Apathy

As I have been sitting around, I’ve realized that my blogs
have become seemingly, how shall I say it…..dull. For that I would like to
apologize. Nothing about these last two months has been dull. However, they
have been very challenging yet very difficult to write about.

Life in East Africa, thus far, has been very fly by the seat
of your pants. Every day we awake with uncertainty – will there be power, is
there running water, is our contact going to be ready when we told us to be
ready, will we go to ministry today, will it rain, if it’s raining to hard can
the vehicles safely travel the back roads, how far away is the ministry today,
did he really mean 2 hours…..and on and on and on. Literally there were days
where it rained in the morning and consequently we could not/did not travel to
our afternoon ministry location due to the conditions (or probable conditions)
of the roads we would need to travel. Other times something would fall through
with one of the translators/contacts that was supposed to go with us. Or the
truck we were supposed to use broke down and we could not afford to take public
transportation. Often times when this happened our team was left, more or less,
to twiddle our thumbs. We would watch a movie (if the power was on), read a
book, hang out, play a game or just stare at each other 😀  Even though we were learning about each
other, about perseverance, and working on our own relationship with the Lord;
after 2 days in a row of not physically doing much apathy and a sense of
boredom would quickly creep in. It took a lot, practically all, of our energy
to fight those feelings. And the lessons we learned on these days are difficult
to put into words.

Speaking of apathy, a rather unexpected thought process began
to occur to me. We would walk through a town and I would find myself thinking
“What a surprise, another village full of poverty, children who don’t have
clothes, children who don’t have shoes, just like every other place we’ve
been”. I could hardly believe it, seeing such poverty and such brokenness had
become so normal to me that there were times when it hardly phased me. Times
when a feeling of defeat had over come me. Yet, in spite of my occasional
apathy God continued to remind me that each child is precious to Him, each
child is beautiful, and each of these towns break His heart. Through those
reminders I have been convicted about my apathy. I desire to seek after God’s
heart and that I truly long to have my heart break for the things that break
His heart. Continually God also reminded me that daily I have a choice. Either
I can choose apathy: to feel nothing about the situations around me and to do
nothing about them. Or I can choose to find the glimmers of hope, I can choose
to fight against the poverty, I can choose to bring joy, I can choose to usher
in the Holy Spirit, I can choose to care and I can choose to let the injustice
move me into action and out of apathy.

So there’s a glimpse of one of the lessons that the Lord
taught me over the course of the month 😀