Uganda Trip 2014: Lessons to be Learned

Tonight, the Kansas folks from our team got to share with our FBC Mulvane church family about our trip. It was a good night to see a chunk of our team together again and get to share our stories and victories and even some epic fails memorable experiences. It was a good night just when I needed one.  To stand before the people who have supported this ministry and who prayed over our team and supported us financially and encourage us to go and serve was a great moment. To be able to share a piece of this experience with those who support my endeavors and me is always such a blessing and a great reminder of how incredible my support system really is.

I will do another post later, detailing the crazy hectic schedule that we keep while in Uganda, but today I’ll focus on what sticks out to me…what God is teaching me and the lessons he started pushing on me there.

I’ve not been in a good place. Honestly, I’m still not. I wish I could have gone to Africa and come back magically better on that “mission trip high”, but I didn’t. I’m still depressed, my life is still way less than perfect, and to be blunt, things are still a total mess. And newsflash, even with all that you're about to read - I'm still super selfish. 

But what I’ve been learning is that God is showing me Him in all of it. Even when I’m sobbing on the floor because everything feels broken and I feel useless, He’s showing me who He is and how that makes me who I am and that there are lots of lessons to be learned there.

Lesson 1: I need to stop saying that I’m not good enough to be used.

I have low self-esteem. This is a duh statement if you know me. I am constantly beating myself up over not being good enough to do anything that I’m doing. I let it hold me back from things a LOT and regret a lot of things that it’s caused me to do, say, or not do or say. But then something clicked one day in UG…because I realized that people were learning things in spite of my deficiencies.

You see, my beautiful friend Melissa asked me to write some devotions for the trip. And I did. And I worried and worried about how stupid they were and how no one was going to get anything out of them and how dumb I was going to look when people realized that I was the one that did them. I prayed and prayed over those words and asked God to make them good, but begged Him to use someone else – to use someone who was a good teacher and could actually put together something decent. I honestly thought I would send them to Melissa and Kim to proofread and that they would kindly “forget” and that would be the last time they saw the light of day.

They didn’t do that and the booklets ended up in the hands of our team members and I worried still. But guess what?! Even with my stupidity and my lack of anything profound to say, God still moved. Cause He does that, remember? It was amazing to me how many of the girls came to me and would tell me what God was speaking to them through these words that He gave me to put on paper. Each of them come from a different place in life, yet God was showing them something beautiful in its own way….He was personalizing each lesson for each person and here I was worried about looking dumb.

He continued to show me in other ways on the trip how it didn't matter whether I was "skilled" enough or "smart enough" or "talented" enough or "good" enough because He uses my weaknesses just as much as He uses my strengths.   

Lesson 2: I need to stop putting limits on how He can use me.

We had a great team of nurses and a wonderful woman that’s a doula on our team. They worked so well together and were able to minister to the women there in such a specific, tangible way. Sometimes, it was easy to feel like I wasn’t very useful because I couldn’t answer questions and I wasn’t up there talking and I wasn’t in the bus giving pre-natal checkups.

We got the great opportunity to take our team to a women’s prison and work with a great prison ministry in the Jinja area. Melissa had told me about this ministry and the woman that directs it and I was thrilled for our team to get to do this and that Mercy for Mamas gets to be a small part of this ministry and it’s place in touching these women’s lives. However, as excited as I was to go visit this place, so were a lot of other people. And when there are a lot of people who want to go there and not enough signed up for another place, some people have to go to the other place. I was one of those people and as excited as I was for my friends to get to go experience this and be blessed by that ministry, and as excited as I was to go see the progress of a place I got to visit on the 2012 trip and love on some kiddos, I won’t lie about how I was disappointed that I didn’t get to go with the prison group to minister to those women and have that experience.

We got to have a lot of time to do outreach with women in different areas and villages. While the nurses and people in charge of sharing and teaching did their thing with the women under the meeting tree, I was often with the youth girls and maybe a couple of others playing with kids or prepping meal stuff or fetching kits, etc. I will tell you right now that keeping 20 kids entertained for 3 hours is NOT my forte. Let’s be honest, keeping 2 kids entertained for 20 minutes is not my forte. I have little patience and am not creative and am not energetic (bonus that the hot sun and exposure makes my health issues flare up) and am not even always the best at remembering the words to kids songs – ha!

Even just being at the front of the bus sometimes gets to me. I throw up a lot folks. A lot of that is due to motion, so sitting at the front of the bus is a must. But guess who else is at the front of the bus. The driver. Who is Ugandan. Who speaks very little English. And I am alone, with my thoughts. And if you know me very well, this can be a very scary thing. And everyone else is further back in the bus, not feeling like they are going to upchuck and having fun bonding with each other.

So I was feeling a little frustrated at points on the trip. Not like angry frustrated, but confused frustrated. My heart is for women and ministering to them in the midst of whatever journey they are on. God has spoken that to me very clearly and I have seen Him use that calling in fabulous ways that are completely unexpected and quiet, but so, so good. I couldn’t figure out how this was happening. I serve with this ministry, I come on these trips – I do all that I do for this calling to serve women and show them Christ’s love for them right where they are. So why am I not being useful? Why am I over here playing with kids when that is definitely not my skill set? Why am I at the orphanage while the others are where I wanted to be? Why are the other girls sharing their stories and having fun while I'm staring out the front window and missing good bonding time? Why am I in the position that I'm in if I really don't have any skills that come in that handy? 

Then finally it clicked.

Because it’s a huge blessing to me when the people of my church love on my kids during service so that I can listen and fellowship and worship and the women from the village are getting that blessing by me singing silly songs and playing in the heat until I collapse on the bus.

Because it’s a huge blessing to me when I get to see the look on a woman’s face when I’ve touched her heart with something I’ve said that resonates with her and my teammates deserve those blessings too. They need them to know just how wonderfully God has prepared them for this trip and the ministry that each of them does all the time in their homes, jobs, churches, and communities.

Because it’s a huge blessing to the women who run the orphanage to sit with someone who wants to hear their story too and who wants to use encouragement and humor to brighten their day and push them on in their ministry while they see others on the team love on the children that they pour so much of themselves into.

Because our team needs to bond. Period. And because I got plenty of bonding time during activities and down time and other folks got good time on the bus and all of that is good and purposeful and it didn't matter that mine was different than someone else's because I still forged relationships that are great and strong. 

I’ve been very guilty of saying things like “God will use you wherever you are” and apparently not really believing it with all of my heart. I always felt like I did, but didn’t – I saw that clearly at the beginning of the trip.

My heart for ministry is geared towards women and their stories. I always thought I had to be directly ministering to them in order to be following that calling. On this trip, I really let God convince me that’s not the case at all. I let Him show me just how much He can use me to minister to women even when it’s not what I think it should look like.

He continues to show me back home what He’s about and that, no matter what I’m battling, no matter what the mess is, He’s good and true and steady. And that He’ll use it all – all of it – every messy, insufficient, broken piece – all of it – for His plans and His good.

And that I don’t have to be good enough, because He is.