Africa

It has been a year since I flew to South Africa.  This time last year I was playing soccer with kids in Soweto, passing out newspapers, and walking the streets of Soweto.  God taught me a lot during that trip.  A year later, I'm still learning.

I loved my time in South Africa.  I loved the team I worked with and the missionaries we worked alongside. I love the people I met there and continue to pray for them.  Dianne and her family are most on my mind when I think of Soweto.  I was able to share a day with her and Robert, Lundi, Lillian, and Felicia.  It's a day I won't forget.  My time with this family and in Soweto has taught me a lot about hope in a spiritually dark world.

While in Africa, I also had the blessing to attend two church services.  These church services had people praising God in three languages.  God is calling out the nations!  To be in class day after day and hear how God's plan is for the nations to hear of Jesus, it is a blessing to see part of that as reality.  I long for the day when I'm in Cambodia and hear nationals praising God in their heart language.  I know that God is calling Cambodians to him and they are responding.  I long to be part of what he is doing there.  The blessing of hearing his name praised in other language is indescribable.

A year removed from that trip, I see how my life has changed.  My focus has changed a lot while here in school.  My friends have changed.  My job has a whole new meaning to me know.  My church has changed.  Mostly, I see how God is teaching me to be a missionary where I am.  Not to wait until I'm in Cambodia to live that life.  I'm learning to follow his commands even now.

When I returned from South Africa last year, one of my thoughts was that being a missionary is hard.  The missionaries we worked with had countless conversations with people in Soweto and very few of them led to deeper conversations about Christ and eventually to salvation.  What I saw last year is how hard that is and how that can be emotionally draining.  Thinking back now, I see how the job never stops and how it isn't a job.  God has called each believer to make disciples, to share of Jesus, and to love others.  This shouldn't be something that only missionaries do.  It shouldn't be something that we only do from time to time.

Now, God has opened the door for me to consistently share my faith with a coworker.  God is opening opportunities to live life with all of my coworkers and to begin to share with them the hope I have in Christ.  I am learning that I don't have to get on a plane and fly around the world to share Christ.  It's not that I didn't already know this but that I am learning to live this way.  As great as it is that I am sharing Christ weekly, I still feel like I don't share enough.  I believe that I am missing opportunities to make difference in many peoples lives with even a statement here or there as I interact with others.  Please pray with me that I will continue to take the lessons that God taught me in Africa and that he is teaching me now and apply them.  Pray that I will be bold in my witness.