This month I lived with 17 girls and became best friends with a mom. Our 3rdmonth on the field was manistry month which means all the men on our squad spent the month together and the women that were on a co-ed team combined as one team along with another team of all girls, making Team Omega or mostly known as BGT (Big Girl Team)!
We lived in our host home in Livingstone, Zambia. Our host was a family that had two daughters, an amazing ministry, and an evil dog. Our host Lweendo and Sanderson, locals of Zambia, are amazing people that have spent years building up a ministry to serve the children in their city along with surrounding villages. They are business minded people and strive to help the locals learn how to not live a life only going after quick fixes.
During this month, I learned more about my spiritual gifts and grew in them. I learned more about the pastor/shepherd and administrative gifts. I really tried to stay away from the administrative one, but it got me. Through learning more about these gifts I became great friends with Lweendo. We first bonded over Arkansas, they stayed there for 3 months which was random but cool, God and what obedience looks like in our life, and our hate for exercise. She is an extremely wise woman and she taught me a lot of what not stressing about the small things looks like. It was cool that our friendship was not based on similarity in our life because nothing was the same. She is a married woman with 2 kids and multiple businesses and a pastor living in Africa. While I am a 22 year old, not married or any kids and still trying to figure out if vegetables are necessary in life (they are not). Our friendship is based on our love for God. We enjoyed just the company of being sisters in Christ and nothing else really mattered. I learned that my gift of shepherding does not need to look like a person that constantly give advice and preaching to everyone. Rather I found that an aspect of it is to be a friend to the person in front of you and look at them through Jesus’ eyes, it really changes how you see people and how to care for them.
The ministry we participated in during this month was running kids camp, going to schools and teaching bible lessons, and bible studies in a near by village. With this a lot of organization came into play or the place would be chaotic. It was still chaotic but like a good chaotic you know, like the one where God controls it and people were in His presence and its okay if nothing went as plan because people still heard about Jesus kind of chaos. Anyways since a lot of organization had to be done, I stepped into the administrative gift that I did not want to be a part of for so long. Now backstory of why I did not want to work in this gift. I kind of always loved the thought of being an assistant and the administrative stuff that comes with it, don’t know why but I did, then I had the opportunity to do it and I failed big time. That failure caused me to believe that I could never do it again and I obviously don’t have that gift, and I would run away from responsibilities that had anything related to administrative stuff. So yeah, I accepted that stupid lie and ignored the gift. BUT finally realized I am actually really good at it during this month, so go God for placing me in a spot to grow into an actually really cool gift.
Zambia was really an awesome month besides the heat and no electricity and no water life. I learned more about the person who God wants me to be on this earth and for His people. I learned when His people work together as the body should, life is pretty cool and Kingdom can be on Earth. Also, I learned never to trust a dog name Dante.
