I can’t begin to express everything that’s happened. We have just finished our “debriefing” where we stayed at a team member’s home in a town called Sabie. We had two days where it seems we did nothing but talk about what happened. A dozen hours of talking and we only scraped the surface of what has happened to and through us during the last 12 weeks while on ‘Outreach’ in Uganda and NW South Africa.
In the end, our team decided that the most impactful things about the whole trip were: Learning how to listen to and abide in God, who we’re discovering is more faithful to us than we have ever imagined. Truly basing each day on following God’s heart for us has led to an incredible maturation in every individual on our team. Looking back, most of our memories and significant moments centered around the individuals who we met along the way. People like Agnes and Martha who have turned their homes into soup kitchens for all the hungry kids they can get a hold of. And Els, who built an orphanage out of nothing and now is trying to start a hospital. And Lawrence, who couldn’t believe that we would go anywhere without preaching to everyone present. And the dozens of other people we bumped into who have dedicated their entire lives to simply loving other people with whatever skills they have. These people have inspired me by showing the extent that personal talents can be used for.
I added up some of the numbers to be able to look back over where our team has been.
Over 3,000 hours of service on outreach. We preached or performed at over 10 church services. Worked extensively with 2 orphanages. Hoe’d 5 large fields. Got 5 cases of Malaria. Communicated across at least 8 language barriers. Organized games for over 1,000 different children. Distributed ARV medication to about 250 people with HIV. Began a soccer and Basketball team and appointed coaches that began running the teams before we left. Saw over 30 people decide to devote their lives to living for Jesus as their Lord and savior.
The list of ways we served goes on and on. But compared to the needs we saw in Africa, it felt completely worthless at times. On one of the last days of outreach we walked through a “Squatter Camp.” 40,000 + people living in abject poverty. Not even running water or the means to daily food. We put in hours of work at this camp but felt incapable of doing much to help these people.
Even after serving thousands of people these last months, our team had an overwhelming sense that the most permanent change came in what God did in our lives. Mostly he showed us all a lot of ways that we could grow up and then guided us towards doing so (miraculously at times).
So now we’ve just finished relaxing for 4 days. We went on a safari and saw really big African animals. We have rejoined all of our other classmates from all over the world in Cape Town, where we’ll spend a final week processing the whole journey of this school before saying goodbye. We look forward to seeing you all very soon.
-Keith and Lisa in Africa
