This last week or so has been action packed. Not only have we debriefed as a team, as a squad, and as a whole World Race with Seth, Andrew, Gary, and Tom, but we’ve also met the new June World Racers and gone an amazing safari.
We’ve been having team meetings, individual meetings, worship every night, along with teachings by the “four horsemen”. We’ve been learning a lot about our attitudes, about not being a victim, about conflict resolution, and learning how to better utilize our team norms. Along with all that, we’ve been doing practical trainings with the new Racers. They need to know that just because their looking to Jesus all the time, that they will still run into issues with their teammates that don’t look like very spiritual issues. It’s almost overspiritualizing things if we tell them that having faith in Jesus solves all the problems they might ever have in community. HA!
Unity and love, among other concepts that the Bible talks about, are just that, concepts. It’s only when we learn how to do them practically that we actually see them at their finest. So how do we do unity? How do we do love? Ask yourself this stuff… maybe it’s just the way my mind works, but I have to have something tangible in my head in order to see the concept turn into a verb. So, I’ve been blessed this week, by having Tom speak on how do do all this stuff practically… he’s speaking my language. It’s like he was able to bring the spiritual together with the emotional and intellectual, and have them all work together. It’s a well balanced approach to doing community and being leaders.
One of the mornings Tom’s wife Emily spoke to just the women about waiting on the Lord, using 1 Samuel chapters 1 & 2. Hannah was a woman who understood, being somewhat of an outcast (barren women weren’t worth much, and there was nothing she could change to make a difference), what it was to wait on the Lord. It was all in His timing that she was able to bear a son. And it was only after she surrendered that son to God that she was able to become pregnant. Every woman is in some stage of waiting. There are things in life that we cannot be in control of, whether we try to be or not.
And Emily spoke to us about the kind of people we need to be in order to prepare during the waiting phase we’re in. We need to be balanced spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Life is not one dimensional… we can get so out of touch, out of whack if we think everything in life is a spiritaul thing. We can get out of focus if we thinnk life is all about what we know, or what we feel, or even how we look. It’s all proportional to one another, and we do ourselves a disservice if we only focus on one of them.
So, anyhow, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having some older women around these parts, imparting a bit from what they’ve experienced in life. I hope to be one of those women someday. I want to be a woman who naturally attracts the younger generation of women, not because I tell them to, but because my life has been one of humilty, compassion, and generosity. Unfortunately, it may mean I might have to go through some tough stuff in life, but I know God’s paved every step of the way so far. I’m just going to keep saying “yes” to Him.
And finally…
We went on an outstanding safari. We got up close and personal with a pride of lions, a rhino mom and baby, a couple of elephants (one fake charged us, and then stormed off), and a bunch of impalas and giraffes and warthogs. Then when we just sitting on a park bench there a family of hippos grazing about 40 yards away with only barbed wire (not electrified) between us and them.
Now we start ministry. Team Nessa is still in limbo, there are so many options that have been handed to us. We may start off in hospitals (really they are hospices for the dying) and abandoned baby homes for the next couple of weeks or so. There are possiblities for us to be entrepeneurs doing groundwork for possible carepoints or orphanages (mercy homes for 6 to 10 orphans with a parent in the home). We’ll probably spend most of our time in Swazi, but there’s a possiblity of us heading to South Africa for a bit. We’re also looking into meeting up with a girl we know from church in MA(Kara, for those of you who know her or are wondering who it is). We hear she’s got a great nickname up in Bulembu (they call her “Boston” for some reason?!)
So, we’ll be doing ministry until about 4-5 days before the end of July. Then begins to last leg, the Asian leg of the World Race.
PS… for all you picture lovers, they’ll be coming… not enough band width right now.
