Greetings from Romania!!! Month 10 of the race has officially begun and I have so much I want to share and have lost so much time. It has been a hot minute since my last post and honestly I haven’t written anything about probably one of the biggest parts of my race so far; Africa. God has shown me so much on this continent and I am so excited to have the opportunity to share with you a summary of the lessons I learned in the last 4 months of the race. Looking back at the last 4 months, I would say I don’t have as many really big cool stories as I did from the first half of the race. It has all mainly been average day to day life and I saw God work in the “mundane“ parts of life. I think that’s why I have had such a tough time blogging these last few month. But life isn’t always a collection of awesome stories. Sometimes there are seasons of preparation and stillness like Moses’ 40 years in Midian after he ran out of the land of Egypt or the first 30 years of Jesus‘ life. Not that the last 4 months have been boring. I have had an amazing and unforgettable experience in Africa. It has just felt a lot like regular life without a lot of the conveniences we have in America. I will share a blog about that soon. But I really would like to focus this blog on the biggest lessons I learned in Africa in each country.
To begin with, I spent the first of the 4 months, the month of June in Rwanda volunteering at a school, playing with kids, preaching and visiting people’s homes as our main form of ministry. The biggest lessons I learned this month came from the position of leadership God put me in. The month of June was a tough month for our team. It was a time full of conflict, full of disunity and frankly disappointment with regard to the dynamic and culture of the team. We would go to ministry play with kids and share the gospel with joy, but as soon as we would get back, the conflict and bickering would begin. There were a few times where things exploded and got way out of hand. There was even a time where people’s actions so disappointed me that I got very upset; the most upset I have ever been this entire year. It was rough. After having endless conversations with my teammates about how to be better and not seeing the results I wanted, I was exhausted. I asked myself what was the point of this and why we were doing what we were doing. I was disappointed with the team and with myself and just wanted us to be united like our whole team had envisioned when we formed back in May. I saw what our team could be and just wanted us to be there and was disappointed we weren’t there. However, looking back at my experience in Rwanda and the tremendous growth I have seen in each of my individual teammates as well as the team as a whole, I could see God’s hand was there through it all. God intentionally put each person on this team together and orchestrated it in such a way that this conflict would arise. I gained very valuable insight about conflict mediation, understanding people’s pasts in order to better understand why they respond to certain situations the way they do. I learned that I am not the “fixer” of problems or people, only God is. The common theme that I learned from every month in Africa is that no matter where you find yourself, whether you are in a spiritual rut or thriving, God is not finished with you or those around you. He who began a great work in you will be faithful to complete it. He was working in ways I had no idea about, building up in my team patience and understanding of true love in the midst of difficult circumstances. I truly believe our team learned what it meant to love each other in deeper ways than would have been possible without all the conflict and hardship we went through. As difficult as the situation you may be going through is, don’t lose sight of the fact that God is working.
Going into the month of July in Uganda was interesting and yet difficult. It was a unique type of experience because we did not have a designated ministry host like in previous months. Instead, we had to create ministry for ourselves, by asking the Lord what he wanted us to do every morning and then doing it. Coming off the previous month and due to other distraction, I wasn’t in the healthiest head space. I had really amazing ministry opportunities and had amazing conversations. Most of my ministry involved discipleship and doing bible studies with our Airbnb host who was a brand new believer. I really discovered my love and passion for discipleship during that time, however, I felt like I temporarily checked out with regard to my team. I felt a lot of the exhaustion from the previous two months affecting me and I feel like I didn’t pour into my team as much as I had the previous two months. Then, I started slipping into old ways of thinking that I had before the race. I isolated myself and got lost in my own thoughts for a time. My thoughts were eating me alive and I realized it wasn’t healthy for me, so I, after spending my time with the Lord realized I needed to intentionally be vulnerable and share what was going on in my head with people on my team. I was feeling isolated and incapable of connecting with people and as I was feeling more and more like that, I became less and less vulnerable about it with people and withdrew myself even more, but it wasn’t until I intentionally sought out those relationships again with my team and I was vulnerable about my thoughts and struggles that I was able to overcome that state of loneliness I was in. If you surround yourself with people dedicated to loving God, and you are intentional about cultivating deep relationships with them, you will find that you have family in Christ no matter what you are struggling with.
In summary, these two months proved to be the hardest months of the race for me. However, the lessons I learned in this time will be invaluable to me for the rest of my lif, as I dive into a lifetime of leadership and relationship building this experience and the lessons I learned have prepared for the next stage in my life. If you are interested in what I learned in the second half of my time in Africa, stay tuned for a follow up blog talking about what I learned in Kenya and Ethiopia. In addition, I will try to catch you all up on as much that has happened in Africa as I can, so stay tuned.
