This morning during church, it was so incredible to hear my daddy preach. I love the wisdom that God has given to him over the years, and I love seeing his passion for Christ come out as He tells of God's love and as he teaches how to be real, radical Christ-followers. It blesses me to have been raised up in a family that believes the things I believe to be true, and it blesses me that I learn more about Jesus and how to love Him when I'm around them. They are my home, and no matter where I might find myself in the future, they will always be my home.

But as I looked out the window, the dirt was not red. The people that walked by weren't black, they were just brown. The temperature the last couple weeks I'm pretty sure have been below zero(totally exaggerating.. we live in Guatemala for goodness sakes!), instead of the temperature so high it leaves you sweating all the time. I heard English being translated into Spanish instead of into Luganda. Tonight as I sit on my bed, typing all this up, my heart aches for Uganda. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Guatemala and I have been so blessed to live here the last 2 years! My heart aches because of the HUGE need that is there that isn't being met, and it aches because I long to be there because being there is my heart and my passion..

I miss red dirt covering my clothes, I miss black faces and beautiful hearts that you can see in their eyes. I miss African accents and African beads and the servant hearts, even though have have nothing else left to give.
My heart breaks for those kids who were so eager for biscuits(cookies) and water and coloring pages because maybe that is what will fill their empty tummies that afternoon and maybe that coloring page will be one of the only things they own to play with and enjoy. I ache for the kids that have mud homes and have to pay for the latrine, or else just make the streets their bathroom. I ache for those who have broken family because poverty drives people to do ugly things and so does Satan and the lack of God's love. My heart aches for those who's hearts are hard, yet still look for love and acceptance and are crushed every time they aren't shown the love they so desperately long for and deserve. I ache for a culture that lies to you and tells you it's okay to lie, hit, cheat, hate, and every other wrong thing. I ache for children who will wake up somehow skinnier and with less hair and peeling skin than the night before that will likely live the rest of their life without knowing Jesus and will most likely die from the lack of filling up those empty tummies. A place where poverty is HUGE, love is scarce, HIV is high, babies are born all the time, someone needs to step up and be that Christ-follower they claim to be. Someone needs to share His love and grace and hope with those people who desperately need to hear it. Jesus calls us to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." We are to go and teach and love and sacrifice and serve with all we are because that is exactly what Jesus did when He was on this earth and we are to follow in His footsteps and be just like Him. And if He commands this of us and if He says we must do it, then when we're not doing it, doesn't that mean we're sinning and betraying Him and not living up to the name we have taken for ourselves, a Christ-follower? I'm not saying that everyone is called to be a missionary. But I am saying that I believe there are far more people out there who are called to be who simply don't and they run away from the Great plan that God has in store. The church of American is right now the most prosperous group of Christians that has ever lived on this earth. We have almost unlimited resources, money, and opportunities than any other time period before us. And my question for all of us (yes, I said us meaning myself included) is, What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do about this increasing need around us? Are we going to just sit back in our comfortable lives and expect that someone else will do it? Because if everyone says that, then no one will ever go and no one will ever teach and His name will never be proclaimed or taken anywhere.
I will go. I will take this beautiful news of hope and love and Jesus Christ and I will go, though it will cost me everything. He has called me to do it, so I will follow after Him, learning more about Him and learning to love Him more and more with each step I take.

And now since I have this passion in me and since I have this calling, I find myself asking, Where do I go from here? How do I go about living life in Guatemala again? How do I prepare for my ministry in the future while I'm here? How do I get work? How do I search for schools and pick one and actually attend it and work hard for 2 years? How do I apply the faith and the things I learned while I was in Uganda? How to I keep myself from falling into the very same things that hindered me and that so easily entangled me, and how do I run with perseverance the race marked out for me? (Hebrews 12:1) I get overwhelmed when I think of those things and when I look at my life now and see the ways that I already am slipping into those things that I was so convicted of while I was in Africa. And if I can do that even after being in Africa, then how can I ever be impacted and have it actually stick with me? But then I was reminded:

We need to stop wasting our time and stop being afraid of what we cannot see and do not know. We need to move forward full force because of what we do know. -Erwin McManus in The Barbarian Way. 

