Musings from Graceland

MY BABY WILL BE IN AFRICA

In about seven weeks, my first born baby will be in Africa along with a teamful of other young adults starting out on the adventure of a life-time with the Adventures in Missions Passport program. For two months, these radical Jesus followers will be living out of backpacks as they live among the nationals in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya while they share the love and truth of Jesus with all those God sends their way. There is another Passport team in Africa right now doing many of the same things that Anna and her team will be doing. I wanted to share what one of the members, Megan Lee Esposito, posted on their trip blog:

Oh my goodness! My body feels like its falling apart! Now I have to stop writing and go eat dinner. I shall resume.. Awe best dinner of my life :) Drayton made banana fritters. Oh my! They were delicious. To make it 1000x better, right after dinner Daniel and Lizzie came back from town with gummi bears, peanut butter and oreos. I'm eating the gummi bears right now and I'm in love!! And to make it even BETTER, Lizzie sent my emails today. Greatest day of my life :D I'm not kidding. My taste buds are in heaven. Ah, wait it gets better..They surprised is with chocolate during our team talk. Yum!! What did I do to deserve that!? Super exciting!

As for ministry, we did door to door from 9:50-12:30ish. Estimated walking distance was 4 miles. It was a pretty normal day. Kendra shared the gospel and Melissa, Melody and Lil Dray shared a word of encouragement. By the way, 4 miles and only 3 houses. Welcome to Africa haha. I wasn't feeling door to door until later this afternoon when I spoke to Stella (pastors niece). I'll get to that in a minute though. After door to door we came home and chowed down on some ugali and beans. I've honestly never seen ugali fly off the plate that fast. We scrapped everything clean. We were hungry!

Oh, I almost forgot about fasting. During breakfast we discussed what fasting looks like for us. Corporate or individual fasts. The conversation went really well. A few people brought up some pretty awesome ideas. Melody mentioned not necessarily fasting FROM something but rather fasting TO something. For example, dedicating one hour everyday to continuously reading the bible- uninterrupted. Drayton also had a great idea. She mentioned dedicating 30 minutes to straight prayer on one subject. I like both of those ideas a lot :) I'm going to pray about it tonight and see where the Spirit leads me.

As for the afternoon, we went back to the secondary school which we estimated to be 6 miles there and back. All together that's 10 miles for the day. That's not including walking to the watering hole to do laundry. That adds another mile. So 11miles in less than 8 hours. It was a rough day. I'm beat! Anyway, about the secondary school, it was pretty much the same as our first visit. The kids were really quiet and didn't interact with us very much. We encouraged them to ask questions and unfortunately they only asked two: Do you have street children in America and are you allowed absences in school? We answered their questions and elaborated on the importance of education. I fumbled a bit because I wasn't really prepared but overall I think we all handled it pretty well considering our leaders weren't with us. We usually lean on them during rough or awkward situations and this time it was all on us. It was a good afternoon though. The kids sang a traditional Maasai song for us. That was really cool. We danced with them and tried to sing but we weren't doing so great. They got a kick out of that. Apparently we aren't very good dancers. Thank you for making that clear to us, Kenya ;)

On to what I had mentioned about Stella.. Her and I had a pretty good talk during our 3 mile trek across the plains of Kenya. We talked about school fees and what that looks like for her. She is trusting that God will provide for her and it was awesome to hear her express her faith in that. What she doesn't know is that as a team we want to help her with school finances. We have extra money set aside at the end of our stay with our ministry contacts to donate/gift to whomever we'd like. She just happens to be one of those people :) We are more than happy to help her. She is such a nice girl and has helped us out so much! I'm super excited to surprise her with the gift of finances. Stella has faith that God will provide and we are so thankful to be the answer to her prayers. What a blessing<3

Back to our talk.. She had mentioned that us being here has been a blessing to the community and I didn't quite understand what she meant. It was weird hearing this because lately I have felt very disconnected from ministry. It was exactly what I needed to hear though. She said her church community shares the Gospel with non believers all the time but they brush it off. When we come in, from a far away country, they think, "Maybe there is some truth to this. What would posses people to leave America to come here and share this?" Hearing her say that stopped me in my tracks. There have been too many times that I've caught myself beginning to get frustrated with the language barrier or unresponsive people and blown it off. I never thought about it in the way that Stella explained it. I need to put myself in their shoes. Traveling is normal to me but they see it as something epic and huge. Which it is but in their eyes to leave America is bizarre. Why would anyone do that?

That's what I have to ask myself in my moments of doubt and frustration. Why did I do this? Why did I leave home for four months? I did this out of obedience. I did this because Jesus saved me by giving His life for mine. This is my passion. I can't allow that myself to forget that. Although I don't like to admit it, sometimes I neglect ministry. I know I can try harder and love a whole lot more. I only have a few days remaining in this beautiful place and I want to make the best of it. Less complaining and more laughing, loving and smiling! I don't want to look back and think, "I could have tried harder. I could have done more." That would break my heart.

And regardless of what else you put on,

wear LOVE.

 It is your basic, all purpose garment.

Never be without it.

Colossians 3:13-14

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To read more about the ministry that these young people are experiencing in Africa, visit their team blog:   http://expedition.adventures.org/

And to read more about how and why Anna is going to Africa this summer, go to this blog post:   http://elysasmusingsfromgraceland.blogspot.com/2012/03/other-side-of-story-ive-shared-before.html