So you might be wondering- why is this girl still blogging? I thought her race was over? Well it isn’t. It never will be. Yes the season has come to a close but the lessons I learned and the commissions I received from the Lord will echo into eternity.
I keep catching myself wondering if this year was a dream or reality. Was I really gone for 11 months? Did I really meet those people and see the things that I’ve written about…. What in the world did I do this year? And what the heck do I do now?! Did I waste an entire year of my life? Can anyone see a difference in me? If they can’t… does that mean it isn’t real?
After a week of pondering I can finally answer...
I didn't go on this race to prove anything to anyone. I went on this trip because I recognized it was what God created me to do and He was clearly calling me to it. I grew and I changed this year and it is undeniable. I’ve been humbled, freed of shame, learned to walk in confidence and found my identity in Christ and Christ alone. I’ve come face to face with unacceptable realities in this world and fought and prayed to overcome them. I’ve brought heaven to earth. I’ve shown the shamed, dirty, broken and desperate the love of Christ. And I know I still have a lot more growing to do (and I mean a lot.)
I went on the race not knowing what to expect, and God showed up. And now I’ve been struggling trying to figure out how to mesh my worlds. So far I’ve…
--Cried at pictures of steak in sky miles magazines (not really sure why but I couldn’t help it)
--Been brought to tears at the sight of homeless men on the streets- not because of how little they have, but how much
--Blog stalked people still on the field
--Induced legit panic attacks for three nurses at the local center for infectious diseases as I described my conditions and health over the past year (no worries, after some debate they decided I don’t need to be quarantined and am probably just fine).
--Drank tap water at every given opportunity just because I know it wont poison me
--Used world race lingo that makes absolutely no sense to the people around me
--Realized that “like typhoid” is not an appropriate American response to, “How do you feel?”
--And spent a lot of time praying, reflecting, worshipping and reading over some of my journals from the year
The words I got as I prayed into our last month of ministry on the race have extended to this season: Battle and Minister in the Holy Spirit. I can do that here the same way I did out there: with all of my heart through prayer and obedience.
At training camp we stood up on our chairs, jumped, danced and screamed declarations at the top of our lungs. We made promises to God and challenges to the devil... And we didn't declare that we would storm the gates of hell for a season. We will battle for a lifetime. We ARE an army RISIN up to break EVERY chain. This didn’t end August 31st 2011. This won’t end.
The last words I heard my squad mates shout to me as the train doors closed in the Atlanta airport and they sped away from my life were: enjoy your freedom
I am free. Free to make my own choices. Free to eat and drink whatever I want. Free to worship, or not. Free to pray, or not. Free to open my Bible in public without fear of persecution. Free to pretend this year never happened. Free to fall back into old habits. Free to do whatever I want. But I now know that choosing to live like the world isn’t actually choosing to be free- it’s choosing to make yourself a slave to sin. I never want to go back to who I was before the race. And I won’t. I am free.
Where am I? In America
Where am I? In God’s will
Where are you? Can you feel His presence?
Today was my last day of ministry on the World Race. I can’t believe how long I have been out here and how quickly it has flown by. We got up at 6am to catch a bus out to the village and as usual we were met by adorable screaming kids climbing over the walls, shaking our hands and giggling. The line up for the day was sermons down by the river, baptisms, girl’s program, men’s program, leaders program and close the month in prayer… of course none of those things happened as planned.
Two hours later I found myself sitting in a field, surrounded by cows, sheep, idols and temples, listening to my squad mates tell 30 children how they can lead their community to Christ, the power and worth that they have and how special they are in Jesus’ eyes. When we got back to the house a man was waiting to ask us to baptize him. Let me take a second to try and communicate the significance of this. Here it is not too difficult to get people to believe in Jesus, the problem is they just put Him on the shelf with the other million+ gods they worship. It is incredibly difficult to get them to make a public declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord of their life (Baptism). So the fact that this man came and sought us out is a big deal. We went down to the river and the man was baptized in front of his friends and it was beautiful. He even dunked himself under a second time just to make sure he was completely soaked.
