Mambo!
I am finally here in Dar and getting settled in! Oh, the journey that God has already brought me on through my short time in Africa! Orientation was tough but so rewarding. God challenged me, showed more of Himself to me and revealed, on an even deeper level, my total depravity and my desperate need for Him! Enduring through heat, exhaustion, hunger at times, emotional hardships, filthiness and a number of other discomforts, God began to break me. He began to break me of my pride, my self-righteousness, my self-sufficiency and my independence from Him. He reminded me of my purpose here… not just to get through Orientation and start my ministry in Dar, but to be sanctified into His image in order that I may pray for the lost souls and share the gospel with those whom He so intentionally puts in my path. Oh, how I am so prone to stray from His purpose for me when I am hot, tired, dirty and frustrated with everyone and everything around me! But He is so forgiving and so faithful! For His “grace is sufficient for me, and His power is made perfect in my weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9) Oh, that we would cling to that… when we feel like our knees are going to buckle when we see a malnourished child sitting in filth, clothed in rags and alone, or when we see hundreds of people bow down five times a day everyday to a God that is not the God of the Bible and does not recognize Jesus as Lord and Savior, or when we visit a temple and see golden statues of elephants and thousands of other gods that are being worshipped in the place of the one and only true God that ALONE deserves the praise and worship of every nation and tongue. May He grant us great grace to be driven by the Holy Spirit to intercede on their behalf’s, rather than wanting justice or becoming desensitized to the vast lostness that we are surrounded by daily.
Although my time in Botswana for Orientation was difficult, the Lord certainly used it for my good and hopefully, His glory! The first 4-5 days were spent team-building. We had a lot of experiential learning activities and time as a team to debrief and pray together. Andy (our leader) was very hard on us…. I think it is safe to say that we all, at some point or another, hated him. But after the 10 days of boot camp was over, we had all grown to love and respect him tremendously. During our time in Botswana we were taught how to use public transportation (buses called combe’s, that the Botswanans PACK people in like sardines), use the currency (pulas) in the market in order to buy food, do some prayer walking and evangelism in an extremely impoverished area, and do a home-stay for two nights.
Due to lack of time and internet efficiency, I will just expound on the last thing I mentioned. A home-stay is when each team (2-4 people) is assigned an African family to go live with and experience life with for two days and 2 nights. These home-stays all vary depending on where Andy chooses for you to go. Some teams were in the city and others were in a village. My team was assigned to Mae-Grace, a 72-year-old Botswanan woman that lived in a village in the bush (this is one of the many times I was hating Andy…)! We were dropped off 2 hours away from Gaborone (the city in Botswana that we had been staying in for the past 4 nights) with a backpack each of personal belongings, a bed mat, sheets, towel, 2 jugs of water, bread, sugar and oil. To shorten this, my time there was HARD. I lived out 2 days in the life of a village woman… going to the bathroom 100 yards away in an “out house” (deep hole in the ground that is one of the most disgusting things I find about Africa), no electricity or running water, cooking over a wood fire outside and sponge bathing. This was something I had never experienced before! I have never felt so out of control and desperate for the Lord than I did in those two days! God not only put me in the shoes of the nationals around me but also demonstrated my utter and desperate need for total dependency on Him! Mae-Grace was absolutely amazing! Like I said, she was 72 years old and was the epitome of a Proverbs 31 woman (which was SO sweet of the Lord to show me as I am praying that God would sanctify me into that woman for Rob). She gave up her room for Tinsley (my female team-mate) and me, provided for her entire family (3 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren that all lived under her tin roof), she was a diligent worker (rode public transportation about an hour every 3 days to work for a missionary family in order to earn her pay), provided food for her household and guests (cooked over a wood fire and would serve us and her family first), and would rise while it was still night (one morning after it had monsooned the night before, I found her shoveling mud outside at 6 AM). She “looked well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness, her children rise up and call her blessed” (Proverbs 31:27-28). I praise God for the discomforts and hardships I was able to experience for those two nights and pray that it will never leave my heart, remembering to praise God for people like Mae-Grace!
After our 2-day home stay, we were given two days with a more relaxed atmosphere with the hopes of restoration and renewal from the Lord. This was good and very much needed (one of the times I was loving Andy)! Then we were off to Dar…. Our home for the next 5 months! The flight from Gaborone, Botswana to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania was about 4 hours. When we arrived to the airport we were greeted by the rest of our team – Jamie (the female Journeyman), Nate and Lindsey (our supervisors) and their 1-year-old little girl, Zoe. It was so good to finally meet who we had been corresponding with via email for months and who would become our family for the upcoming months! The first two nights the girls stayed with Jamie and the boys stayed with Lindsey and Nate. That worked out well as none of us were prepared to “man” the city of Dar on our own or be dropped off at our apartments quite yet. After a couple of nights we moved into our apartments and began making it our home! We are so blessed by the apartments that Lindsey, Nate and Jamie found for us – we girls have our own and the boys have their own (each with our own room and bathroom…. Which is such a rarity here in Africa). We have spent the last 3 nights here so far… it is taking time to get used to the heat and not having air conditioner, not being able to drink water or brush our teeth from the faucet, not having the plumbing that we are so endowed with in America, and waking up to roosters crowing and the Muslim call to worship every few hours. But despite not having what we are accustomed to back home, we are so thankful for the safe and nice roof over our heads!! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that our apartments are on the property of a primary school (elementary school) so I am LOVING waking up to children everywhere outside smiling, waving and giggling at us! Isn’t God so sweet to give us the desires of our hearts! J
As I close this entry out, I want to thank all of you for your prayers and your encouraging emails you have been sending me! Even though I have not had time to respond to most of them, I cannot begin to tell you how much I need them and how much the Lord uses it to strengthen me to accomplish His mission for me while I am here! I am so excited to dive into His plans for my time in Dar and cannot wait to share with you how He will move and make His glory known here! Below are a few specific prayer requests that you can be praying for me if you feel led.
1.) My time in God’s Word and in prayer – This is tough to do in this environment when it feels that the only alone time you have is when you are in the shower. Please pray that God would give me grace to be disciplined and wise with the time He has allotted me here.
2.) My relationship with Rob – I never knew how incredibly difficult this would be to be apart from him and not be able to talk to him whenever I need or want to. Please pray that God would bless the little time He gives us to communicate with each other and that He would grow us and sanctify us more and more into His image during this season apart so that we could in turn, love each other the way Christ loves His church.
3.) Team unity – I am learning more and more each day that I am here the importance of this! If we are not unified in Christ as a team, how will we show Jesus to others? Please pray that God would unify us together so deeply in Him that we would be able to show Christ in our every word and deed.
4.) Our ministry – We are so excited about God’s plan for our time here and so ready to make disciples! Please pray that God would prepare the hearts of the people we will encounter and that they would be receptive to us. Please pray that God would empower us with His Spirit to be bold and speak His truth as we seek to further His Kingdom by coming alongside the ministry that Nate, Lindsey and Jamie already have here!
5.) Nate, Lindsey and Jamie- We are so blessed to have such Godly and fun leadership under them! Please pray that God would sustain them and endure them to lead us through this season. Being parents, Lindsey and Nate have even more responsibility and now have 4 more “kids”… please pray for blessed time for them as a family and that we will be able to serve them and be a blessing to them while we are here!
Thank you all for being a part of this journey with me! I pray that God would speak to you and encourage you through my experiences and time in Africa. I love you dearly!
