A Piece of My Heart

I went to Africa
in the summer of 2006, the year my sister got married. I signed up not because
I thought I would go and change the world, but because somehow I knew that I
was supposed to be there. That was a crazy summer for me, I had finished my
first year of teaching and was again looking for a teaching job because I did
not get rehired at the school I was at. I was in my sister’s wedding which was
the weekend after school was out, then was able to spend time with family that
came down for the wedding. A few weeks later I was off to Africa with a group
of friends and acquaintances from church to work with kids and do a “camp” for
kids in South Africa.
I went knowing I would love it, but not knowing what God was going to do.

I look back on that trip and wonder
what God was doing in that time in my life, when everything was falling apart
and I had nothing to cling to but Him. Our group in 2006 had a week long camp
for the kids in South Africa.
I have to admit that rather than stepping out in faith and allowing God to work
through me in the lives of those kids, I hid. I volunteered to take care of the
little kids, the younger brothers and sisters of the kids who were coming to
camp. The two and three year olds who were carried there by their five and six
year old siblings. We played in a little room, colored, danced, sang, blew
bubbles and for some of the older ones we learned simple verses like their
siblings. I know that what I was doing was important, but I wonder what God
could have done through me if I had let Him really use me that summer. I loved Africa, part of it was the people and their hunger for
love and affection. Another part of it was the beauty of the place and their
need for hope. I would have stayed if I could have. The missionaries we were
working with had some interns and I would have loved to have joined them, but
God closed that door for me at that time. He used Theresa to speak wisdom into
my life when she told me that I needed to trust God in the small things before
I could trust him in the big things. I had grown up in the church and from my
understanding I was trusting God, but I also knew that she was right.

I returned home that summer
thinking that I would always love Africa and knowing that I would go back to serve
there again, but I never expected to really be moving there. The summer of 2007
did not allow me to return to Africa as much
as I tried. I had my envelopes addressed to send out for support, but the dates
for the trip changed and I was no longer able to go, so I let Africa slip away
from me, still keeping a piece of it in my heart and knowing that a piece of my
heart remained in Africa.

It was in 2008 that the opportunity
to go back to Africa arose. My roommate,
Nateka, and her friend, Paige were going to Swaziland,
Africa with a church in Birmingham.
I didn’t know what the connection was, but I knew that I could not stay here
and let them go to Africa without me, so I
signed up. Honestly it was a very challenging situation for me. I had joined a
group of people that already knew each other and I was one of the outsiders.
This is now a group of people that I will always love and cherish in my life,
but at the time the adversary used that insecurity in my life to try to get me
to not go. God however had bigger plans
and placed people in my life to assure me that this is where I needed to be.

Our trip to Africa
that summer and the adventures that we had were amazing. God used things like
shoes to minister to out hearts and in that time of serving him in their
everyday life needs He spoke to my heart. I had once again left the states
without a teaching job waiting for me when I returned. I had joked with friends
and family that I just might not come back, but I’m not sure I really believed
that. God had bigger plans, He usually does. The missionaries that we worked
with in the summer of 2008 needed help, mostly administratively, which is not
really my passion, but I saw it as being able to change lives and spending time
holding kids that don’t all have the love that the kids I hold in the nurseries
here in the states have. I returned “home” with my heart still in Africa not know what God was going to do. Kriek and
Jumbo, the missionaries in Swazi recommended praying about returning for three
to six months before pursuing anything, so I began to do that and my heart
still said go.

I began the process of applying to
go to Swaziland with
Adventures in Mission
and was able to meet with Jumbo in October when he was in the states. I went to
the meeting, not knowing what to expect. I wanted to go and serve to love on
kids when I could but knowing that as of the summer what they really needed was
administrative help. I came out of that meeting with a new vision. That vision
is described in I want to be a …