STORY TIME!
I’m a storyteller by nature, and I’d like to share some special memories I’ve encountered along the way. Some are funny and some are serious, but what matters most is the fact that they stood out for a reason: to be shared! Please enjoy these moments with me…
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While prayer walking in Costa Rica, we ran into a transvestite who was friends with our leader. As they were talking, our leader asked the lady if she needed prayer for anything. When we asked our leader what the lady’s name was, she said, “Victoria”, but then the lady spoke up and said, “No, no. You can’t lie to God. Call me by my real name: Carlos.” So that night, we prayed over a man named Carlos, and it was beautiful. (Names have been changed to protect identity.)
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During door-to-door ministry in Nicaragua, we stopped at one house and prayed over a lady who was having stomach issues (vomiting) and headaches that doctors could not diagnose. As we were praying for her, she began to burp uncontrollably — and rather humorously — as if the Holy Spirit was removing whatever it was from her body as we stood there praying for healing.
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In Honduras, Karly (our team leader) and I went walking around town just for fun when we ran across this man who was in a wheelchair and noticeably handicap. Karly, with her loving and gracious heart didn’t even hesitate to get down on his level as we were passing him to spend time talking with and praying for him. I can’t describe it, but somehow between him speaking Spanish and her speaking English, everything was understood so clearly that it could only be God who intervened for the language barrier.
Another time in Honduras, my teammate Michelle and I found a coffee shop in the middle of the square with seating above the store. So we ordered our drinks and headed upstairs. When we got there, we realized all the tables were taken and began to head back downstairs when we were stopped by a waiter. We watched him pull a table out from under a man reading a newspaper by himself and bring the table to the middle of the area for us. Then he moved the man’s things off a chair and brought two over for us to sit on. We were so embarrassed, but so thankful the man with the newspaper didn’t seem to mind the whole thing.
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In Chile, we lived with nine other girls between the ages of 18 and 30 who had graduated out of the orphanage program. While we were there, we led English lessons for the girls who still lived at the orphanage. One in particular was really interested in learning English, and stayed behind after class to get help with her English homework. At first we were crunched for time, but we realized that this moment was special, as we didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with the girls in the orphanage. So, we spent a few extra minutes explaining her English homework. A few days later we found out we were getting a 10th girl at the orphanage, and lo and behold, it was the same girl we had helped at the orphanage! Not only did we take time to get to know her, but we were able to pour into her more once she was part of the house. Ahhh, God is awesome.
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Once, while we were helping in a house at an orphanage in Bolivia, my squad leader Larisa and I noticed the tias (house moms) making banana chips. Since we had recently gotten a large bunch of bananas, we thought it would be a great way to surprise our team. So, we went home, thinly sliced our bananas, heated up our oil, and placed the slices into the hot oil. They ended up as mush. So, we gathered our oil and sliced bananas, marched ourselves over to the tias’ house, and asked the tias to help us. With giggles they stated that they had used the other bananas, plantains, to make the chips, not actual bananas. And then we all laughed at our obvious and hilarious error. Silly Americans. Silly language barrier. However, this encounter scored us an invitation to come back that weekend to learn how to make real plantain chips!
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This one time in Bulgaria we had potatoes that rotted before we were able to eat them. We found out toward the end of the month, so we didn’t have a lot of other food options. There was a small store that we referred to as “The Egg Place”, since it’s where we bought our eggs every few days that month. We decided to substitute our potatoes for eggs that night. So, some of our team went to The Egg Place, but they were (ironically) out of eggs! But they did have potatoes, so we got potatoes from The Egg Place instead and proceeded with our original meal. Thanks, God!
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In Greece, a family came into the Drop-In Center (a place that provided showers, food, and English lessons to refugees) for an English lesson. They explained how difficult it was to come to the church, as it required several modes of public transportation, and they didn’t know how often they would be able to come. They knew very little English, so we used Google Translate quite a bit. We were able to play Uno, though, and practice colors and numbers while having fun. At the end of the “lesson”, the dad had several phrases saved to his phone that read things like, “Christians are a kind crowd” and “We found love in a church”. Cue goose bumps. That Sunday, the father came to church, and I can only imagine him taking what he learned in the service back to his family as a vessel of the Lord.
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Once while we were grocery shopping (for our whole squad aka 30 people) in Romania, we realized we bought more than we could carry back to our house, which was about a 20-30 minute walk. So, we asked to borrowed two shopping carts and toted our groceries about half a mile down the road, drawing lots of attention from locals and children. When we returned the carts, another employee (possibly a manager or owner?) was quite furious that we had done such a thing. Whoops!
While telling confessions at our Final Debrief (4 months after this country), we found out that the smelly ground “beef” we had been eating this month in Romania was actually donkey! I’ll just add that to the list of unusual things I’ve eaten in my life.
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In Ethiopia, we lived in a mission house with lots of windows at the top of a hill of a compound. Also living in the compound was a small neighborhood of about 10-15 children. Every morning we would woke up to the kids in our compound peeking their heads over the windows, awaiting our presence outside to play with them!
Also in Ethiopia, we participated in a 5k that our ministry was hosting. Five people from our squad participated in the event, as well as many locals. The streets were lined with people as far as you could see. Once the race began, about half an hour later the first local crosses the finish line and the rest of them follow within the next 15 minutes. However, there was a very noticeable gap between the locals finishing and our group finishing, but everyone was still just as supportive and excited as the first person who crossed.
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Doing ministry at the school in Rwanda was sometimes chaotic, but there are those sweet times I’ll never forget. The children here find mzungu (white person) hands to be so fascinating. If one of ours are free, two or three children will race to your side to take hold of it. So, one day we decided to teach the kids hand games and songs we used to do as kids. It was such a success! There was a line of kids waiting to try their turn at “Ms. Mary Mac” and other hand games. Every time we left the school, we gave high-fives. Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to connect with people without words!
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In Uganda, we worked with an organization that ministered to street boys. Upon arrival to our ministry site, we were greeted with a presentation of the boys singing prepared songs such as Lean on Me to us. I teared up! It really made me excited to get to know those boys and pour into them the rest of the month.
And as many of you know, the most memorable thing that happened in Uganda was me getting a plaster cast put on in the middle of a Ugandan hospital hallway and using handmade wooden crutches the last 10 days of the World Race. Definitely unforgettable.
In Africa in general, there were several times when we invited the kids to come color with us. Unlike in the US, when you hand a child a coloring sheet and crayons, they don’t know what to do with it. Coloring isn’t something they spend time doing. So, we taught them how you can create anything you like using any color you choose. By the end of the month, coloring was something they really enjoyed spending hours doing.
Thanks for enjoying these memories with me. Of course there are a million more, and I’d love to share each and every one with anyone. Feel free to ask!
