I wake up every morning to the sound of dogs barking, or chickens clucking, or the children whose yard I am currently tenting in shouting to one another. The early morning’s disorienting fog hangs heavy in my brain as I sit up, run a hand through my sweaty hair, and feel around the tent for my glasses.
Once I can see again, I feel clarity. I am in my tent, on my sleeping pad, in a little Philippine village living this thing called the World Race.
A few zips later, I’m out in the fresh air which is, so far, always cooling, especially compared to the sweltering of my tent. I pass a few teammates on my way to the water well. We usually nod or murmur “hello”, but there is a mutual understanding that we do not speak in full sentences to one another at 6 AM.
Hand over hand, I pull a bucket of water up from the bottom of the deep well. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and enjoy how the icy water gets my blood pumping in the mornings.
Things stowed in my tent, I look around and observe my team. Rashidat does her morning yoga in our tiny bamboo nipa hut, Andy stands at the well getting ready where I was just a few moments before, Ethan wanders the camp eating his morning bread, and Connor sits off to the side journaling.
We camp in front of our host’s brother-in-law’s family home. The property sits in the middle of a sugar cane farmer’s land down in a small valley between hills. The sugar cane stalks grow far above my head and have long green leaves that whistle and rustle in the wind. I can hear them whistling to me, calling me out of the valley and up to a high place.
I obey, and make the short walk out to the fields. Most of the fields immediately around our home have already been harvested, leaving a soft walkway of dried leaves under my feet. Two fields over, a boy around ten year’s old harvests fresh stalks with his machete and tosses them onto his cart pulled by a grazing ox.
Up here, the wind blows down from the mountain constantly. The mountain itself stands tall and green, the overseer of the village. I’ve yet to see its peak, as the clouds always hang low, but I hope to one day.
I stand and let the wind blow through my hair. My soul sings along with the sugar cane, and I feel a peace I cannot explain out here in the middle of nothing and nowhere. I take a long, long moment to breathe deeply in and out, trying to capture as much of this fresh air into my lungs as possible, to remind myself that I am alive and that this moment is real.
Holy Spirit dances across the sugar cane leaves and finds me standing alone breathing deep. I pray. I worship. I enjoy knowing that in the middle of nowhere I am far, far from being alone.
Eventually, I let my mind wander.
I wonder about the village we are evangelizing in and how to best love and connect with God’s precious people there. So many children peek out at us from around doorways or behind their mother’s legs, anxious to play but pretending to be shy. The women sit around the center of town pumping water and doing laundry together. The men gather near the only internet café smoking and laughing. This village is largely unknown to us at this point and I wonder where and to who The Lord will draw me.
I wonder about the long 45 minute mostly dirt road trek my team will make into town to meet up with the rest of our squad. I think about how we zoom through sugar cane fields and goat pastures on the back of a “tricycle”—basically a metal sidecar pulled by a moto. I laugh remembering the night before where we got stuck in a rut in the dirt road and had to help push the tricycle up the steepest hill. Transportation has always proved to be an adventure.
I wonder about my testimony which I will be sharing with around 4,000 high school students this month at an outreach event our squad is organizing. I’ll speak on my past struggles with mental illness. The Lord told me early last month that he’s putting a seal on that chapter of my life. He told me that I will leave Asia with those things that kept me shackled and kept me in darkness removed from my identity and my life. So when the opportunity to speak about my struggle with depression and how God carried me through it arose, Holy Spirit told me that this was my seal; This is the final period on the final sentence of that chapter of my life.
Down at the camp, someone is calling me to team time. I love this family that God has placed me into, so I hurry down the hill, ready to start a new day wielding joy as my weapon and walking in peace knowing that with what I have, I am blessed in abundance.
But before I go, I stop, breathe, remind myself who I am and why I’m here; I am a daughter of he creator of the universe–the moon who seeks to reflect his light in all things– and I am here to love with his heart and hands. It’s good to remind myself this daily, and I am blessed to have the opportunity to stop and smell the roses– or the sugar cane, really– and center my heart on Him.
Currently: Bacolod, Negro Occidential, Phillipines | 3:35 PM | 92% Funded | I know so deeply that no photograph will ever be able to replicate what I saw and lived today
