On the Real World Race

Well, we’re in Africa now.  It’s hard to believe that I can finally say that, as many of us have unofficially deemed this period as the commencement of the “real World Race,” complete with high expectations of huts, squatties, zero Internet, some kind of clicking language, and lots of topless women with naked babies straddled across their hips.  We showed up in Mozambique after a bus ride from Chisinau, Molodova, flight from Bucharest, Romania, flight from Istanbul, Turkey, and bus from Johannesburg, South Africa.  8pm Thursday to 12am Sunday.  52 hours of travel days.  We arrived at our primary contact (Angie)’s house exhausted, seemingly encapsulated by hoards of mosquitoes.  After a hearty midnight dinner of rice, beans, and chocolate cake, we spent the night under the protective cover of our tents before heading to our ministry location in Guija the following morning.
 

Each day, we pump millions of buckets of water at the nearby well, hold babies so their moms can get their daily supply of water buckets filled, and admire them as they carry them back home on their heads.  Oatmeal, coffee, and a brief devotional comprise our daily breakfast, shared with our contact Tienie (a friendly, 40-something South African man) and his staff:  Weldon from Zimbabwe and local Mozambicans Flora and Silverton.  After cleaning up around the base, we make our rounds in the surrounding villages to encourage and pray for single moms, orphans, the elderly, men and women struggling with AIDS, paralysis, blindness, cancer… all kinds of hardship you can imagine.  Honestly, it’s been rough.  Because the need is so great, we don’t have the opportunity to spend extensive amounts of time with most of the people we visit, and it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all we cannot do.  Thankfully, though, Tienie already knows these people, and he is frequently able to assist them in getting medicine, wheelchairs, and other things that would help them fare a little more easily.
 

 

I’m continually reminded – and thankful – how little the first impressions of our new locations are anything like how we will regard them the rest of the month.  We always show up in the dark – literally and figuratively – with the fear and mystery of what our new lives will resemble looming over us.  The comforts of Europe/Pretend Home are long gone, stowed away in a forgotten corner of Angie’s with my chocolate, 3-in-1 instant coffee packets, and travel pillow.  Time to adapt, grow, become.  Wash some feet.  Preach a sermon.  Get those gosh dang lice out of my teammates’ hair.  Look more and more like Jesus at the end of every long, hard day.
 
It’s going to be a good month.
 

Hey!  I still need to raise $1,500 by July 1^st to be fully funded for The World Race.  If I don’t meet the deadline, I will go home.  Will you partner with me in this ministry by donating toward my support account?  Just click the SUPPORT ME! link in the list on the top left side of the page!

This Was My Favorite Blog to Write (Part 2: I Know a Little More Than I Once Did)

I am in the house of an elderly widow.  We just finished cleaning up the last of three rooms, coated in what must have been months – maybe years – of dust, memories, remains unknown.  I am looking at artifacts positioned haphazardly on the windowsill, at a wedding picture hanging crookedly on the wall, at legal documents encoded in Russian, desperate to know the stories embedded in each.  What have the eyes of this woman seen?  What pain has she endured?  Who is she, really?
 

I am in a small group of college students, each sharing prayer requests.   I ask how I can pray for them.  They communicate with what little, broken English they know, but I can see the strain on their faces, in their eyes, of how much more there is to say.  And all I want to do is understand, to know their pain.  I want to share in their story so badly, it almost brings tears to my eyes.

I am in room 6 of the hotel where our squad is meeting for debrief.  We are twelve, my team and our squad leaders/coaches, sitting in a circle, recounting our time here, sharing the victories and struggles we experienced over the last month.  For the first time in its raw fullness, I share where I’m at:  I don’t click as well here as I did with Mosaic.  I don’t feel like I have a special “role.”  I feel behind relationally, spiritually, emotionally.  I’m just exhausted from trying so hard to feel everything and everyone out, to know and be known. 
 
The words spoken back to me by my squad coaches were rich with passion, grace, truth.
 
You are loved by the Father.  You are so tired from trying to make things work with those around you because you’re not focusing on your relationship with the One above you.  Stop striving.  Rest.  He says you are beautiful.  You are His daughter.  He is proud of you.  Your performance doesn’t matter.  It won’t make Him love you more.  You are His beloved.  Walk in confidence of His love for you.  You are no longer Martha.  You are Mary.  "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.'”  The Lord looks at you and says, “There’s my beauty, across the room.”  May He no longer have to say that, for you will be right by His side.  All those things you believe for everyone else:  believe for yourself.  There is grace.  There is love.  For you.  Accept His love.  The Lord loves you as you are.
 
And as the tears flowed all around the room, I looked at two of my teammates in disbelief and wonder.  I laughed as I pointed at them and said, “Yeah, what’s going on here?  Why are you two crying?”  Suzanne answered,
 
“When I hear these things said to you, and I know where you’ve been for the past four months, it breaks my heart.  I want this for you so badly.  This is what I’ve been trying to tell you all along, but there is nothing anyone can do to make you believe it.  I want you to experience this.  I want this for you so much.”
 
At that moment, my life was changed.  I knew that all those things could be true for me, too.  At that moment, I have never felt more loved.
 

As I soak it all in, this crazy experience called The World Race, I become more infinitely aware of where I am, what I am actually doing.
 
And it blows my mind.
 
I’m in Moldova.
 
I am very likely the last American that woman, Feodora, will ever meet.
 
I get to hear the stories of individual lives that no one back home will ever get to hear.
 
I live in a community of people who understand freedom.  Who live out love.  Who are radically, beautifully, wonderfully transformed by the Father.
 
A year ago, I never would have seen myself in this place. 
 
I never would have dreamed of being alive, breathing, vibrant, broken, in the middle of somewhere, Eastern Europe.
 
I never would have imagined I’d be trekking the world with five other women who are on a journey similar to mine.
 
I never would have thought I could both know and be known so well.  Known… and loved.  By my Father.  By His children.
 
But I am so thankful I am.
 
What an indescribable gift.
 
Yes to this.
 

 
"I love you."
(At deaf orphanage in Cahul, Moldova)