Two summers ago God called a little Texas girl to Africa. It was there that He would change her life.
When I stepped onto the plane in Houston, as much as I wish I could say I was singing praises to God, I have to confess I was questioning Him. I had never been on a mission trip and never been out of the country and here I was flying to sub-Saharan Africa to spend 3 weeks serving AIDS orphans. Did I hear God right? Was this really what I should be doing? What if I mess up? What if I’m not “Christian” enough for them? All these questions were rolling around my head. But as much as the enemy was barraging me with doubts, one thing stood true: the Lord had provided me with every cent needed for the trip and deep within me I felt at peace. So as the plane took off, I opened my Bible and prayed harder than I probably ever have in my life.
And the Lord was faithful. He blessed me with an experience that refocused my life completely. As I prepare to step onto beautiful African soil again, I can’t help but relive that short time. I’m blown away at God and the way He moves. He used me in ways I never imagined. For one boy in particular, He allowed me to play a small part in showing him how much God loves him and what a blessing he is.
Week 7 of CampLife I worked with 13 boys. Ranging in ages from 7 to 11, they won me over instantly with their crooked smiles and love for jumping all over me. But one boy in particular was different. Reserved and detached, Mavuto was heavy on my heart. After a few days my Zambian partner, Isaac, and I were praying about our boys and we began to talk about him.
“We should pray about who he thinks he is,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Do you happen to know what his name means? It means burden, problem, troubles.”
My heart fell. My sweet boy was identified as a problem. Every time he heard his name called he was called a burden. I tried to imagine how I would be affected if every time someone called me I heard “you’re a source of trouble”.
But then I remembered that the camp director had mentioned the power of names in our brief training session. He said that in the past, kids had actually been renamed at camp. I knew right then what He was calling me to do. And so did Isaac.
“How would you feel about praying for a new name for Mavuto?”
“Let’s do it,” I replied as goosebumps covered my skin. We agreed to pray about it that night and talk about it the next day.
The next morning we met up to pray before our kids got to camp. I didn’t really have a lot of experience with “hearing from the Lord”, especially with a deadline. The name “Daniel” came to my mind, but I didn’t really have a peace about it. After we prayed, Isaac asked about what the Lord had spoken to me about our boy.
After a little bit he said, “What do you think about Madhaliso?”
“Well, what does it mean?” I asked with anxious expectation.
“Blessing.”
Without a doubt, I knew that’s what God wanted us to name him. Because that’s how he saw his son, as a blessing. “Perfect” I replied.
We sat our sweet boy down and talked about Jesus. After we went through the Evangecube and tried to answer some of his questions, I couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth: he asked if Jesus could save him. We prayed with him and tried to convey to him the power of what he was professing. We talked about who he was and how God sees him. Isaac started to talking about his name and what it meant and how we felt the Lord calling us to give him a new name. We explained how much God loved him and how He saw him. When we told him what God wanted to call him, blessing, his handsome face lit up like a Christmas tree. He received his new name, Madhaliso, instantly and from that moment on acted like he’d never been called anything else in his entire life.
We went back to the other boys and tried to explain the name change. After a second, one of the other boys jumped up and, in his beautiful accented Zambian-English, yelled “That is what they name him last year!”
Turns out that last year he had come to camp and during that time his counselors felt the Lord calling them to redeem his name too. So they changed his name. To Madhaliso.
We learned that after camp the previous year Madhaliso went home and his family continued to call him Mavuto. But God decided to use us to address that too. The next day we got to go with our kids into their communities to support them in sharing what they had learned with others. Within an hour, we met Madhaliso’s grandmother. She and Isaac spoke for quite awhile and we learned that Madhaliso had been named Mavuto because his mother died in child birth. Now orphaned by both parents, tragedy had haunted this sweet child of God his entire life and his family blamed him for every ounce of it. But Isaac must have spoken the words of God that day because by the end of our time in the community Madhaliso’s grandmother agreed to keep his new name.
And to this day, he is called Madhaliso.
Since that day my understanding of identity and names has completely changed. I never knew what my own name meant until after that experience and it’s something that I still use as a source of strength. And as we prepare for Africa I’m constantly reflecting on it. God used this precious son’s name, along with His Son’s blood, to redeem his life. Even through a language barrier He used Isaac and I to communicate that Madhaliso is a blessing, to His Father and to this world. Madhaliso literally received a new identity when he accepted Jesus that day in Zambia. And he lived it out every day for the rest of camp, running around laughing, singing, and yelling “The Lord is my Shepherd!”
