Africa feels a world away from the Philippines and home. We are currently staying on top of a mountain in Swaziland at a children’s home spending time with the fifty children that live here. It is beautiful here at El Shaddai and it still shocks me when I look up from gardening in the morning and see the incredible view.
My days are blending together and it’s incredible to me that we have been here for two weeks. Every morning I wake up at 5:30 to have some time by myself before the rest of the squad is up. I boil hot water for coffee and sit at the dining room table with my Bible and journal and pray over the day ahead. We eat breakfast as a squad around 7:30, have devotion time together, and then the girls head up to work in the garden while the guys work on other projects around the ministry site. We each have a buddy we were paired with from the children’s home when we arrived, and the older girls garden with us from 9 until lunch. In the afternoons we spend time with our buddies and come up with different activities to do together. My buddy is one of the high school girls and is 15 years old. It was hard at first coming up with things to do here that might be fun for her, but when she saw I had music and podcasts on my ipad she got really excited. We listened to one of the podcasts from Reality Santa Barbara and had a great conversation about the sermon.
A few days later I led our first chapel service for the high schoolers. We wanted to show our older buddies that we were here for them to talk about whatever they wanted to share. We knew coming in that it might be hard for them with people coming in and and out of the ministry site so frequently, so it made sense when they didn’t really want to hang out with us at first. We decided to start a separate chapel service for them away from the younger children. I prayed about what to talk about at our first meeting and felt led to talk about identity. As I spoke, the words settled over me and were a reminder to me as well.
We are God’s sons and daughters and He knows every part of us–every good or bad thing we have ever done or sin we have committed. He sees every part of ourselves that we try to hide from the rest of the world and He loves us anyway. More than that, He calls us his children and wants a relationship with us. I looked at the high schoolers and reminded them that they are free from how other people view them, who their families were, and the shame and guilt that the world tries to heap upon them by saying that who they are is not enough. We are dearly loved by God, and in that love, we are set free.
We read from Colossians 3 and I told them to read this passage and reaffirm who they are when they forget, and to use the word “I” as they read it. I stood before them and told them that we are here because we want to help them walk in their identity in whatever way they allow us to. When they all avoided eye contact with me on the way out the door I wasn’t sure if this talk had meant anything to them, but the next morning my buddy came up to me in the garden. She told me she really enjoyed chapel, and asked if we could have Bible study together this Sunday. God is so cool.
There are ups and downs all the time on the Race. Some days are boring or frustrating, and other days are exciting and a complete surprise. I am learning what it means to choose joy regardless of what they day brings. The more I travel the more I realize that a place is just a place. God works everywhere and in so many different ways, but people are so similar. We are all just looking for who we are, and need to be constantly reminded of where our identity truly lies.
Thank you all so much for reading and for your continuous prayers. Please feel free to email me or comment below. I would love to hear from you!
Merry Christmas!!
