This is the story of how I fell in love with Africa...

God’s timing is cool. He intricately weaves our lives together and is working so heavily in our hearts every second, but most of the time what he is doing goes unnoticed. We don’t realize the crazy path he takes us down until we’ve arrived at the end.

This is a story of how God planned for me to fall in love with Africa.

It’s January of my senior year of high school and I am in Waco, Texas. Little do I know this is where I will be spending a large chunk of my time in the future. I meet multiple different groups of people. My future roommate and her family, one of the daughters of my dad’s good friend from college and all of her roommates, a good friend from home’s older sister. All were connections that were a bit of a stretch, and all were divine interactions that God had planned before I was born. All of these people had one thing in common. A church. A community of people who know how important it is to be vulnerable, to be present, and to passionately pursue Jesus.

After 36 hours in Waco, I knew. I knew that God was calling me to attend Baylor University. I didn’t know why, but I knew who. I knew who my people were going to be. I had to be a part of this family who all want the same thing: more of Jesus.

Fast forward to the first Sunday of my freshman year. I am at Antioch Community Church and someone prophesies over me that God has huge plans for me at Baylor. That he took me halfway across the country and out of my comfort zone so that I would learn to rely fully on him, and that my home will always be my home, but this would be where I will grow into who he is creating me to be. My life would be an adventure, and to get excited. That next Wednesday I was at the college service, Dwelling Place, and heard God clearly for the first time. He told me to change my major, and to trust him. So I did, and so it began. He was after my heart, and this church was the place that he captured me again.

I quickly became involved in anything and everything, attending life group, being discipled, living in community in a way I never knew was possible. It’s now October, and they are announcing the summer impact trips at Dwelling Place. I had not intended on going on our trip, but for some reason that night, before they revealed where we were going, I turned to my friend next to me and said, “If our section is going to South Africa, I have to go.” Granted, the chances were extremely slim, seeing that there were hundreds of countries in the world, not to mention 10 different trips within the college ministry. Within the next hour, they had announced that our trip was headed to Cape Town, South Africa. I was amazed, confused, and certain that I had to go.

I was overjoyed; my parents were all for it, and I was ready to go. However, throughout the next couple months, when the details started coming together, it seemed less possible. The dates for the trip were moved to June, and I had already accepted a nannying job during that time. My parents told me I needed to honor my commitment, and the trip was put on the backburner. I submitted to what they wanted, and took my name off of the list for the trip.

That’s where God decided to step in. You see, when He gives you promises, He always fulfills them. He had told me I would be going to South Africa, and at this point I just felt that I had heard him wrong. However, in March on our spring break mission trip to Edinburgh, TX, God brought it up. He told me to bring it back up to my parents, and to ask them to pray about letting me go. And that’s what I did.

I talked to my parents, optimistic that there was a reason He told me to bring it back up. I encouraged my parents to pray about it for a week, see what God says, and to let me know. I prayed fervently for that week, believing that if I was meant to go on the trip, God had the power to change their minds. I had already gotten the tentative okay from my boss for the summer, just in case they said yes. At last the anxiously awaited phone call came, and it wasn’t the answer I expected.

When my parents told me no for the second time, I was extremely disappointed. It didn’t make sense to me why I had felt I was supposed to bring it up again only to be even more let down than the first time. But God was still working, even though I was too blind to see. It was Sunday at this point, and the next day God told me not to tell my summer job that I wasn’t going on the trip until Wednesday, I didn’t understand why, but I obeyed.

When Wednesday came, I told my boss that I was going to be able to work for her after all, and she apologized and said that she had already hired someone else. At this point I was beyond confused. Why did God have me bring this up, only to have me more disappointed and without a job?  I was having trouble seeing the big picture. My parents were angry with me because they thought I did it on purpose, and I was completely unsure of what to do.

About a week later, my parents called. They said they had thought about it a lot, and that I could go to Africa after all! It was completely unexpected; at this point I had felt defeated and unsure. I was reminded of the promises of God from when the trip was announced, and of his faithfulness to fulfill all that he speaks. I have no idea when my boss hired someone else, but I would not be at all surprised if it was in the three-day window before I told her I was free, because God is cool like that.

I eagerly raised support, excited and expectant for all that God was going to do. I could hardly believe it! After what seemed like forever, my team of 26 boarded the plane to South Africa on June 3^rd, 2013.

And then it happened; Africa stole my heart. The joy of the children who had next to nothing, the faith level of the students at University of Cape Town, the wisdom and advice from the Kennedy’s (the family planting the church in Cape Town that we got to stay with), the unique culture and God’s handiwork in the mountains and the beaches that took my breath away. I never wanted to leave, and I’m already eager to return.

The biggest thing I learned on the trip? Never underestimate what God is capable of. The bigger the faith, the bigger the miracles. I saw people come to know Jesus for the first time, I prayed for people to be healed and they were healed, I helped people hear God and experience the Holy Spirit for the first time.

I got to love people with Jesus’ heart.

I got to save people with Jesus’ story.

I got to heal people with Jesus’ name.

The truth is, none of it was me. I never had the words to say, and I never knew the right place to go. That’s the cool thing about relying on God; he’ll get you there, and after it he works, you’ll find yourself wondering what in the world just happened. When in reality, nothing in the world happened, but heaven interceded, and people were changed forever.

It wasn’t always easy. It was often times very humbling. It causes your confidence to come from a different place than you are used to. When you see God work, you grow confident in the truth and the power of the gospel.

Another huge lesson God wanted me to learn? It can happen anywhere. I can rely on God and have faith that he will work the same way in Waco, Orlando and at Pine Cove. I can live in a way that people can’t help but notice that there is something different about me.

“Recognize the power in your testimony,” he says. The things I experienced and the stories I can tell have the ability to change a person’s life. I just have to believe in faith that he does the same things on a mission trip in South Africa as he can do in a cabin of 12-year-old girls at Pine Cove or in a donut shop in Waco on a Sunday morning after church. He is unchanging, so why allow myself to believe that the mission trip ended? It hasn’t, and it never will.

When I look back at my journey with God in the past year, I am undone. Everything that I went through, every interaction and decision was God breathed. He ordained my every step, knowing that I would end up in this place. He knew that He would call me to Africa in this time, and that my heart for ministry would grow more than ever before.

Until next time, Cape Town, see you very soon. ;)