A few Sundays ago we went on a hike. I thought I was going to keel over, literally. We've been working on getting in shape for this since we arrived here 4 1/2 months ago. Little did I know I didn't work out nearly enough. We were climing the face of a mountain. No path in front of us. But that's kinda like our walk with God. He has a plan that we can't see we've just got to trust. So we get to going. Johnny, Alfred, Anica, and I are tagging in the back (I'm super slow and not a very skilled walker). I was ready to quit before we'd even gotten into it really. I thought these people are nuts I'll never make it up this. HA! I did it y'all. I climbed up and it was so rewarding. The view from up there is breath taking. The beauty of this country has yet to cease to amaze me. I sat there staring at the view just thanking God for all the things we are fortunite to have in life and to be able to see while I'm here. I also spent time praying for the people here. They are in a serious drought. The water level was lower then any of the South Africans with us had every seen there. Everyone and everything is in serious need of rain; buckets and buckets of rain. Going up this mountain made me think of walking with Jesus. We have to take the path we think God wants for us. We might let us go out of the way but brings us back to Him in the end. As we headed up this mountain we just had to follow each other and hope to make it to the tip in a reasonable amount of time. We stopped and looked, to breathe, to just rest. But one thing we can never do with God is stop. We have to press on. He'll lead us in the direction he wants us to go. We just have to trust with everything in us that He's leading us in the right direction. We might stumble but he'll pick us right back up. As we look back on our stumbles we can laugh at them because God had it under control the entire time. He loves us no matter how much we fail Him.
Today I got Elsie, a woman who works on base, new shoes. I have laundry day on Wednesday, and when hanging up my clothes, I ALWAYS forget to put on shoes to walk on the hot pavement by the laundry line...(us Globals have adopted the Africaner Life With No Shoes.) Elsie always laughs at me and asks me "Where are your shoes?!" My typical response is "I forgot them!" Haha, well I FINALLY remembered them and I made it a point to show her that I remembered my shoes that day. She laughed, and showed me hers as well. Boy were her shoes worn out. Now I'm not talking "Oh these are getting worn out, probably should get some new ones in the the next few weeks but these are still kind of okay" kind of worn out. I'm talking, falling apart, can see through the bottom of her shoes kind of worn out. I felt in that moment that I needed to get her shoes. I wasn't sure if it was God talking to me, or just my heart aching for my sweet friend Elsie, so I kind of let it be. I'd forgotten all about it until the other day in PEP, a local clothing store. I drifted over to the shoes section, and thought of Elsie immediately. I walked out of that store with a pair of bright red slip-ons for Auntie Elsie. When we got back to base, it was about the end of the work day for Elsie and the other women who work on base. I hurried to find Elsie and there she was in the laundry room again! As I gave her the shoes, I immediately started apologizing, saying I wasn't sure if they were the right size or if she'd like them, yada yada yada. They were a perfect fit. I'll never forget the smile on her face or the way she hugged me after she tried them on. She told me that she was speechless with thanks. It's amazing how God can lay things on your heart in order to bless someone else. By listening to God's voice, I got to bless Elsie. Thank God for allowing small things to speak loud.
As I was sitting in the Airport in GA, I thought God what are you getting me into? My fear of leaving hit me. I'd passed security and wasn't going back. The journey to get here was long and hectic. We started with a two hour flight delay. After arriving we couldn't find Mr. Palmer. He was told we would be three hours later than we were. After we were picked up, we stayed in Joburg in a Chinese church. The next morning we set off to come to Shayandima. A six hour driver turned into a 16 hour drive. We had a lot of stops to make. We also blew a tire and the trailer broke! Send me and email or Facebook message if you'd like to hear more humor from it. The first two weeks we had bootcamp. Upon arriving we had 5 minutes to pack a bag of things for two weeks. Hello freak out for me! WE camped around base the entire time. We did lots of work projects. They are building a hall for a gym and more classrooms/offices. We got the awesome privilege of painting, stacking bricks and of course trench digging. Neat the end we began to realize how much we were relying on God. We hand washed our clothes, took bush showers, changed our sleeping area and had to trust people we just met. We learned to cuddle with Jesus, we focused on Him and less our selves. Prayer becomes our new best friend. Those weeks we learned that God is all we needed in life.
Now to what we've done sense then... A basic week consists of base devotions every morning. We then go to help in the school all day. I work with grade 1 (love it). Everyday is something different after school. We have orphanage twice a week, maintenance, financial class and special school. Every Saturday is different. We have church and hangout on Sunday. |
AuthorJessica Hedge Archives
February 2016
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