I just need to cling to Jesus Christ and I need to follow after Him and learn to be more like Him from reading my Bible and listening to His still small voice when He speaks it. I need to learn to love Him more and more every single day. And if I'm doing that, then everything else will fall into place. I do know that He is faithful and will hear me when I call out for help and when I beg Him for forgiveness and ask Him to help me to change. I know that even when I'm amidst adversity and discomfort (and sometimes even comfort), He can help bring me through if I ask Him to and if I actually try to come through too. I will love others and He will show me the steps I need to take to get to where I need to be in my future. And He will teach me to love and be thankful for the place that I find myself at right now. How can we ever get to the future if we never stop and take time to thank Him for where we are now? We are always in transition time. Every day is a step closer to our new goal.. and once that goal is reached, then we find a new goal and push on towards that.

Right now I can love and spend tons of time with my family. Right now I can research and find schools to attend hopefully in fall of 2013. Right now I can fall more in love with Jesus as He teaches me through His Word and as He speaks to me every day. Right now He can teach me through ministries here in Guatemala, whether they link directly with the ministry I'll have in Uganda, or whether they are just helping me to gain more experience on the mission field and help me to build relationships and teach and show God's love in different ways. Right now I can stop and be thankful and praise Jesus that He has brought me this far, and cling to Him every single day as He takes me to who He wants me to be, to the places I'm supposed to go, and to the ministries I'm supposed to do. Right now I can learn all I can from my mommy and daddy while I'm still under their roof and I can take advantage of the opportunity that I have of accountability with my sisters.. and I can learn from their wisdom too. And I can intentionally love my younger siblings and show them a love that I have failed to show them all these years of being their older sister.

God is good through every cirumstance. He always has a plan for what He's bringing you through now. And He always wants you to follow radically after Him, seeking Him and loving Him more and more, and He wants you to go with Him and teach others about who He is.. even to the hard places. He wants you to serve, to love, to share, to go, to disciple, and to be the very person He created you to be. He wants you to live up to the potential He has for you and He wants you to use the talents He gave you to get there. And He wants all the glory and the honor and the praise to go to Himself because it is only through Him that all of this is accomplished. It is only through Him that we are saved and made new and it is only His love that we so desperately long for and find when we seek Him. It is He who does all this, because without Him, we are nothing. And that is the only reason for which we can do anything He calls us to do. His power is made perfect in our weakness. He meets us where we end. He carries us when we can't go anymore. He speaks through us and moves in us and through us. He is God and we are not. 

Jesus' hope and where God's leading me

I know that Carissa and I got back home almost 2 weeks ago (Nov 1st... adoption day! :) ), and I'm sorry that it has taken so long for me to write. My experience in Africa was one that I will never, EVER forget about and I PRAISE Jesus for letting me have such an experience of serving Him and others, of loving with more love I could've imagined, and with SO much peace as I was doing what He was asking me to do. I believe I updated you here and there in the first weeks of being there, but I figured I'd fill you in on bits and pieces here and there that stood out to me and that taught me the most..

It was the third week of me being in the beautiful country of Uganda, and I found myself right smack-dab in the heart of the Namowango slum. I had prayed to Jesus countless times before about being in the heart of Africa because that is where I felt He was calling me. I remembered years back to when I was sitting on my bed in my room of our comfy house in our comfy town in our comfy state in our comfy country and I begged Him to take me out of that comfort. Even though I was absolutely terrified of what that might mean, I begged Him anyways because I knew that was what He wanted for me, so I wanted it to because His plan is always best. And I couldn't believe that I was finally there. I look around and all around me is poverty. Everything is covered in red dirt and everything has stains from anything and everything. Trash covered so much of the ground and red dirt huts and hardly-holding-together wood shacks lined dirt roads. Streams of water that I'm almost sure wasn't just water ran through everyone's homes and I cannot even describe to you the stench. But even though I found myself in such hopelessness and hurt and horror, I looked around and saw black faces staring at me, each one full of stories I can't even imagine, each one with a human heart just like mine that God gave them. Everyone smiled at me when I smiled first and said, "hi" and each one wanted to be noticed by the mzungu(me, the white girl). I wished I could go around to every single little person and pick them up and twirl around with them in my arms and whisper to them that they are special and I wanted to tell them that I loved them and Jesus loved them, even if they didn't understand because it is the truth. I saw hurt souls that have been lied to and misled and compromised so much more than I could even try to comprehend. And it hit me. How in the world am I supposed to make even the slightest difference in such poverty? I'm just me, there's no way I could ever be enough or do enough to even make a dent. And as I sat there listening to a mother telling about her home situation of not having toilets or showers or having to wait in line all day to fill up their always empty water buckets, I begged God to whisper His still small voice to me. He called me there, He provided and made the way for me to be there, so what was I supposed to do? And as I stood there trying to take in as much as I possibly could so I could try to take it home with me, He whispered to me and it was so clear that He might as well have yelled it across the whole country.