Water has played a big role this year- from freedom literally raining down at training camp, to the worship out on Bangla road, to water Baptisms and ending with a word four of us got at the beginning of this month: the washing of feet. I thought the highlights of our day were over when I walked outside and stumbled upon one of the most beautiful things I have seen this year. My squad mate Cassie was on her knees in front of a woman with a big bowl of water and some soap in between them. She thanked her for her servant heart and spoke over her boldness, love, encouragement and significance. After praying and encouraging her to continue being a leader in this community Cassie washed this woman’s dirty, worn, aching feet. I watched Kingdom touch earth in that moment.
Surprise!!! We suddenly got invited to a Christian wedding an hour rickshaw ride away in a random village. The ride was hilarious, the wedding was beautiful, the food was… Indian, the crowd treated us like celebrities, our translator acted as a bouncer to keep the children from tackling us and a little girl gave me the earrings out of her ears. Two of my squad mates were even forced, I mean chose, to go up on stage and sing a beautiful, spontaneous rendition of Amazing Grace.
As it was our last night of ministry we did something special to finish well: we worshipped, we prayed, we took communion and then we anointed and commissioned each other. At training camp we sat in a circle surrounded by candle light, listening to worship music and our leaders washed our feet and prayed over us. On our last night of ministry we sat together, no longer strangers, but family. We went around and drew crosses on each others feet with water as we spoke life and commissioned one another into the next season of our lives. It was incredible. And we ended right at midnight.
So the name of this blog was 18 hour church, but all I have done is describe my last day of ministry… confused? Well here is something I have learned this year:
Church is more than a building
Worship is more than a song
Prayer is more than words
Jesus is more than a name
For 18 hours I did church, I worshipped, I prayed and I was Jesus to people. I ended ministry the same way I began and have finished the Race: in God’s will. For 11 months I have learned what it means to be the Church around the world. I have seen what it looks like to fellowship with people who speak a different language, to love dirty children who haven’t been hugged in years, to give chocolate to a child who has never tasted it before, to share the Gospel with people who have never heard the Name of Jesus and to praise the Lord with all my soul. I’ll end this blog with the song that has shaped and defined my month and the end of this season.
There’s no place I would rather be, there’s no place I would rather be.
There’s no place I would rather be than here in Your Love! Here in Your Love!!!
Set a fire down in my soul that I can’t contain that I can’t control,
I want more of You God! I want more of You God!
-Set A Fire, United Pursuit Band
Let me summarize what has been going on the past couple of weeks.
Month eleven. India. Less than 20 days left. Here we go.
Three teams are staying together for the month and we have broken up into two groups. One is working at a home for children with special needs and the other (my group) is planting a church in a village. Out in the village a small group of us have been pouring into a very special woman. Her original name has two parts- the first is the name of a Hindu god and the second is the name of a spirit. We have renamed her Preemah Hallelujah (Preemah means love in her language). She is the victim of generations of inbreeding, some kind of neurological disorder or cognitive impairment and we suspect abuse as well.
The first time that I walked into her room the darkness in there was thicker than anything I have ever felt in my life and the teammates we brought with us the next day felt it from down the street. The first time I saw her she was lying on her side in a contorted position. The first time I looked into her eyes I saw a demon looking back at me. The first time I prayed for her (in Hebrew) she turned to stare at me with deep aggressive eyes, HISSED at me and reared her hand back to slap me. The last time I visited her she was sitting up in bed smiling and saying “amen”, “hallelujah” and “I love you.”
We started by trying to cast out the demon but nothing was happening,
then Chelsea felt the absence of love in this woman’s life
and we started speaking out love and the darkness fled.
We have only been in the village a little over a week and we have already seen incredible miracles! Many have been healed of back pain, leg pain, coughs, headaches, fevers, crooked backs, breathing problems and heart problems. At our first healing service we prayed over a little old woman who hobbled in on a cane and when we said “Amen” at the close of our prayer she threw her walking stick into a pile of trash and walked home. God is so good.
