I have exciting news that I am eager to share with you. I AM GOING TO AFRICA!!!!! Ever since I did my Discipleship Training School (DTS) and did my outreach phase/missions trip 4 years ago, I knew that I wanted to be a missionary. But I had no specific idea where I wanted to go, so I began asking God 3 questions: Where, What, and Why. I soon realized that I had a huge heart for Africa, specifically the Southern part of Africa. As I continued to ask God about what I was called to do in Africa he showed me that I come alive when I hear about AIDS and HIV in Africa. Then I asked the final question, “Why?” and the answer is bring faith to the faithless, hope to the hopeless, and to love the unloved – simply as Jesus did and continues to do. Then God gave me the verse 1 Corinthians 13:13, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” I believe this dream and passion to go to Africa started when I was around the age of 8 when I watched the movie The Lion King. I know now that Africa is not like the movie, but I still get excited thinking about when I will be going there.
So you may be asking, how did you get chosen to go to Africa? Every small group leader in the DTS gets put into consideration as to who will assist the outreach leader. In the DTS that I am staffing, there are 2 outreach locations for the students to choose from. One is to China and the other is to Africa. I talked to one person responsible for choosing outreach assistants and told them that I would love to go to Africa. A couple weeks later they approached me and asked if I would like to go to Africa. I screamed and said, YES!!!!! There will be 23 students going to Africa, and for every 5 students 1 staff person needs to go. So I will be assisting the leader along with a married couple and their 2 year old son.
The next question that may have crossed your mind is, where will you be going in Africa, and what will you be doing? We will be going to Johannesburg, South Africa for 3 weeks. Then we will be going to Dondo, Mozambique for the final 4 weeks of the outreach. In South Africa we will be working in the slums and also with AIDS babies. While in Mozambique we will be working with Heidi Baker’s ministry called Iris Ministries. This specific location that we will be at is boy’s orphanage ages between 7-18years old. We will be working hard on this trip by helping with farming, plowing fields, leading church services, loving on the widows and orphans, and many other things.
There are many more details to be worked out and our plane tickets will be bought soon. The tentative dates that we will be traveling will be from March 28th – May 7th. After arriving back in Denver, Colorado the students will go through a week of teaching and debrief times as well. They will then graduate on May 20th and will go back to their homes.
My current plan after the students graduate is to take a 3 week vacation where I will be spending about a week in Arvada, CO with my parents and then flying back home to Illinois with them for about 2 weeks. I’ve been wanting to spend more than a week in Illinois, because 1 week is not enough time to see family and friends. I am also hoping to share with friends, family, and supporters about specific stories and things that God did in my life during this trip. I believe that while I am in Africa God will give me answers to questions that I have been asking Him for awhile now.
I will try to send out another update before I leave for Africa.
