I think the hardest thing about coming back from a trip as life changing as traveling to Africa is struggling to remember what you wanted to change. It’s so much easier when you are forced to leave your comfortable life behind to see all of the things that need to be different.
This is my second time visiting Africa and each time I swear I will come back different. I put on my best missionary face and make a list of goals that get lost in my bible the week i return. I swear I won’t be so selfish, so demanding, so human but then a week passes and my “necessities” are back and I have forgotten what that amazing country has taught me. Somehow I forget the way I felt when I saw someone who truly had to rely on Jesus. I forgot the longing from my heart to be that dependent on the only thing that really matters. I forgot how much my soul needed to be reminded of the real simplicities of life and more than anything I forgot how much I have really been blessed with.
I want to remember though. I want to be different because of what I have seen. As one of Brooke Frasier’s songs says so perfectly, “faith without deeds is dead”. I can’t come back from Uganda and not change who I am because my faith pushes me to be better, love deeper, and give the world a taste of Africa. We all need a taste of Africa, we need to remember what it is like to really need God, to really trust God, and to really accept that this world has nothing to offer. It’s harder for me to give up what God asks me to because I have a lot of crap, a lot of earthly things I am holding to and a lot of plans I have made for myself. I can’t grasp what living on faith is because I have savings to ensure that never happens (or at least ben does). The facts of life in America make total surrender to God a daily discipline but once you have seen it you can’t help but want it.
