When the small, barefoot, 6-year-old schoolboy crossed the street in a hurried skip, I decided that two months in Africa was not enough.
I wanted to see all of Africa.
In our neighborhood in Ocean View
I wanted to leap out of my skin and travel to Lesotho and Botswana, Zambia and Sudan, Ethiopia and the Congo, Liberia and Ghana, Egypt and Algeria; I wanted to see this place that I had avoided for so long.
This month, there were so many things that made me feel at home such as..
- Living in a house (our contacts gave up their home for missionaries)
- Going to a loud, long-winded worship service that was in English (love you PHM)
- Seeing black and white faces everywhere
- Finding Black hair products in the drug store
- Eating Honey Nut Cheerios
- Hanging out with middle and high school kids
***
On the first Sunday, in the middle of worship, I began to cry tears of joy and the Lord gave me a vision of a little girl running into her father’s arms and the father saying welcome home. After five months in Asia, my heart had found its home.
Sports ministry in Masiphumelele
Over the next three weeks as we did house visits and street evangelism, prayed at hospitals and fed the hungry, played with street kids, camped on the mountainside, and did sports ministry, and I began to push deeper into the comfort and peace that the Father brings.
***
It wasn’t so much Africa that was home, but God’s presence and I could feel it all around me.
I felt it when I was nervous about what to say to the woman in the hospital bed dying away, I felt it when I had hard conversations with teammates, I felt it when I sat on the mountainside, mesmerized by the stars. I felt it so frequently that I knew He was with me and during the last week of ministry, His presence changed my heart.
I have been praying for guidance about what to do when I get back to the States and I so badly did not want to teach anymore. I contemplated so many different ideas and none of them settled. I prayed and I journaled and I fasted and then prayed some more and still no answer. Why are you ignoring me?!
Then, we get to our last week of ministry at Simonstown High School where we got to do sports ministry and I knew.
I knew that there was no way that I could not teach.
Tuesday afternoon, after being with the kids for only a day and a half, I was practically begging the Lord to work out a plan for me to teach and lead Young Life when I returned home.
I didn’t care that I would only have two weeks to transition into my job as a first year teacher. All my fears and apprehension about the whole ordeal had dissipated and I stood at the bus stop dreaming. Dreaming of how I could be a light to these kids, dreaming of how I could transform the culture of the professional community, dreaming of how I could make an eternal change in the kingdom of God by cultivating the presence of God in my classroom and I got stoked.
Truly, God had led my heart home.
He had brought me to South Africa to engulf me in His arms and brought me to places like Cape Point and Table Mountain to show me a deeper depth of His glory and majesty.
View from the top of Table Mountain
Now that I’ve spent a month in His presence, learning to be led by His spirit, I know that He is trustworthy, and on this ever-changing Race, it’s good to know that truly He is my ever-present help.
As I write this, we are on our 18-hour bus ride from Cape Town to Johannesburg and our time with Kingdom Sports and Bradley and Joslyn makes South Africa easily my favorite month on the Race.
Bradley, Joslyn, Blake, David and Pneuma, courtesy of Jenny Gage
However, I am still excited for Swaziland and what God has ahead for us. We have passed the halfway point, but want to be a team that relentlessly loves God and loves people and we want the Holy Spirit to lead us, so please join us in prayer as we head to El Shaddai, an orphanage in the Swaziland mountainside.
I have so much love and thanks for all my readers, prayer warriors, and friends!
You are the best! May God fill your heart with even more joy than mine!