I am learning so much this month about the power and goodness and love of God. I have almost completed my goal to read through the whole Bible this year and I have been learning a ton but what I really want to share with you are two things I learned from a friend in the states this morning. I want to ask you two questions…
The first is this: What is repentance? It’s a word thrown around in the church a lot but what does it actually look like? Why do we find ourselves engaging in what we think is real repentance and then months or weeks or days or even hours later find ourselves back in the same pit? What is repentance? Is it feeling bad? Is it saying sorry? Does it involve a priest or money or tears or being on your knees? Is it passive or active? Aggressive or fluffy? Self-pity or determination? I’ve heard some good things about the book What is the Gospel and I plan to check it out when I get home, apparently it addresses all of this. My friend summarized some idea of the book into the following answer. Repentance involves waging war on your sin and refusing to live with it any longer. It is fighting with all of your heart, every moment, by the Spirit, to honor the Lord your God and no longer live as slaves to sin. That view of repentance has changed my life and I needed to share it with you.
Secondly I’m referring you to a four minute clip by John Piper answering this question: Can you love people if you don’t love God? P.s. I love discussion and I love comments soooo if you want to leave a little something at the bottom of this I would love to talk to you some more.
God is real. Miracles are real. Salvation is real. Repentance is real. Love is real.
As you have been reading my blogs have you ever caught yourself thinking- I wonder what the public
transportation system is like around the world? Well if you have, here is a blog just for you!
After 10 months you kind of get used to the different ways cultures around the world function. Like
showering with buckets, random black outs, people thinking I am Justin Bieber, never knowing what you’re eating, everyone on the streets pointing and yelling in their various languages “White person!” and lots of other things that I just consider normal by now. One thing you really learn to do on the World Race is laugh at yourself and your situations.
Last week we spent a few days out in a village and it was my favorite couple of days in Africa so far.
We visited an orphanage, played with some amazing kids, bought some African clothing, participated
in a cool worship service, had a big open air meeting and lived with an amazing family. We even met a
famous dancer who performed for us at the church (I thought they were kidding about his fame until we
saw him in a music video on a tv this morning). It was definitely difficult to leave….
So how did we leave you may ask? Well the public transportation here are these 18 passenger vans
called “Dolla-Dollas “ that try to pack in as many people as possible during each trip. There is no
passenger limit and if there is room, it will be filled. This has led to some scary experiences, like women
with infants falling over as we go over bumps, as well as funny moments, like Shaun being forced to sit
in a strange older woman’s lap for a 15 minute ride. To avoid all of this we rented out an entire Dolla-
Dolla for our ride home so that we could have room to stretch out and relax and enjoy the scenery for
our two hour trip…. That didn’t happen.
About 15 minutes into our ride we picked up our first passenger- a man with a chicken. I don’t mean
fried chicken or even a chicken in a cage I mean a man holding a live chicken under his arm. Hours later
we felt kind of bad for him as he exited the van covered in chicken poop. But like I said, he was only the
first additional passenger.
Our two hour trip turned into a four hour adventure and by the end our Dala-Dala was filled with more
people and things than I ever thought possible… half way through I found myself speeding down a
bumpy and dusty African country road crammed between 27 people, three large sacks of corn, two
large sacks of potatoes, our eight bags, eight sleeping bags, eight sleeping pads, two tents, a bucket,
three additional duffel bags, a wooden bed frame, a bag of shoes in my lap, the chicken and two men
holding on from the outside with the sliding door left open. All of this was inside the van but we also
had a mattress tied to the back. Pictures couldn’t possibly do this thing justice… And we thought we
were a big deal when we fit 10 people in a Honda civic back in Central America... In addition to all of
this, whenever the driver would press the gas this horribly loud painfully high-pitched noise would
scream out of the engine until he took his foot off of the pedal. We only have about 40 days left on this
adventure and we are trying to soak up every single strange, uncomfortable, challenging, dirty, hilarious,
random and unexpected experience that we can get.
