Forever Changed

 It has been over two months since I wrote my last blog. I did get to write one on my trip to Africa but due to VERY limited internet, I only got to post it on our mission trip blog. I really don't even know where to begin this blog. My life has been completely changed in the past two months. God has done so many things and wrecked my life in so many ways that I would be sitting here for hours if I tried to type them all up. With that being said, I think I'll type up a few highlights from the trip and what the Lord has been teaching me since being back in America!

*The Lord started working in my life before I even left the US. In the weeks leading up to my trip, I honestly did not want to go to Africa anymore. I was so terrified of the 21+ hours flight to get there and the prospect of leaving my family for so long that I couldn't look past it to the ways the Lord was going to use me on this trip. At training camp two days before leaving I honestly wasn't sure I was even going to get on the plane. I remember calling my mom from the airplane right before take off and telling her that for so long I could back out and now I couldn't anymore. It was an overwhelming sense of helplessness. The day before we left, I started to get angry with God. I didn't understand why I had to have a fear of flying now when I had never really had one. I had always flown fine up until the year or so before my trip and with each flight my fear seemed to increase. I was crying out to God asking for some relief of this fear. When I asked God why I was afraid I felt the strongest since that He was telling me that He was trying to teach me to rely on Him. That for too long I had relied on myself and for once I was going to have to give up control and just trust God completely. I opened my Bible and in that way that only the Lord works, He guided me to Isaiah 41:10 

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.  

I was struck by an image of God holding up the plane with his "righteous right hand" and guiding me safely to Africa.  I can't honestly say that my fear of flying was gone but I definitely felt better. I felt like this trip was God's will and He wasn't going to let it fail because it was His plan for me. 

*My next big thing that I learned on this trip was how loved by God I am. When I landed in Johannesburg, South Africa, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I was in Africa. I was in Africa. This was a place I had imagined myself going since the time I was 13 and I was finally here. I started thinking back to the Fall of 2010 and how I was presented with the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Costa Rica. My mom sent a check for me to be able to go and the day that the money was supposed to be deposited, my nursing professor sent me an email saying that if I missed class that week I wouldn't be allowed to make up the test. I was devastated. It took a million phone calls but eventually we were able to stop the check from being deposited and a few months later, my cousin and a group of others left for a trip that I should have been on. I wasn't happy about it at the time but sitting on a plane waiting to get off in South Africa I realized that God didn't let me go through with that trip because he had a different plane for me over the summer. I was amazed by the fact that God loved me enough to orchestrate a trip to a place where I had always wanted to go. He really does love us enough to give us the things that matter to us. I was so humbled by that. 

*People don't realize it, but, Africa actually does get cold. The week we left, it snowed about an hour away from where we were staying. We weren't exactly prepared for this cold climate so for a month I wore three pairs of leggings under my skirts and as many as 4 shirts at times to try to keep warm. What's humbling is there were kids walking around in way less clothes than we were and shoes with holes in them and they weren't complaining. 

*My month consisted of playing with kids. People ask what I did in Africa. I tell them I played with kids and froze for pretty much the whole month. Throughout the month there were certain kids who stole my heart and who I miss more today than I did when I left. One of these kids was Nunze (pictured left). Nunze, or Zimbabwe as my team liked to call him, was a four year old precious child who came to center we worked at. He didn't speak any English, but his smile and laughter could seriously brighten anyones day.  I even recorded his laugh so that I could listen to it here at home and remember his joy. One of the highlights of my trip happened on the last day. Everyday when we left the center, I told Nunze that I loved him and Jesus loved him. During our last week, Nunze started repeating the words back to me. I would say I and then he would say it, I would say love and then he would say it, etc. On the last day, I told Nunze I loved him and he said "I love you!" I had to fight back tears, I think about him and pray for him everyday. 


*Throughout my month in Africa, I was extremely homesick. It was harder than I expected being away from home and not being able to call my family. The center we were working at got robbed at gunpoint one morning literally five minutes before we got there and the township we were in had the highest crime rate in the world. I didn't like feeling like my safety was threatened. I had never been in a situation before where I was literally afraid but that's how I felt the whole month. I never slept at night because I would think about all the bad things that could happen. I would pray and pray and the only conclusion I came to was that this was another way the Lord was teaching me to rely on Him. It definitely forces you to when you have no where else to turn. 


Those are just a few recaps from my month in Africa. For the first two weeks I was so excited to be home. Now though, its been a month since I left and I want to go back. I never thought I would be sitting at my computer googling trips over my Spring Break to go back. I don't know what the Lord has planned for me but I do know that I left a huge piece of my heart in Africa and I can't imagine not going back one day hopefully soon. I have been forever changed and this blog only scratched the surface all the Lord taught me and is continuing to teach me.