Why Everyone Needs to go to Africa

September 16, 2011 at 11:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

So, I have been home for a few days now and am still having a hard time processing everything.  I don’t even really know where to begin with explaining my trip or what to do with myself now that I am home.  The one thing I am absolutely sure of is that EVERYONE needs to go to Africa.  At least once, but I am pretty sure if you go once, you’ll go back again.  If you go, you will forever be changed.  You will fall in love with a beautiful country and her beautiful people and, more importantly, you will be reminded of the amazing grace of the Gospel.  So, the main reason I am trying to post, even though I have no idea where to begin or what to say, is to encourage everyone to go.  You will not regret it.  I highly recommend going here and signing up now to go on one of their upcoming trips with Sixty Feet.  It will be worth every second away from your family and every penny spent.  While in Uganda, I came face to face with some major ugliness.  Not in the poverty or the people I met while there, but in myself.  Here I am, supposed to be loving and serving those without families and a home, and I am still consumed with myself.  When am I going to get to eat lunch?  It is really hot, when will we get to get a drink?  Man, it smells really bad, when can I get out of this room?  I really miss my family, when am I going to get to use the internet?  Ugghhh, there isn’t toilet paper-again???? And the list goes on (and on and on.)  I KNOW.  It’s bad.  It’s selfish.  It’s ugly.  It’s true.  It is completely and utterly amazing to me that God would look on me in love.  I have done NOTHING to deserve it.  In fact, even when I am trying REALLY, REALLY hard to do the right thing or say the right thing, I fall short.  I am selfish and undeserving and broken, yet He loves me.  He saved me.  He gave His only Son for me and I totally do not deserve it.  Grace is the only thing that saves me and the beauty of the Gospel and His Love becomes even more real to me.  When the Gospel grabs hold of my heart, yet again, then I am truly free to love and to serve.  Not because I am such a good person (cause I’m not), but because I am SO LOVED by Him that I just need to share some of that love with others.  Another reason everyone needs to go to Africa is to get some perspective.  Facebook, blog-stalking, reality tv, and shopping for fun hardly seem like priorities anymore.  It is so easy to get comfortable in our North American bubbles.  It is so easy to forget that there are many people in the world right now that work way harder than I do; (and are way smarter and sweeter than I am) who struggle every single day just to meet their basic needs.  Things like running water are actually a luxury.  It is hard to believe, unless you go and see it for yourself.  We take so much for granted, and we give so little even though we have so much.  The only problem is that once you have seen it, you become accountable.  We have to do more because we know.  There isn’t an excuse.  I am faced with my ugliness all over again because part of me still REALLY wants to go on like I did before.  I still want to waste time and money and then use excuses for why it’s okay.  Thankfully, God is gracious, though, and I am slowly learning that living that way will not satisfy.  So, now I am faced with what to do.  How to apply what I have seen and make changes in my life that matter.  I will completely screw up many times I am sure, but God can still use me.  If you want your life to forever be changed, you need to go.  And if you don’t, then you need to go even more.  We are completely missing the point of this life.  To get the gospel and to gain some perspective, you need to go.

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