My purpose in being there had nothing to do with their lack of food or clothes or money for rent. There's no way little Teisha could change even a single thing there. My purpose is to share His love and hope with anyone and everyone. I am supposed to share Jesus' saving story with anyone and everyone because even if I can't change a single thing about their physical state, saving their souls is what matters. People can have so much or so little in this life, but that doesn't matter because all of it will be thrown away in the end.. but if I can help with their physical state to, then I will because I believe that's what Jesus would do.

As the Scripture says, 'Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.' For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile-the Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom the have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'" Romans 10:11-15

That is why I am called to be smack-dab in the heart of the slum in the middle of Uganda, Africa. He has called me to be those beautiful feet who bring good news. And I am so humbled that He has chosen me to do so. Because even though I was there to hopefully bless them, I'm absolutely convinced that they have blessed me so much more. And I am so honored that He has asked me to go back there and bless and be blessed even more. And it's not me doing the work either, it's not me blessing lives. It is the God above of all, the Creator of all things, the Servant of servants who does it through me. And He gave me a chance while I was there in Uganda to share those good news and His love.

A few weeks later when I was at another ministry working in another slum in Uganda, I got the opportunity to share my testimony with a group of about 25-35 women who have lived as slaves to poverty ever since they were born into poverty. I have learned over the years that God had a purpose for all that happened when I was a little girl, for when I found myself in a situation that I thought was completely and utterly hopeless. I knew He had a plan for that hurt, for that loneliness and abandonment, and I had thought that I had already seen almost all of the good that was going to benefit from it. But I was so wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I know that my story doesn't scale compared to the stories they live and face every single day. I know that my troubles were so little compared to the troubles people all around me have, so I don't pretend that my story was worse than it was. But it was hard, and it is a story of hope and that is why I shared it.

As I shared with the women, I'd say a sentence, Cliff would translate it into Luganda and then Lilian would translate it into Acholi(the native language of that tribe). I shared all that happened when I was little and the things I felt and I shared how God brought me through and how He was there with me the whole time, even when I didn't understand. And I told them, "I don't know most of your names, I don't know the stories of your lives, the things you have been through to bring you to be the person you are today. I don't know the things you face every single day, most of them are harder than I can even imagine. And I can't promise you that God will take you out of any of those situations. I can't promise you that you'll find yourself with more money you've ever had, I can't promise that He will make every relationship better and all circumstances better.. But I can promise you a love and a hope that you have never imagined. I can promise you that even when you walk through the darkest times in life, He will walk with you through them and when you can't stand on your own, He'll carry you. And that makes the difference. He came to save souls, to comfort the lonely, to mend the broken-hearted. He is the God of the universe and He holds all things together.. and He holds our hearts together too, even when it feels like everything else is falling apart." I told them of when God called me to Uganda, and even though I didn't know why back then, I still followed Him anyways. And as I followed Him, He showed me why I was supposed to be there, and that reason was so that I could stand there in front of all those women and tell them of His love and goodness despite all the ugliness and lies all around. And I also said more words that He put in my mouth to say, and I cannot begin to try to describe to you the emotion that was in that room.
That was the reason I was in Uganda in the time that I was there. That is what I am called to do. And that is exactly what I'm going to do when I get to go back.

And not only do I want/feel called to share that story, but I feel called to teach more. To teach of Jesus' life, lives of others who lived before us who had wisdom to share with us that we can learn from. To teach the very words God breathed so that we can get to know Him better and so that we can learn to follow Him radically through life even harder and more closely behind Him than we ever have before.

And for that reason, I feel that God has called me to go to Bible school so I can learn more so I can teach more. It terrifies me thinking of living back in the states, without my family, doing school work that I was so thankful to be done with when I graduated from high school. But it is what I must do. It is in His plan for me, so I must radically follow behind, trusting He'll bring me through. Where God calls, He provides, He equips, He loves, and like I said, He has a purpose.