our home in the village outside the church in our African skirts
some of the kids at the orphanage no I didn't use photoshop I was really there
the chicken... Julie loved it this is just all of the stuff... we added another 15 people
half way there!! we had a girls night afterwards to recover from the day
“Hey now this is my desire consume me like a fire ‘cus I just want something beautiful to touch me I know that I’m in reach ‘cus I am down on my knees I’m waiting for something beautiful” – Something Beautiful by NeedToBreathe
These are some of my favorite lyrics of all time but I had forgotten them over the past few months. I have acquired so much amazing new music this year (Jesus Culture and Derek Webb are my current favorites) that I’ve forgotten about some of my old favorites. This song came on my ipod the other day and I literally froze- it just speaks to my spirit whenever I hear it. When it comes to music I have been so absorbed with the new things I am enjoying that I have forgotten about some of the awesome songs of my past. The opposite has been happening with my mind. As the Race is coming to a close I find myself spending so much time trying to recall and hold onto the memorable moments from the past 10 months that I’ve almost begun to miss out on the present. Today, however, has been an amazing combination of past and present that I will never forget.
Today three teams from our squad were invited to a Christian/Muslim debate to discuss the religion of Jesus Christ and the validity of Scripture. At 8am over 100 Muslims showed up to debate the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the 20 of us. These weren’t just any Muslims they were the top university students in the Tanzania. These are the modern day Pauls of the Tanzanian Muslim world and the future of this society. There were four Muslim men who did all of the talking and they posed ideas ranging from the contradictions of the Bible to the idea that Jesus was a Muslim. It was an incredibly exciting, trying, interesting and intense morning to say the least.
Cara Parker opened the debate with an overview of scripture, the Gospels, what we believe and the credibility of the Bible. Dustin Suttle gave an incredible historical account of the validity of Scripture. Allan Boehm gave the most beautiful Gospel presentation I have ever heard in my life. He spoke twice and both times when he sat down I looked around our group to see every hand pressed to a heart and a tear in every eye. It was incredible. Jessica Keown, Christina Palmer and Addie Weaver used scripture and logic to back up our points and answer questions posed by the Muslims. Shaun Frederickson spoke and found that the four main speakers were the only ones out of the 100 Muslims there who had actually read the Bible. He pleaded with them to stop listening to our voices and go home and read it for themselves, just the four Gospels, and a few men promised that they would. Dustin spoke again at the end to summarize all that we had said and explain that the reason we were sharing this with them was because we love them. Brooks Elliott mediated the entire event and kept people under control.
In the beginning their leader brought up a bunch of argument from the book of Maccabees from the apocrypha. I looked around the room and just saw the hope, confidence and air get sucked right out of my squad mates. None of them had ever studied this book and had no idea how to respond to what he was saying. But of all the 100 some odd writings not in our canonized scripture God led this man to speak about the one and only book that I knew all about. As I got in front of the group and spoke about Judah the Maccabee and the miracle of Hanukkah, God’s covenant with His people and how the Jewish laws and traditions are discussed in the New Testament our confidence and hope returned.
Shaun said that as I was speaking He felt us come together as a body of Christ. It was as if we were all pieces of a puzzle that God was putting together to present the beautiful picture of His Gospel. No one else in that room knew the stories I was talking about. And when Allan and Dustin and the others got up there and spoke I found myself just sitting back in awe overwhelmed by their knowledge. None of us could have done it alone. None of us had the knowledge or experience to stand by ourselves and defend the Gospel of Christ as it was being attacked today. But together, with the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we were beautiful.
“Hey now this is my desire consume me like a fire ‘cus I just want something beautiful to touch me I know that I’m in reach ‘cus I am down on my knees I’m waiting for something beautiful.”
God is a beautiful God and He works in beautiful ways.
One of the main focuses of the debate was the term “Christian”. The Muslim leader attacked this term for about an hour of his time. What hit me however was that before Dustin’s closing speech not a single one of us referred to ourselves as Christians. We used the terms “children of God” and called God our “Father” and our “Lord” but we never called ourselves Christians. When we were defending God with all that we had, the way we did it was not through our titles but through our identities. We weren’t defending a religion or a concept or an idea, we were defending our God and all that He is to us.
