.”
We said “Yes! Of course we want to stay! Soccer in the rain is so much fun!”
So that’s what we did. We stayed and we played! It was full of laughs and falls. Of goals scored and shoots that didn’t even come close to going in. We could barely see and were soaked from head to toe, dripping from the rain that never let up but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world. I that moment God has just reassured me that I was made to be here at this time, with these guys, in Lilongwe, Malawi. He reassured me that I am following the plan he has for me.
But we didn’t just stay because playing in the rain is fun. No, we stayed because God called us these 9 months to love on his people and meet them where they are. To get on there level and love on them. He called us to be uncomfortable, to get dirty, to get soaked to love his children. We stayed to show the guys playing that playing with them was more important than us getting a little wet and dirty.
You know those moments in your life where you get this feeling that this is a moment you will remember forever? It’s just for a split second but something in your brain clicks and you know. It could have been the day you saw your wife coming down the isle, the moment you first got to hold your baby girl, that last second before you win the state championship, or the day you graduated college. They could even be small events like driving down the parkway listening to music and screaming at the top of your lungs, cooking AWFUL fettuccine alfredo pasta with your friends for an English class assignment and trashing your kitchen, spending time with a loved one, or tubbing at the lake. It’s what we like to call an infinity moment.
We call them infinity moments after the book and movie Perks Of Being A Wallflower. A movie and book most of my squad has watched or read several times on the race. The scene is Charlie driving through a tunnel with his new friends Sam and Patrick, the song heroes is playing and he says “I feel infinite.” Its like that sole moment could continue going on for the rest of your life and you wouldn’t mind it. It’s just perfect. It fills you up and gives you so much peace and joy.
I had one of those moments in that mud field. Playing soccer in barely visible rain in Lilongwe. It was perfect.
The week before we had gone to soccer the players weren’t crazy about us, they liked us, they were just kinda putting up with us and our inability to play soccer. But the day we stayed with them and played in the rain was a breakthrough with the players. We were giving high fives and hugging. We were making up handshakes and cheering each other on. We had made a relationship with these guys and it was so sweet we didn’t want to leave.
When it was finally time to leave we were so sad and went to hung all the players. It was such a sweet moment with my team and with all the guys. There have been a few moments in my life like this, I have even had another on the race. But every time it clicks and I know I’m filled with this joy and the only thing I can think is…
“I feel infinite.”
-Stephen Chbosky Perks of Being a Wallflower.
