From September 7th. More to follow soon…
I’ve been lost in Africa: in the eyes of children running to greet and red dirt clinging to my heels. Of the hospitality of large families with neighbors over to help prepare meals for the Muzungus. Have you tasted a cup of the finest of their tea or shaken hands with the deep-voice pastor from the little wooden church? I’m lost in my thoughts of how I have changed–or rather Africa changed me–and how I was lost here. What was lost is that part of me that used to be near-oblivious to the extent of her suffering.
When I go home in three months, will I be able to aptly express how I felt when a thirty-seven-year-old woman down the road died of Aids and left little children with her husband? I don’t know how to express the feeling I had today, when we were introduced to seven children who had no food, their father had run away from his responsibility to care for them, and their mother makes $1.85 on any day she’s able to find work. How will I express how I feel when I go back home?
If you don’t believe that the world is a fallen place, full of brokenness and tears, I suggest booking a plane to this vast continent so that my attempt at relating won’t be misunderstood by the absence of some of the senses. Simply hearing or seeing cannot do this continent justice; to feel the little dirty hands and hug the skin-diseased children, pray for those with Malaria and walk the miles, look over statistics and pray for the rain for gardens that provide families’ food would engage the remaining senses. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a woman full of broken pieces myself, looking for the Master to piece together what’s been shattered. I have, by no means, all the answers. But I’m simply revealing what I’ve seen, and letting you so much as feel the tears of Africa on your own arm.
“Dear students of Kisigula Secondary School,” I began one afternoon. “My team and I are leaving Uganda tomorrow morning, but I wanted to send you a letter to say goodbye…” Michael was a well-spoken secondary (high school) student who came up to me on our last Sunday night in Uganda. Having invited my team to visit his school one day, I had met him twice before. He shook my hand as he left that night. “I wish you a safe journey,” he said formally. And then, “Do you have any idea what impact your testimony had on our students? Do you know that many of them are losing their parents, and because of it they believe they have no reason to live? Many of them are hanging themselves. They are on the front page of the newspaper!”
A sigh went through my mind and clearly across my face. The thought was, how big is our God to handle all of this? The answer was, big enough to proclaim Himself Father–and intimate, He knows each student intimately and brought them into the world–and He loves them more than I do. Okay. They would be fine in His care. All I could do for them was what the Lord prompted me to do: remind them of His faithfulness.
“Psalm 68:5 says, ‘A Father to the fatherless…is God in His holy habitation,'” I continued in my letter to them. “As I shared with you before in my testimony, I was once in a place of so much pain from losing my dad, that at times I wanted to die to be with him…”
That day when we visited Kisigula School, I shared what God did to bring me through the pain, the comfort and hope He had given me. Here, I was simply prompted to remind them. This is not the end. “When we don’t have strength, Jesus carries us…He felt alone on the cross so He can know how you feel…and He longs to be your Father.”
Pastor Angel delivered the letter.
I’m a World Racer and I’ve been “wrecked for the ordinary”. When you’ve been asked to take pulpits on the spot and seen those in hospitals rise to their feet without canes and the sick healed; when you’ve held malnourished children with skin diseases; when riding anywhere means layering in a jarring van; when babies sit bare-bottom in the dirt and children play in trash; when certain medicines are not available; when children beg for money on the streets to go to school; when many around you are battling Malaria; when you live in a village with 104 orphans whose parents have died of Aids, it changes you.
I…didn’t want to change on the Race. I wanted to stay in my own circle of what I knew and was comfortable in–the ordinary–where all my friends and family could continue to understand me and we’d have our old jokes and everything. That will still be there, but my soul mirror reflects something different. I’m lost in Africa, in all that I’ve seen here. But if God is the Potter and I am the clay, then the color of this continent’s red dirt that He’s painting on my side is all part of the work that will reveal a beautiful finished product. Not because of me, but because of Him.
At debrief we were assigned new teams, and we are now in Kenya. Team “JOY” should be our name, cause it seems to be what God has carved out for each of us! One member is Teresa McMillan, who I have been traveling with for three years. Who’da thought we’d end up on the same team in month nine?
Two days ago we went to a town, where a boy began asking Chanell for money to go to school. “Please! When my father died, my mother ran away from me and my little sister!” His feet were hanging out of both shoes. We walked into a grocery store, and though he didn’t continue to ask for money, he followed us inside. We talked about buying him something to eat and drink. When I came back, Chanell and Annie had their hands on his shoulders and were praying with him to receive Jesus! Didn’t know what I missed, but I stood there with them. I found out that he had cancer, and was actually sixteen years old. When Chanelle asked if he wanted something from the snack aisle, he said, “No, I don’t want chips; I just want to live!”
So we checked out at the register, and I said, “Obadiah, do you know what it means that you gave your life to Jesus?”
“Yes,” he said with a sigh of relief. “It means that everything’s going to be alright.”
He asked us for a new pair of shoes, and when we walked into the store, he knew exactly the pair he wanted. New socks and everything! He was smiling.
After Obadiah left us and said he was going to throw away his old shoes, I don’t know what happened to him. This young man could have represented to me the aching fact that it’s not only him who needs Jesus and shoes; he’s also in every African country! And if he’s in every African country, he’s also all over the world! But I remember that Jesus left the 99 to look for 1. We aren’t the saviors of the world, but Jesus is; and all we can do is the simple things He asks us to, like coming into His yoke, which is light and easy, and not wearing the world as one.
Africa, I will keep what I’ve seen in my heart.
