I was having dinner with a friend the other night, and she asked me how my interest in and love for Africa began. I stopped for a minute and had to reply in honesty that I was not really sure. It wasn't a culture I was interested in when I was younger. I remember sitting in GA's ("Girls in Action" for those of you who did not grow up going to this Baptist version of Girl Scouts) as a very young child and looking at a cartoonish map of Africa with drawings of lions and straw huts and other stereotypical African images while my GA's leader talked of the missionaries we were supporting who lived there. The gist of her talk had been "Isn't that so cool, little girls?" I did not think it was cool. I thought it was terrifying. The fear of leaving the familiar was birthed in me as my 6-year-old self prayed something akin to "Dear Jesus, please don't ever do that to me."That prayer, while not one I would have admitted to actually uttering, was one that constantly flowed through my heart over the following years.
In the Summer of 2005, when I was 20, I chaperoned at a camp called BigStuf in Panama City, Florida. One of the sessions had Louie Giglio speaking about surrender. He specifically mentioned the fear that if we fully surrender in our relationships with Christ, that God will do something crazy, like "send us to Africa." The speaker said it was more likely that we would be asked to remain exactly where we were and serve Him fully in those places. Then he began to speak of the AIDS pandemic and poverty, but also about how God is working in Africa in amazing, vivid ways. He asked the audience to consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International.
I remember feeling incredibly moved and remember him saying "The American way is to be incredibly moved and then do nothing." I prayed "Jesus, I don't want to do 'the American thing,' but I don't know what else to do. I already sponsor a child, and it isn't as if I can just go to Africa or something." I decided then to apply to intern for BigStuf the following summer, not only because I loved the camp, but mainly because the interns took a short trip with Compassion before the camp internship began.Over the next 6 months, my heart began to change dramatically. February 2, 2006 was the day I had my interview with the camp. That morning in my history class before the interview, all I could do was stare at the map of Africa on the wall and try to make sense of my sudden, gnawing desire to go there. At the end of the interview they offered me the choice between pursuing the camp internship or a brand new, experimental internship called Journey that would consist of a week at the camp and the rest in Africa. They weren't sure of much more than the fact we'd be in Zambia. I knew immediately that Journey, not the camp internship, was really where God was leading.
My summer in Africa (well, winter over there) was incredible. It was filled with intense beauty, frustration, sadness, and joy. We partnered with Adventures and Missions and many South Africans and Zambians to do a program called Beat the Drum, where we went into high schools to discuss an abstinence based method of HIV/AIDS prevention. Our time there was very difficult, but also very amazing.
During my first week in Zambia, I was sitting in the middle of a group of young children, and I looked down to see a shy little girl sitting next to me. I smiled at her and reached my hand over to squeeze hers and then put my hand next to hers on the ground. She looked down at the juxtaposition of our hands and slowly pulled hers away as she hung her head in shame. Her hand was caked with numerous layers of pale, gray dirt. Out of her tiny, English vocabulary she pulled the word "Dirty." All I could do was grab her hand and hold it tightly while saying words I wasn't sure she understood like "No, no, no! You are beautiful!" As a smile slowly spread across her face, and I put my arm around her and pulled her to me, I silently prayed "If You want me to move here and spend my life pouring love and acceptance into these beautiful, little lives, I think I'd be ok with that."Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - C.S. Lewis "The Weight of Glory"
My mud pie isn't drink or sex or ambition, it is my love of the comfortable and familiar. On the plane home I journaled that I was beginning to understand that "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." meant not that God gave me what I wanted, but rather that God has the amazing ability to change my heart to want what He wants for my life when I ask Him to exchange my heart for His. That is where my interest in and love for Africa began: in one tiny, rare moment of surrender in my life.
