Africa Reflections #1

My heart, mind and soul are full. Full but longing for more. I think about Jesus telling the woman at the well that he would give her living water and she would never thirst again, and how we are completely satisfied in him and yet in the midst of our satisfaction we long for more and that's where I find myself today. Over the next several days and posts, I want to take the opportunity to talk about my experiences in Africa. I just got back last night and have spent the morning uploading pictures and reflecting on all that I've seen and thought over the last 10 days. My prayer is that I'll never be the same.

Above is a picture that captures the moment that I consider to be the number one highlight of the trip for me personally. A little background first. We planned this trip with our primary mission being to build a clinic that Watermark had funded for the people of Makamba, the southernmost province of Burundi. But we also went into it with the mindset of "T.I.A." which means "This Is Africa" and you never know when, what, or how your plans will unfold (side note: wish our lives were a little more this way). So the third full day that our team was there, we arrived at the work site and there were no construction workers there, no foreman, and really nothing for us to do. So, we spent the entire day just being with the people. I remember Bob Pyne, one of the staff members for ALARM, meeting with us a few months ago and basically saying, "Presence is far more important than program," meaning that our Western mentality was good for nothing and that just being with people was more important that accomplishing any task. He was right.

So right before this, we were walking along when an elderly woman stopped us and asked if we could help her. She had walked from her home outside the village to come to the clinic in hopes of receiving an injection to help with her asthma. When she arrived, there were no more injections for her and now she would have to walk back home with labored breathing and little more than a few tablets of Aspirin to help (which it doesn't). We told her that unfortunately, we could do nothing for her, but we prayed and shared with her about Jesus. Tracy Lau and Merritt Olsen did a great job of loving on her and I stood back, watched, prayed and cried. I cried for her because of how simple it would be to meet this need back home and how there are thousands and thousands of doses of this medication sitting on shelves in the US that will be thrown away before it's ever used and how wasteful and foolish that seemed in the midst of this. But I cried more for the destructiveness of sin, selfishness, hard-heartedness, and all the sins that so easily entangle us that leave this world broken and fallen.

We left her and I continued to cry, pulling my sunglasses down to hide the tears. I found a pile of bricks and began to help Jeff Stanley stack them. After a few minutes, some of the kids, including my buddy Nikeza came and began to help me (by the way, can your 3 year old pick up 6 bricks at a time and carry them 10 feet? There's can!). We moved bricks for a while and then I told them, let's take a break and I sat down on this pile of rocks and told them I would tell them a story and teach them a song. Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded by kids and adults alike and Christine, one of our translators came to help me tell the story. I told them the story that Jesus told at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7 where Jesus says that if you listen to what he says and do these things, you are like a wise man who builds his house on the rock, but if you do not, you are like the foolish man who builds his house on the sand. Sitting only a few feet away from the clinic that is built on it's cement foundation and with large stones that we and the team before us had moved to begin to reinforce the floor, I used it to illustrate my point. I pleaded with them to listen to Jesus, to live like he lives and love like he loves. We sang the song, "The wise man built his house upon the rock, the wise man built his house upon the rock . . ." and the kids did the hand motions. It was priceless. Then, Christine asked them in Kirundi, who can repeat the story back for us. And several of them raised their hands. Christine saw a man standing behind me raise his hand and called on him to share the story again. Verbatim, he went back through the story and told people to be wise and to build their lives on Jesus.

When he finished, we all applauded and I stood up to find him. I asked him his name and he told me it was Peter (not making this stuff up people. The guy named "Rock" was the one who retold the story about the wise man building his house on the rock). I put my finger in his chest and told him that it was his job to tell all of the people of the village the stories about Jesus, I told him that I had to go home but that he lived here and the children would listen to him if he would tell them the stories. You see, the adults, even in the churches, do not teach the kids. They send the kids outside the church to play and run around while they sing and worship inside. I don't know if he got it or not, but I hope he did.

The day continued with all sorts of moments like this, but that was my favorite. I was humbled that God would use me like that, and astounded when I thought, "This must have been what it was like for Jesus to walk through the towns in Israel and Judea during his day." The Africans would surround you, whether you were doing anything or not and just stare at you and want to touch your skin or whatever and listen to you tell them stories. It was unbelievable. The ALARM staff told us that the impact of this would be huge for these people, because typically the mzungus (white people) only talk with the rich or go and hang out at the resorts or with government leaders, isolated from the people, but we were there touching them, hugging them, and playing with them. As Christine said so simply, "You are loving people!"

I'm praying that I will take more advantage of simple opportunities to love people. Tell a story, teach a song, hug someone who's dirty, and do it in the name of Jesus, because it's all about Him anyway. Yesu arakukunda (Jesus loves you!). More later.

This is me with my buddy Nikeza

This is me and Christine. Fanta Citrus is really good, by the way.