A year ago today, I was staying with Jaco Rudolph and his family in Vilanculos, Mozambique. I have to be honest; it was one of the hardest months of my life. Up to that point on the World Race, things were seemingly going my way. But when we headed to Mozambique, we’ll just say it hit the fan. To begin with, we had to send home a valuable member of our squad and it wasn’t the most popular decision that I got to be the voice of. This of course added to the isolation already brought by leadership making it a super lonely month. As if it couldn’t get much worse, my health started wavering. I got a few pretty gnarly foot infections and I couldn’t walk. So there I sat each day, literally alone.
Before the pity party is thrown, most of it was self inflicted. I was isolating myself at times. I tried to just push the thought out of my mind that Thanksgiving was coming up because that would just make it even harder. However, that day finally snuck up on me, and I couldn’t evade it.
Jaco is a South African with a huge heart for Mozambique and really helped our squad see it. When Thanksgiving morning came around, Jaco sat us down to have our daily “run-down” meeting. Someone offhandedly mentioned having a prayer session to begin the day and remind us to be thankful and what they day meant. Jaco quickly stopped everything because he had no idea that that day was Thanksgiving. He took his schedule, balled it up, and said, “This can wait for tomorrow, today we celebrate and have a day of thanks.”
Quickly, our squad started running around and were assigned jobs for cooking, shopping, and preparing the festivities. We were in a very rural city in Mozambique, so the groceries were scare, but our team was able to whip up an unbelievable Thanksgiving feast. The few weeks that led up to that day just seemed to melt away as our squad celebrated together and reminded each other to be thankful.
Jaco ran with our makeshift holiday and gave us such an incredible reminder of home. During the day, I was tasked with making sure we could get all the parents to call us despite our poor communications. Jaco pulled out all the stops and pretty much every person on our squad was able to talk to their family for the first time in a while.
The next day, most of the pressures returned and so did the pity party (don’t worry, it didn’t last very long…). However, for that day, I was able to find so much to be thankful for. Now, a year later, I have to thank Jaco for putting a hold on his schedule of ministry to allow our group to have a day of thanks.
I often neglect this holiday and just use it as an excuse to veg out and wear elastic pants. It was quite a blessing to get a lesson on Thanksgiving in the middle of the bush in Africa. There is a video of our Thanksgiving a year ago on my Facebook profile…