Back in month two when we were praying into whether God was calling us to go to Southern or Eastern Africa, one theme played a large part in the decision. We felt as if God was calling us to stand on the front lines for Him. Eastern Africa and the countries we are in are the path by which the Muslims are advancing into Southern Africa. Well today we stood on those front lines and we battled, we prayed, we cried, we honored and we loved. It was truly Something Beautiful.
Representing Jesus and the Jews
This man was the main Muslim representative... his name was Jesus.... seriously.
We hiked a mountain and said goodbye to our pastor and ministry team from Uganda. After a really amazing time together looking into the Word and praying we were headed down the mountain when we noticed the fire in the trees a few feet away from us. We looked closer and saw that it was a group of witches. We then saw a witch leading a man through some kind of ceremony involving an old golden bell and a mound of dirt... Shaun and I talked to the witch for a minute and then he suddenly changed his mood and started shooing us down the mountain and off of his land.
I rafted the Nile with a group of eight girls. Our guide fondly named us the Cupcakes but we hit those class four and five rapids hard, got thrown out once and flipped once. No one on the squad got hurt and a lot of people also went bungee jumping.
Our 28 hour bus ride to Tanzania turned into a 50 hour trip after our bus broke down and we spent the night at a rest stop.
We safely made it to Tanzania and saw giraffes from the bus.
Tanzania is absolutely gorgeous. After our long trip we have two days off to rest and then we will begin our ministry here (whatever it is) and next week we are supposed to go stay with a tribe/village.
We found out what we will be doing during our final month on the Race... I'll be home in less than 60 days
It was our last Sunday in Uganda and my eye was bothering me, my stomach was hurting and this little voice in my head was tempting me to stay home and sleep. I chose to go to church instead. When we walked in it was unlike anything we have seen so far: the kids were dancing, the people were jumping, everyone was singing and this one guy was krumping on stage. (Krumping for Jesus, who would have thought that was possible?) After lunch we went evangelizing in the area and I got paired up with Pastor Krumper (He had a real name of course but it was Ugandan and I never really caught it.) His dancing was definitely a glimpse into his passion for Jesus and evangelizing with him was unlike anything I have experienced so far.
At one point we talked to this Muslim boy and girl and they decided they didn’t want to believe in Jesus. Before we left I gave them this challenge, I asked them to tell me something that they have been praying to Allah for that he hasn’t answered and I would pray that same prayer to Jesus. We agreed that if it came true in the next week they would believe in Jesus. They asked me to pray that the woman’s husband would get out of jail. I believe that God will glorify His Name and show them His power and grace.
Later we met these two boys who were confused about different forms of Christianity. I basically told them that it is all about relationship. You can have God as your government/president: far away and distant from you, but if you ever get into trouble you can cry out to Him and by law He will come to your aid. Or you can have Him as your Father and best friend: always with you, right by your side, always there to have your back before you even ask.
Everywhere we went it seemed like Krumper and I were drawn to the same people, that is, until this next group. This was the first time I felt hesitant and intimidated all day, and then he told me what the building next to them was: the witch’s shrine.
When we got there I asked if they had ever heard about Jesus. One guy said “of course”, another said “never” and the rest just continued playing their game. We shared with them for a while the truth of the Gospel and we started drawing a crowd around us. By the end we had about seven kids, a mother and her four children and the group of guys we originally approached hanging on our words. Both of the men bowed their heads when we were finished and asked if they could pray to receive Christ.
Meanwhile the witch showed up.
He kept coming in and out of his shrine and arguing with us. I wasn’t surprised that he was aggressive towards us but I was shocked at what he was saying: that he knows God and likes Him and has never done anything against Him. He also told us that he used to be “Born Again” and that he has read the Bible many times. He didn’t like it so much when we told Him that God is a jealous God, you can have none before Him… and He doesn’t like sorcery. He didn’t want to listen to us or even really talk with us. He just kept barging into our conversations, yelling that he liked Jesus and then walking away.
It was an incredible scene. We were standing so close to this witch’s shrine that I could have reached out and touched it, this was darkness’s playground and home field. And we declared that Jesus Christ is Lord and led two men to Christ, right there!
