Honored

Today I feel honored, I feel honored to have been called to go to a far away land, to love unloved people, to experience new things, Honored to have been loved by my host family and many others. Honored to have rafted the Nile and seen monkeys. Honored that I was chosen to come to this place. It ahs been so hard, harder than I could ever have thought but it’s an honor to be tested, stretched, broken, humbled only to fall into the arms of the one who has loved me through it all. I am honored to have cried all the tears I have cried because I got to see the heart of God that much more clearly even through the tears. I am honored to be covered in red dirt because that means I am in Africa. I am honored to be one of few people who will ever get to live in a foreign country for 4 months with an extraordinary host family. I am honored to see the handprint of God in a whole new context, honored to see stars that we cannot see in the Northern Hemisphere in the U.S. Honored that I came here and will not leave unchanged. I am honored to have been torn down so I could learn how to love. I am honored to have heard many different opinions on missions and on God so I could solidify my faith. I am honored to have lived in a place where community is huge and resembles the early Christian church. I am honored to eat beans and rice every day because I can enter into others suffering in an appropriate manner. I am honored to have had a bucket bath or freezing shower every day so I can learn how to be even more thankful. I am honored to be separated from my family and Chris for 4 months so I could learn how to love them and how to serve them better. I am honored to have killed a chicken and cooked a meal over a charcoal stove or wood burning stove because now I can appreciate my huge kitchen and the things God has blessed my life back home with. I am honored to have met close friends who I will treasure and love for the rest of my life. I am honored to have struggled so I could find happiness. Africa has changed me drastically, Josh told me when I left that the best advice he got before he left for Costa Rica was to not expect to return the same. With that expectation I have lived the life of an African realizing that my American attitude needed to be transformed. Not a single day that I have been here have I not seen or felt God in a very real way. I have learned how close to me He is if I just reach out to take His hand. I am humbled and honored mostly to be a child of God and to realize that no matter how far from home I may go, he is there to guide, challenge and love me through it all. I can honestly say this has been the hardest, most challenging and often times the most frustrating time of my life but it has also been the most growing, most humbling, and most exciting time of my life where I have come to closely know the God who brought me here. When I first left I had no idea why I was going, I did not want to go and I was incredibly fearful. Of all the things I have learned, the most important is that God is near, he is big but he is close, especially when your heart is lonely and broken. I do not think I could have learned these lessons sitting in my dorm room at Biola, I had to be completely isolated in a tiny town in Africa seeing starving, barefoot children and living with a family who makes less than $375 a year for me to have seen how very close God was. I will not come back the same; Africa has renewed, strengthened and illuminated my faith in the most extraordinary way!