This is probably one of my hardest yet favorite months. We didn’t do anything that spectacular but I overcame a lot of fears this month, I think that may be why i loved it so much. It was so freeing.
My team was in Northern Malawi, right next to Lake Malawi which is huge by the way, it looks like the ocean because it is so big; it stretches off into the horizon. Anyway, the schedule was basically: Preach/teach/childrens ministry at a church service, door to door evangelism the next 2 days then move on to the next city and repeat the same schedule. So the ministry the entire month was preaching & evangelism, neither of which am I gifted in.
The first day we did door to door evangelism, we split off into pairs. I was in such a bad mood because I was not comfortable at all and had no idea what to say. I don’t think I had ever really shared the gospel with anyone before, besides Senem in Turkey. I kind of let Jess, (who’s main gift is definitely the gift of evangelism) take the wheel the first half of the day. THen it was my turn. I was so nervous, i could barely look the people in the eyes and I was stuttering. Anyway by the end of the day I had shared with three houses and about 10 people “accepted Jesus” but even though I had stepped out of my comfort zone i was still in a bad mood, I was not happy at all. As the days went on however, I became more and more comfortable with it and ended up loving it by the end of the month. I still don’t know how effective door to door evangelism is and I know that probably only 5% of the people who accepted Jesus in their hearts truly meant it. But if God had us do that ministry to get me to step out of my comfort zone and reveal a new gifting in my life, then that in itself is worth it.
God also had me step out of my comfort zone even more in preaching that month. Even though we have Warren with us, we all had to preach & teach at some point during the month because there were so many services that we would be hosting. I had never preached in my life. I had no idea how to put a sermon together. Luckily Warren gave us a little “preaching 101” lesson for us, but even so, I have trouble leading devotions, how was God going to use me to preach to a congregation? When my time came to preach I decided the easiest thing would be to share what God had been teaching me at the time, and with it being Christmas what better time to share about Christmas than Christmas Day. You can read my Merry Christmas blog to read about what God had revealed to me about Christmas this year.
Anyway, I was given a couple more opportunities to preach/teach (who knows what the difference is), and there were times that I was actually eager to share. God would just reveal to me topics He’d want me to share about, which were all things He had been teaching me on this trip, so it wasn’t too difficult to make the sermon personal.
We hosted a Pastor’s Conference at the end of the month where Jess & Warren taught the book of Philipeans with them. I was able to use my gift of service those couple days and lead the hospitality team, so I ended the month doing what I love.
Even though most of the month was repetitive as far as the schedule goes, God brought so much freedom not only in me but in my teammates as well. If i had told myself even two months ago that I would be evangelizing and preaching, I would never have believed myself. But I am so thankful for the freedom God brought into my life. I’m so glad that even though I was completely petrified that I was obedient and let God use me in ways I never thought He could use me.
But I also loved the people we met in Malawi. All the pastors took us into their homes, and their wives took care of us. Pastor Clingly was my favorite, he is so crazy! On Christmas Day at the service that I shared at, we were doing “praise & worship” and pastor Clingly was certain that Hannah, Tiff and I would learn a Malawian song, so we sang the same song over and over but we had to learn the dance moves that went along with it. So he taught us the moves and then had the congregation judge us on our dancing. It was so funny! He cracked me up, the conversations we would have with him were always so funny, I want to go back and visit him someday.
