Under African Skies

When I was in high school, I read a book called “Kisses From Katie”, the true story of a young woman who at nineteen years old moved to Uganda alone, founding her own ministry and eventually adopting thirteen young orphaned girls and raising them as her own. Reading this as a teenager touched me deeply and stuck with me for many years as the Lord called even me to overseas mission work. In September 2017, after applying and being accepted to the World Race, my family went to Florida for a few days of vacation. I took “Kisses from Katie” with me, wanting something to read on the beach, but more than anything, praying the Lord would speak to me once again through rereading Katie’s story and confirm or deny if I should really step out into the unknown of saying yes to the Race. I remember sitting on the beach, finishing the book with tears in my eyes, and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lord was really going to provide me with $18,200, that the Race was really going to happen. He spoke to me in that moment that all I needed was a confident yes and to put all of my trust in Him. I told my family later that day I was going to travel the world for 11 months and serve in 11 different countries, and I confidently knew the route I was going to pick as well: the one that traveled to both Cambodia and Uganda, countries I have long felt drawn to. 

 

I would have loved to come on the Race with a Kindle library full of books to spend my rest and travel days with, however, with all of my own personal money going towards fundraising and supplies and gear needed to live out of a backpack for 11 months, I’ve only been able to purchase a few. A must was the follow-up to “Kisses From Katie”, Katie’s second novel called “Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful”. I read this book during my first month on the Race in Belize, not realizing at the time how much it would speak to my own spiritual journey months ahead. 

 

I’ve written quite a bit in the last eight and a half months about my own personal brokenness. Even before the Race, I’ve traveled to a third-world country before, I’ve witnessed poverty and hopelessness in the world. Something about the pace and pattern of the Race, however, made these communities, people, and situations difficult to praise the Lord and carry my own hope and faith through. I spent the month of December in El Salvador celebrating the birth of Jesus with children and teenagers in orphanages and juvenile detention centers who so desperately crave the love they’ve been denied their entire lives. We then went to Vietnam and Cambodia, now peaceful nations, but a culture and a people still recovering from war and genocide not nearly long enough ago. People stuck in the vicious cycle of poverty with little or no hope of ever getting out. 

 

I walked through so much more pain, brokenness, anger, and confusion than I ever thought I would on this journey where I’m supposed to be bringing the hope and love of Jesus all around the world. Still, He met me in my brokenness, and because I came out the other side and the sun rose again and I began to choose joy daily, I thought I had conquered the darkness of the world. I thought my days of wrestling with the Lord were over, I had already done all of my questioning, doubting, and gone through my sole season of pruning. I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

 

I’ve been in Ethiopia, in Africa, the place I have spent the entire Race striving to make it to, for a week now. It’s difficult to put into words the thoughts and emotions on my heart to describe life here. I can tell you that it’s different than anything I’ve ever experienced. Life in Africa is hard. It’s beautiful, it’s broken, it’s peaceful, it’s unexpected, it’s a million other things and more. 

 

This month is another all-squad month, meaning all 32 of us are living under one roof and doing ministry together. We are serving with HOPEthiopia, an incredible ministry here in Ethiopia with several bases around the country, and quickly growing to expand to other countries as well. HOPEthiopia truly and beautifully lives out James 1:27, as their main focus is caring for the 4 million+ orphaned children in Ethiopia. We are living among a children’s village, and our ministry centers around the children here, as we are seeking to build relationships, teach, and simply show love to these children who have known tremendous trauma and unimaginable pain in their short lives. 

 

I realized I’ve been holding my breath since arriving here in Ethiopia and learning what our ministry would be. Before arriving, I knew Africa was going to be different than anything I’ve ever experienced, and I knew there would be little that could prepare my heart for this place. I immediately rebuilt all of the walls around my heart when I heard the word “orphanage.” I feared that being around these children day in and day out, living in a community where people can barely afford clothes on their backs let alone food on their tables, in a place where education is not mandatory or expected but rather a luxury, where the color of my skin screams privilege and wealth to everyone I encounter; I feared that all of these sobering realities would break me once again. I didn’t want to wrestle with the Lord again, I didn’t want to ask the desperate and hopeless questions, I didn’t want to fall asleep every night with an aching in my heart, to carry a crushed spirit once again. But I’m thankful for growth, for the fact that I serve a God who breaks down walls, and loves deeper than I can even fathom. In “Daring to Hope”, Katie describes my heart I’ve learned to fight for and see so much more beautifully than I ever could:

 

“But now I know that the things I never wanted were the very things I needed most. The things that I thought would break me were the things that drove me straight to Him. My anguish and sorrow sent me to the Healer, who would mend all those broken places and put me back together more beautifully than I had imagined. All those cracks and holes and ruptures would be the places in my life where His glory would shine through. Beauty, though not as I expected it, would be found amid the ashes. These would be the places that taught me His heart as He lovingly and tenderly bound them up, and they would make me brave, ready for the next thing. Ready for anything.”

 

“God sees you and me in our pain and our brokenness. He sees you walking a difficult path when the sun goes down and your life is a far cry from that which you expected or dreamed up. He sees you, dear friend, when the ending of the story is not the one that you yearned for and your prayers seem unanswered and it all just feels like a bit of a mess. He wants to name these places The Lord Will Provide. In the places where you thought life might be easier, when you thought things might be different, when you thought you might be better, be more, God provides His Son, who meets you and provides grace for your gaps and light in your darkness. His deep desire is for us—that we would know His love in these unexpected broken places and that we would know the true hope found only in His Son Jesus, the Lamb, who never, ever stops reaching out for us, who cups our pain in His nail-scarred palms and cradles our hearts close to His. He wants to be our reward.”

 

Before leaving Romania, I got a tattoo of a crown. I’ve been asked several times now why I got this or what it means. I love answering this, because I then get to share one of my very favorite pieces of scripture out of Isaiah 61:

 

I’ve wanted this tattoo for a while now as a reminder of what once was ashes, but now has been transformed into a crown of beauty I get to wear proudly everyday. I now understand it wasn’t a coincidence I finally got this tattoo just before arriving in Ethiopia. In this country, in this community I’m currently living in, I’m looking around and seeing a lot of ashes. I see grief, spirits of despair, hopelessness, poverty in both the physical and spiritual sense. But I have hope and confidence in the goodness of my Father, and in my anointing to be here in the first place. He sent me! But I don’t have to do it alone. I’ve been given His spirit, to make His name known. I am rejoicing in what will be done, in the ashes that the Lord will make beautiful one day. 

 

The Lord Will Provide. I’ve seen it, I believe it, and I proclaim it. Here, under African skies, at home in America, around the world, and everywhere in between.