Hello friends! It has been a HOT minute since I’ve last update you, and I wanted to begin with a sincere apology and a gratitude for your patience. I am in fact still alive and kicking, just been a little(almost 60 days) wifi deprived. Enjoy!
Tuesday, May 19th, 2018.
Month Nine.
Nine.
Nine days of ministry left. I remember staring down the daunting nine months ahead of me with such fear. I journal my days and write my prayers and mentally hold them alongside my writings from Cambodia. A different mindset, but on an even deeper level a different woman. I was not capable of the praises I scribble and sing and declare today in those beginning days.
So what about Africa is to credit for this radical change?
The poverty. Mind boggling, truly. From the comfort of our brick home with couches and Nutella in the pantry, we have a 360 view of real Africa. Huts with no structural foundation or integrity, formed with sticks and mud and thatched with straw and hay. Toddlers, some no older than the preschoolers I babysit back home, walking for miles in broken rubber sandals to fill up old and dirty gas cans with water from our backyard. Their clothes are destroyed, most of them are wearing several layers despite the heat due to the compromising and gaping holes and tears. These precious babies have dozens of flies swarming their noses, eyes, and mouths, and my soul wants nothing more than to scoop them up, give them all baths, and put Sesame Street band-aids on all of their cuts and scrapes. This village resembles living conditions of North American colonial ages- oxen powered farming, horse drawn carts, meals grown, ground, and wood stove baked, all from their backyards.
The kids. HOPEthiopia houses 24 orphans, aged 3 to 18. My heart has broken for the orphaned and abandoned since my own childhood, but living with these little image bearers of God, the sweetest little nuggets, has reconfirmed a calling on my heart from almost a decade ago. Most of my new friends are social orphans, neglected or abandoned or the heirs of witch doctors or alcoholics or desperate parents that simply couldn’t afford to take care of their babies the way they needed. And yet, I see so much joy in each and every one of their faces. By American standards, these kids have it rough. They share rooms with two or three other kids, they wear the same outfit for a week or two, their only have a soccer ball or a stuffed animal in their toy collection.Still, they are living as kings in comparison to their classmates. They have an insulated brick house, a concrete floor, 3 meals a day, clean water, a working toilet.
Delivered promises. The Christian radio station in Houston has played the jingle of “God listens” in my cars since my infancy. Early in month 5 my heart was wrecked, completely destroyed, for a group pf people very dear to me. I have prayed, begged, fasted, pleaded, for these souls to be reconciled with the truth of how their Father looks at them every single day since the first night I cried for them, and went weeks and months without seeing any deliverance on the promises the Lord had given me about his love and plans for them. Month 8, halfway through my time in Africa, he started moving and broke walls and moved mountains. I had made my peace with never seeing the fruit of my petitions, but by His goodness and grace He delivered and proved again his faithfulness. I will never again doubt the power of prayer or that my God listens.
Boredom. Not a typo, Africa has been weeks and weeks of waiting for something or someone or searching high and low for ways to fill our free time. We also live in the LITERAL bush, with the nearest wifi or coffee shop or grocery stores or anything being at minimum two hour drive away. Above all else I think the World Race is a year of discipleship, with opportunities to serve as the base. Three months of having nothing, no distractions, few comforts, and the same struggles of community staining on my last reserves, the rubber meets the road and true colors become screaming and vibrant. I swear on every breath I’m ever going to breathe that God was the only way I got through this year. He was the ultimate teacher, the place I learned the most. When all you have is God, you hold on as tight as you can.
So that was Africa in a nutshell! I have a few more blogs rolling your way soon, thank you for all of the prayers and patience and support! One of my next blogs will be a Q & A, so comment any questions you want answered below! I head home so soon! Go God!
In Christ,
g
