Off to Africa!! We were located in Lusaka witch is the Capital city of Zambia. I felt the huge culture shock when I left Eastern Europe and arrived in Lusaka. It was CRAZY. Everything about Zambia was so different. I want to say this in the most sensitive way about my experience with the people/ culture of Zambia. The people I encountered seem to live out of a victim mindset where everything is someone else’s fault or they take no responsibility for the outcome of whatever it is. Excuses are there justification for life’s hardships. Instagratification is what they seek. It was so sad. Zambia is an every man for himself kind of place. The Zambian culture was so hard for me to understand.
When it came to the christian community it was also really sad. Bibles are so scarce that 90% of the church did not own a bible so they were fully dependent on getting fed by the pastor and some of the pastors were questionable so then you just have the blind leading the blind. So so sad. This broke my heart.
My heart started to harden toward these people. I was getting so frustrated with constantly being asked for money or my watch, or clothing, or whatever I had on. Each request my heart was getting more numb to these people. Until one of my friends told me I was being selfish. I realised I was being so selfish with my heart. I was not willing to love these people the way God was calling me to love them.
That is when I realized that it doesn’t matter what I think about the culture or the people or how this happened. What matters is how I treat and love these people. At that point I knew I had to set aside my fleshly feeling and love unconditionally.
We can not be selfish with our hearts if we numb them to certain people or things we lose part of ourselves weather we want to acknowledge it or not.
May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.
2 Thessalonians 3: 5
-V
