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| This is not a one way street. The cars to my left were impatient to get out and took over the left hand side of the street. |
When Kevin and I began our journey into ministry, we both
felt led as individuals, but also felt told to go as a family. We were both
interviewed separately, as well as together to determine if we both felt called
to this path. We began training together, attending orientation and many other
classes together. We did ministry partnership together and even did language
school together. We have been on this journey together, every step of the way,
each of us called on this path.
But from the moment we landed in Africa, our paths have
split. Kevin goes into the hangar each day, working on what he was called to
do, what we were called to do as a team. He repairs planes that take vaccines
to villages, he flies doctors into remote places that have no names, he walks
alongside other pastors as they go from village to village, and he talks to our
national workers daily and is eagerly learning their cultures and languages (he
can honestly greet you in over 5 languages now). But what do I do each day?
What do I contribute to our “team”?
I have said over and over that our life is very much a
roller coaster here – ups and downs, twists and loops, fast moments and slow
moments. And sometimes I don’t like it here. I do not feel very valued here
when I have my low days. It is hard to remind myself that God has personally
called me here when street children bang on my car demanding I give them
something; when a police officer pulls me over for having my “blinker on too
long” and demands I give them all the money in my wallet; when I have to spend
20 minutes arguing with the person trying to cheat me out of my phone units
when I know exactly how much each unit costs; when a vendor stands at my car window
while waiting in traffic trying to get me to buy something I don’t need and
tries to tell me I must give him money to eat when I buy nothing; when a bus
cuts me off in traffic causing me to swerve into another lane and each person
in the bus proceeds to stick their head out the window and point and laugh at
me while I am now stuck behind them in traffic for 20 minutes and the driver
continuously taunts me by sticking his hands out to point at me and clap; when
someone only sees me as an easy means for money and not for my value; when I
make my daughter scream while removing mango fly larva from under her skin.
Yes, sometimes I absolutely do not like it here. It is hard. I do not get to
see the things that Kevin sees daily. Where he is told how much he means to
someone, where a man cries because Kevin gives him his first Bible written in
French/Lingala, where a child’s life is saved because of an emergency medical flight
my husband does, where people sing and clap with joy when the plane flies in, where
an entire village receives a much needed measles vaccine during an outbreak, where
crowds of people wait to talk to the pilot who makes the world different and
better for them.
