IRELAND 2014: Learning to WALK

“For he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” Hebrews 13:5 (Joshua 1:5)

“We have the idea that God is going to do some exceptional ting, that He is preparing and fitting us for some extraordinary thing by and by, but as we go on in grace we find that God is glorifying himself here and now, in the present minute. If we have God’s say so behind us, the most amazing strength comes, and we learn to sing in the ordinary days and ways” – Oswald Chambers (My Utmost)

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” Hebrews 13:8

“All this time, I feel like you’ve been looking for something big to prove yourself maybe? You’ve always felt like you have to do things on your own. And now that you’re essentially heading to Africa with no plan, you probably feel like He’s sending you alone. And I know it’s scary and you’re afraid of missing out on better opportunities and you can’t really see God because of all this. But these times, I think, are when you can see Him the most” – Katie, in her letter she wrote me before she left

“It is such an answer to prayer that you have time to spend with Jesus to think and process. In my mind, if the whole point of your going over to Ethiopia was for the Lord to put you in a place where you would be able to sit and commune with him and talk with him, that would be worth it. I am being slowly convinced here that time with our Farther is the most important and to make choices that keep us away from Him is nullifying His grace to us” – Emily Nicholos, in an e-mail she recently sent

This morning I read the passage above in My Utmost for His Highest and realized how God is teaching me what it means to walk with Him instead of just believe things about Him. After the youth meeting on Sunday, I left really intimidated by the rest of the summer. Kids are easy to play with because they just flock to you and want to touch you. But 2 months provides WAY more potential than just playing with the kids. I have the opportunity to form relationships with the SVO staff, the youth, and the guardians. Which means that in the next 2 months, I’m going to have to be vulnerable and experience failure and rejection – 3 of the things I avoid the MOST. And even though I’m really excited because I know SO much is going to come of it, it’s a lot scarier than being chased around by a bunch of kids.

BUT after seeing the passage, reading through a couple more verses in Hebrews, and remembering things that people had told me over the past weeks, I realized that’s exactly why I’m here for 2 months. I think God’s showing me that He will never leave me or forsake me, even in my day to day life. And as Ethiopia becomes my “home” for the summer, it stops being this place where I expect huge “moments” that I can cling to and place my faith in. Not that I’ve stopped expecting big things from this summer. But the more settled I become here and the more routine life gets, the more potential I see for relationships to build instead of just one-time emotional conversations. I love high energy and “doing” all the time because I don’t think that I fully trust that God is with me in the mundane, every day aspects of life. So as my time in Ethiopia becomes more “normalized”, I’m terrified, but I see SO much purpose in it, and that’s cool.

“Through him let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” Hebrews 13:15

Random Updates:

On Sunday we had our first “Youth” meeting. It was kind of boring, which was cool because there’s a TON of ways that it can grow this summer.
I got corn rows! (Carey, I promised I wouldn’t come back with them, but I never said I wouldn’t get them…). It’s step #3 (I think I’m on #3?) in becoming Ethiopian. I met a couple of girls at the youth service on Sunday, and I told one of them I wanted hair like hers (college students can speak a good amount of English – all college classes are taught in English, so the more schooling they have, the better they are), and 20 minutes later I had cornrows. I’m pretty sure my scalp got a little burnt the next day (sorry Mrs. Lisa, I didn’t get your suggestion soon enough!), but it was TOTALLY worth it.
I MADE MY FIRST ETHIOPIAN FRIEND!!! Her name is Meti and she’s 22 and an accountant. She told me she liked my hair (after it was in the new hair-do), so naturally we hit it off. She spoke really good English because she’d been through school, and we were with two 10 year olds who also spoke English pretty well. It was awesome – we ended up hanging out for about 2 hours talking about random things (the 10 year olds helped entertain too). At the end of our conversation, we decided we were gonna start meeting up on Saturdays during kids “Sunday School” and have a bible study. I have no idea what it’s gonna look like, but I’m SO excited because I feel like we’re going to learn a lot from each other. I also just wanna know what college life is like/life was like growing up here/make an Ethiopian friend.

o On that note, I had to bail for this Saturday because we’ll be in Ambo with the team, but I got to have my FIRST text message conversation in Ethiopia. Now we just need to be FBO and we’ll be REAL friends.

We got to see two of the businesses that some of the groups had made through BOK. It was amazing, and spoke SO much for what the program is doing and how it is actually empowering this women to believe in themselves, think for themselves, and become self-sustainable in order to provide for their family.

- Ambo tomorrow! I don’t know if we’ll have internet, so there may not be posts until Sunday or Monday.