My friend and teammate, Rachel wrote a blog about our time here in Malawi. I loved it so much I decided to make it a guest blog post on my site. I’ve added some pictures but what she wrote is exactly how I feel. Read it and know there is truth, the World Race isn’t always easy, it’s not always fun but I do know that God is always with me.
This month my team and I are living in Dzoole Village, Malawi. Living in a village has had its difficulties but it has also brought a lot of laughter and sweet memories.
This is a little peak into our lives in Dzoole. (Home sweet home)
1. There is no electricity in the village which means when it gets dark there isn’t much to do. We eat dinner by candle light or lamp light and then head off to bed…at 9pm. And if by some chance we find ourselves up past 9 we consider ourselves night owls, or as Annie likes to say “late birds.”
2. Some days we walk an hour to get to a neighboring village to preach and pray for the people
there.
3. The nearest town to us is Ntcheu (if it sounds like you sneezed then you pronounced that correctly). It takes about an hour to walk into town from our house. We usually try to hitchhike, but some days no one stops and other days a van with “God’s Mercy” written on the hood stops to pick you up and saves you the walk into town. (Or a big semi truck whose tires come up to your chest and you’re sure you’ll never be able to climb in, let alone get out.)
4. The nearest town being a few miles away means perfect star gazing conditions. We lay outside watching the stars and scream when we see a shooting star flash across the sky.
5. Living in and among the people means getting to know all of the neighborhood kids, chasing them around the dirt roads, and them giggling whenever we finally catch up and overpower them with tickles.
6. One thing I didn’t expect was to be terrified of walking out to the squatty potty in the middle of the night because supposedly hyenas roam the streets at night. It doesn’t help when you walk out the back door, hear loud rustling noises in the bushes and every dog in a mile radius starts howling and streaking past you. What else do you do but run to the squatty and lock yourself in?
7. Village life makes sentences that we never imagined saying come out of our mouths. For example, while walking home one evening, “Man, I was hoping to catch the squatty before it got dark and the roaches come out” – Sadie.
8. Here in Dzoole visitors, especially azungus (white people) are a rarity. So we tend to collect quite a crowd wherever we go and always have people in our house eager to meet us even though we can’t communicate in the same language. And I’ll never forget the night we arrived every child from the entrance to the village to our house chased the truck in so by the time we made it to our house it seemed like every child in the whole village was waiting outside our house. (This was one day we were coming back from town.)
9. We eat the same meal for lunch and dinner every day which means we tend to go through a jar of peanut butter and a jar of nutella every day. Peanut butter is considered a main food group on the world race. (Cikonella is our Nutella, trust me, this size is good enough for one sitting…for one person.)
10. Christmas in the village means painting a Christmas tree and taping it to the wall with medical tape. I love our Charlie Brown Christmas tree, though.
Living in a village for the month has left us with a lot of down time and also left us with a choice. We are at a point in the Race where honestly we feel tired; tired of pushing ourselves to step out of comfort zones and tired of pushing ourselves to grow, tired of language barriers and tired of nshima. It’s Christmas time and we miss home, family, friends, comfort, and Christmas cookies. Every day we are faced with the choice of whether we are going to embrace the month, embrace the ministry, and lean into everything that God has for us, tiredness and difficulties included or are we going to distract ourselves with books, movies, thoughts of Christmas parties, life after the Race, and one my team’s favorites, nertz. Some moments I choose to embrace but others I choose distraction. Some times it seems easier to distract myself than to push myself to continue processing and working through the same lesson that God has been teaching me for the past month and a half. But I know that I won’t look back on this month and wish I had watched another movie or played more games of nertz…bad example, can we ever play too much nertz, Agape?
So I want to embrace every moment that presents itself. I want to embrace every moment where I am standing up to preach and give the line to the translator and all I get in return is a blank stare.
I want to embrace the process the Lord has me in this season, trusting that He will bring resolution and healing on His time.
I want to embrace each and every moment chasing little Austin and Oliver and embrace each time Austin snuggles up in my lap for a nap and leaves a trail of dirty sweat behind. (Pictures added of Austin, top and Oliver, bottom)
I want to embrace every moment with my team, knowing that we aren’t guaranteed a certain amount of time together on the race.
I don’t want to live distracted or to wish a second of it away. Because the time will come when I am in another month, another country, and finally back home and I won’t be able to wish for these moments back.
And some bonus pictures of Agape. For your enjoyment. (Added by Ash)
Awkward family photo…
“This tree is big…we should take a picture in front of it.”