On the walk back to the church Pastor Krumper told me these awesome stories about witchcraft in the area. Six months ago the church waged spiritual warfare on the witching community and prayed that God wouldn’t let them remain on His ground. They prayed that the witches in the area would convert, move or die and over the past six months three have converted, many have moved, and one has even died. The man we met was actually the junior witch who has taken over for the senior witch that just passed away.
God, however, has been fighting witchcraft in this area for longer than six months. Three years ago a witch gathered a bunch of fellow witches together to go and curse the church. When they got there the lead witch stepped inside and immediately saw fire fall from heaven and a man dressed in white with an incredibly sharp sword. He instantly fell to the ground and started wailing and screaming. The Christians heard it and came outside to find him in this state. They prayed over him and delivered him from a bunch of demons and he prayed to receive Christ. From that day on he was completely on fire for God and went around preaching the Gospel everywhere he went. He also changed his name to “I Have Seen The Light”.
These are some of the experiences I came on the Race for. To SEE God fight the devil and to hear stories of His victory. I really didn’t think I would like this country… I was so wrong.
I have mentioned that we do a lot of evangelism here in Uganda. We spend a few hours walking around a designated community and sharing the Gospel with everyone we meet. Sometimes they pray to receive Christ and sometimes they say they are not ready, sometimes they laugh at us and sometimes in the middle of sharing pastor says “we go” and we just leave it at that and move on to the next person.
Today Pastor gave us a little more insight into what is going on. Not very many people here speak English so we do everything through interpreters and we spend a lot of time smiling and nodding and silently praying. So when Emmanuel said he was going to give us some explanation we all got really excited. He said that people here, they don’t have good memories. Because most of them have seen so many horrors in their lives they have chosen to forget most of their childhood. It is not uncommon to meet a person who genuinely doesn’t know how old they are because they have blocked out so much of their past.
Witches are very common around here, as are sacrifices… both animal and human. Every year over 100 children are brought to the witches to be sacrificed, to be murdered, in order for the family to receive some kind of blessing. Pastor said that the problem with these practices… is that they work. Whenever someone sacrifices their child to gain wealth you will see them driving down the road two days later in a brand new car from the money the demons provided for them. Darkness is all over this place.
Pastor said that people here make decisions to dedicate themselves to things. If they decide to serve the church, they will serve the church. If they decide that they do not want to serve God, they will not serve God. And if we find one of these people during our evangelism that does not like God “we go now” and we pray as we walk away from that person and towards the next.
He brought all this up because the other day we were at a Muslim school and God put this idea in my head. After about a 45 second team debrief on what the idea was the seven of us got up in front of about 100 Muslim teenagers and basically all gave a very brief testimony about our lives at ages 5, 10, 15 and 20.
The message was that God loves everyone. He loves you if you are the only Christian in your family or if you are one of twenty. He loves you if at five years old your mother was dead, your mother had abandoned you, you were playing with Barbie dolls or you had just prayed to receive Christ. He loves you if at ten years old you had a boyfriend or you played sports or you spent every day with your church group. He loves you if at fifteen you were doing drugs, sleeping around, still playing sports or modeling. He loves you if at twenty you were in school, on the World Race, still partying or about to get married. He loves you if you have been a Christian for three, five, ten or twenty years. The seven of us are all incredibly different and have all led incredibly different lives but we all have one thing in common and that is the only thing that matters- we all love Jesus.
And Jesus loves all of us.
Our pastor told us today that he was floored by this presentation, not because of the intended message, but because we could all remember what we were doing at these various ages. I mentioned in my last blog that we haven’t seen any of the expected spiritual warfare here. We found out today that is in large part because pastor has been protecting us from it. We didn’t know what we should have been looking for or else we would have seen it all over the place.
p.s. there is no need to feel nervous for us, pastor also shared with us today that he used to be a well known kick-boxer. He even showed us some of his moves and he is legit. This man and this country are just full of awesome surprises. Just six more days of ministry and I am excited for every single one of them. Please be praying for us.
