This week God has really been teaching me a lot about surrender. Right now I’m reading this book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan (highly reccommend it). It’s about living big for God and having crazy love for him. It gives the analogy of a movie and those who are casted as an extra. We tend to treat our lives as this really important thing. We rent out a whole movie theater on opening night just to watch us be an extra in a movie. We’re on the screen for just seconds and think that the movie is about us. That’s like the big picture when it comes to God....

2/16 We went to the hospital today which is what I’ll typically be doing on Tuesday (and Friday) mornings. The hospital is nothing like what we are used to in America. They are separated into three different wards: men’s, women’s and children’s. The wards have different sections that have around 8 beds per section. There is no privacy and they only have single rooms for patients with TB. People are just out in the open for everyone to see. It’s very hot in there, too, which makes most patients wear little to no clothes at all in order to stay cool. Many...

    This is Thaban. He is five years old. He loves to be held and to play. His eyes sparkle when he smiles, and so many of us on our team have fallen completely in love with him. Thaban can’t speak. We are told that he does not swallow properly. Because of this, Thaban constantly has a tremendous amount of drool dripping out of his mouth and caked all over his clothes. Thaban teaches me how incredibly selfish I can be. It’s often so hard to pick Thaban up when you are hot, soaked with sweat, and the last thing you want to do is have drool all over your clothes,...

  <–Mandesa- she’s hillarious! Another week in Africa.  This week our team took some time listening to the Lord as to where we felt led to minister. We’ve been taking another week to get acclimated to our surroundings and build relationships with others. It takes a while to understand concepts of their culture since it is so different from ours. Some examples- most of the time it isn’t appropriate to call an older woman by her name. It’s similar to the concept of Mr. and Mrs. but rather mage or gogo. Also, when offered food it is always considered...

  Earlier this week my team and I had the opportunity to visit a hospital near by. We were there to pray for, encourage, and simply love on the patients and their families. We saw physical brokenness and suffering. Most of which seemed to be caused by things that are rarely seen in the states because they are completely preventable. As I was walking into the children’s ward I saw an older woman sitting alone in front of a tiny bundle that was on the table in front of here. I approached her and asked if I could sit down and I saw that the bundle was the frail, tiny body of a...

On Monday we went to a wildlife reserve park.  We spent a couple of hours driving around, fully embracing our American tourist-ness.  We were a little disappointed that a giraffe was not seen, but we have not lost hope…we will see one!  After driving around we ended up at a picnic area.  We chatted for a few minutes then split up to spend time with our Heavenly Father.  I began my time claiming John 10:27 that as a child of God we will hear his voice and know that it is Him.  We had two hours to spend in God’s presence and seek Him regarding His...