I’m always a bad news first kind of person, so let me get straight into it. Tanzania never warmed up to me and definitely had it out for me. My rough start to life in Tanzania, as discussed in my prior blog, continued on throughout the month. Here’s a run-down on all the not-so-good stuff that happened to me:
- I got hit by a moving mini-bus. Nothing major. Just hit my arm and bruised it near my elbow.
- I became rather ill and spent 4 days in bed. Couldn’t eat anything because it only made me sicker.
- I took a motorcycle ride up a mountain, where my driver flipped the bike backwards, with both bike and driver landing on me. No worries (or as they say in Swahili, hakuna matata), I wasn’t seriously injured – only some bumps and bruises.
- On the same trip up the mountain on a motorcycle, I had to let go of the driver and fall off to prevent the bike from flipping backwards yet again. Do note that it was a different driver than the one who fell on me. Again, I was fine, just another bruise, but definitely made me nervous about getting back on a bike to get home.
- The sickness mentioned in #2 never fully went away. After about 2 weeks of not being able to eat without having major stomach problems, I spoke to a doctor about it. He suggested that it may be some kind of bacteria issue and gave me an antibiotic to get rid of it. The medicine has not helped or changed anything, so I’m on the prayer plan – praying that whatever this is will just go away. It’s most likely a parasite causing the problems, based on how my body is reacting to food of any kind.
- As we were on a bus heading towards the border of Rwanda, on our way out of Tanzania, a tree branch shattered the window I was sitting next two. A large portion of the window and the frame fell in on me. Luckily, I leaned over the person sitting next to me in time to miss the glass hitting my face. Yet again, no injuries, and just 2 small scrapes on my leg.
So here’s the thing. Yes, all that stuff happened to me, all in a period of less than 3 weeks, but what I really hope everyone sees when they read that is how God was and is watching out for me. In most of those situations, I could have been majorly hurt, but in all of them, I walked away just fine. I mean, really, who has a motorcycle and a man land on them and gets up from it barely worse for wear? Heck, who falls off of a motorcycle twice in one day and doesn’t get injured?? It was very clear to me, and my team, that God protected me in each of those scenarios.
God’s protection isn’t the “good news”, though it’s definitely the highlight of the bad news. The good news is that while Tanzania took a toll on me physically, God was working on me spiritually. I came on the World Race for many reasons, and one of them was that I have a desire to grow spiritually and to develop a more intimate relationship with God. This month God revealed himself to me, in ways that I never thought I’d experience. God spoke to me, and I HEARD HIM!!! And this wasn’t a onetime thing; I heard him more than once. Now if that’s not good news, I don’t know what is. 🙂
Most of ministry this month consisted of us speaking at church, in forms of testimonies or messages/sermons. I am not a public speaker by any means. I hate public speaking, whether it be in front of 10 people or 100 people. In prior months on the race, I did well at avoiding it. We were talking about what typically makes “good” testimonies, and I remarked that I wish I had something really good to share from my personal experiences, in terms of being a Christian. The next day was when I first heard God speak to me. He told me that I did have a good testimony and that I needed to share it with this church. It was time for me to be vulnerable and to share my struggle of keeping the faith when God doesn’t instantly answer my prayers. I volunteered to speak at church – me, the person who had successfully dodged speaking at church thus far on the race. I shared with everyone the story of my mother’s paralysis, how I pray every day for a miracle, and how despite the lack of change in my mom’s body, I still pray because 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says to pray without ceasing. I shared many verses in the Bible that have helped me keep my faith that God will answer my prayer. By sharing this with the members of this church, there is now that many more people praying for the miracle that my mom would walk again. The pastor of the church assured me that I would get my miracle and said that my mom would be walking again in 6 months. Six months would be just when I would be returning home from the race, and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather come home to than my mother healed.
A few days after God told me that I did have an important testimony to share, He gave me a message/sermon to work on. I was trying to nap one afternoon, and as much as I tried to ignore him, God kept telling me that I needed to write a message on loving others, with the focus being on John 13:34-35. Now trust me, I knew this was God speaking to me because I would never, ever, decide to write a sermon, much less voluntarily deliver one. So instead of napping, I got up, pulled out my Bible, and started writing. It was such a crazy experience. God just gave me the words and the verses, and it all just poured of my pen.
Hearing God speak to me wasn’t all that happened this month, but I can’t tell you everything in one blog because it’d be way too long. That just means that this blog is to be continued ……
