2017
That was the year God started whispering Africa tenderly in my ear. 2017.
I thought to myself, “You can’t be serious, God. What do you want?” I was 15. I guess you could practically say I was a baby. I didn't have a relationship with God, I had religion. I had routines. I played in band and orchestra at my local Romanian Church, I sang in choir, I helped with Awana. I did everything that I could get my hands on. But God was ready to burn my religion and replace it with authentic relationship and lifestyle. He wanted me to rethink His rules as devotion and freedom. He wanted me to dream big, to be filled with excitement for the advancement of His kingdom. It took three years of praying for Africa and understanding until I laid it all at His feet.
In three years, God and I tended to the seeds He planted in my life. I worked on pursuing authentic relationship with Him and He raised me in maturity in Him. I realized I thought of Him as small. I thought mission work was too big to be possible for me, but little did I know, I was limiting the work God wanted to do in and through me. I surrendered all that I had… and it was very little. I shakily whispered yes to Africa, filled with fear and anxiety.
That was in February of 2020, right before COVID took over our world. I’m not going to lie, I was upset that when I finally had little courage to say “yes,” things weren’t going smoothly. I was scheduled to be in Rwanda that July, but the countries shut down. And instead of boarding a flight, I was driving aimlessly in the Utah desert curiously wondering what Rwanda was like and what her people look like.
Fast forward two years, after a couple attempts to make it out to Africa, I finally landed in Kyangwali, Uganda in July of 2022. The second I stepped on the land, I knew I was finally home. At least, the temporary home on this Earth until heavenly grandeur. I was different person than I was in 2020. No longer afraid, I was beginning to find boldness. And even further, I am not recognizable from the girl I was in 2017. My faith became my breath, not routine within a to-do list. I gave my life to Christ, all of it, for mission and for ministry. I regretted not trusting in God sooner, I wondered how much deeper my character would’ve run if I had started sooner.
I look back on Jesus feeding the 5,000. We recently had a sermon on this at my current church. A young boy had very little, some fish and some bread. Yet the little he had, he gave to Jesus. In the right hands, little turns into nourishment and blessing. The crowd was cared for, they were fed, and welcomed into further teachings from the very Messiah.
You may have little, but God will do more with the little you have than you can ever try to do. The catch is to surrender all in complete trust and faith.