If I had to pick one, I
loved seeing God’s fingerprints on each person we met, including my
team, our ministry contacts, and everyone we met. I wrote a blog about
it-Created in His Image, but it was really cool. The unique beauty of
each individual face, throughout the world, was cool. I liked traveling
and seeing famous things, like Angkor Wat or the Nile, but my favorite
part was meeting so many different people, so many different faces, so
many different lives, and so many different definitions of beauty.
What was your least favorite?
Living
with people 24/7 was kind of overwhelming, but very stretching. I have
also used some terrible places to shower and relieve myself-like holes
in a piece of wood, straddling it by standing on some concrete. It is
also not fun to not be able to refuse food, drinks, etc, even when you
are very full.
What was most meaningful, either activity or country or event or whatever?
In
the Philippines, I got to take care of the most beautiful orphans. I
also got to feed the hungry once or twice a week. To me, this was what I
had expected the race to be like, and so I enjoyed tangibly meeting
people this way.
For me personally, the graduation my team arranged
for me in Thailand really touched my heart. I was super bummed and had
convinced myself that whatever was going on that night was not for me,
and then it was. I’d never even had a surprise party, so to have a
surprise graduation. Wow. I felt so loved.
What range of activities did you do?
We
did whatever they needed. So in New Zealand, I was a camp counselor, a
dish washer, a hospitality clerk and a dining room bouncer. In
Australia, I helped out in classrooms with aboriginal students and did
manual labor. In the Philippines, I volunteered at an orphanage and fed
victims of the flooding from last September 2009. In Cambodia, we taught
English and did manual labor, like building a new roof and siding for a
widow’s home. In Thailand, we taught English in classrooms, to monks,
and at mini-camps. We also did manual labor and helped out with a local
church. In Kenya, we helped out at schools and preached, a lot. In
Tanzania, we visited churches, homes, hospitals, and helped out with a
revival meeting. In Uganda, we visited schools, churches and homes, and
preached a lot. In Romania, we visited gypsy villages, worked at a
thrift shop, and did some special events for children. In Hungary, we
did bible studies, fed the homeless, and encouraged an American
missionary family living in Budapest. In the Ukraine, we are partnered
with some local churches, helping out with manual labor and basically
just spending time with the Partridge Von Trapp family. (They are kind
of like our family, but bigger, and even more musically talented, every
single one. It is nuts)
How have you changed as a person since last year?
I
have learned perseverance. I have learned how to put others first but
still stand up for myself. I have gained perspective on how the rest of
the world lives, and hope to remember that when I start to complain
about the little things. I have grown up a lot, I have gained wisdom and
understanding, and I hope I am a “better” person, though that will be
hard to quantify.
How has your relationship with God changed?
I
trust God a lot more. In the beginning of the year, I had to get over a
lot of fear-fear about driving fast while go-carting and jumping into
water. Trivial, yes, but it set the stage as the year progressed, as we
took public transportation without seatbelts, jay walked in the busy
streets of Manila, rode in open air trucks up sketchy mountain passes in
Uganda, etc. I ate unclean food and probably drank water that wasn’t
the greatest, but all I could do was pray and trust.
I also believe
more deeply what I have claimed to believe all along. Going to school at
USC, I was really into compromise. Like I know what I believe but I am
not going to shove it down your throat. And while I don’t want to shove
anything, or force anything, I do believe in absolute truth now. I want
to love people and share life with them and pray for them and hope they
will meet God like I have.
What was the hardest physical or environmental challenge?
The
air was REALLY dirty in Manila-but we had comfy beds…I guess in Uganda
one week, the place where we showered was corrugated tin siding, no
roof, and VERY slippery stones covered in mud. Then you use warm, dirty
water to wash your hair and body, maybe you get 2 liters of it, so not a
lot. So that week I was very dirty. Plus the bathroom was a 7 minute
walk down hill-we didn’t go after dark.
What did you find most foreign as an American?
The
entire African continent…really, it is just a different world. There
are very few American chains in Africa, for the most part, maybe some
Pizza Hut, but very rare. Once you get out of the capital cities of
Nairobi or Kampala, you are in real Africa. Mud huts, tin roofs, lots of
beans.
Also, the alphabets in Cambodia, Thailand and Ukraine, but
especially in Cambodia and Thailand, are totally obscure. There was no
reading of the signs there, and it was when we landed in Cambodia that I
thought, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore. (Many things are in
English in the Philippines, and they have many American chains-it’s
actually more Americanized than New Zealand or Australia).
Were you mostly working with believers already or did you touch and reach people’s lives?
It
depended on the month. Some months we worked with believers to reach
out to other people. In Thailand, for example, we worked with a pastor
but taught English to monks and others. In Africa, we did a lot of
preaching with pastors to people who weren’t necessarily born-again
Christians, sometimes they were Catholic or Muslim or just didn’t really
want to be Christians, which was really hard for our contacts/local
pastors to understand.
I hope we touched people’s lives. I was
sorting through my pictures on Picasa the other day, and it said like
3000 unidentified faces. So even if we didn’t necessarily spend a lot of
time with them, a lot of the time we didn’t even learn their names,
unfortunately, we did meet tons of people, and I hope they were
encouraged and felt compassion and love from us.
