Reflections

Wow, I can't believe it's all over. The last 24 hours preparing to leave were so surreal cos I was really starting to feel at home in Zambia. Now I'm sitting in Nairobi airport trying to survive a 7 hour transit, so it seems like a perfect opportunity to reflect on this amazing period that God blessed me with. The tough thing is, I really don't know where to start, so I guess I'll just have to start rambling and see where i end up.

When I first arrived, I really didn't know what to expect, and really wasn't to sure what my purpose was in Zambia. I don't think I've shared with you yet the circumstances by which I ended up planning a trip to Zambia, but I'll just say that it was fairly random. I was originally thinking about joining a mission trip to Mexico and somehow that just didn't happen (thank God cos it ended up being completely cancelled because it was right when the whole swine flu thing started). Then I spent a long time thinking and not knowing where I would go and someone mentioned a hospital in Zambia, but not where I ended up going. It was when I was researching this other place that I remembered Fr. Abraham whom I'd met in Nigeria, and once I got in touch, it all just seemed to happen. The long and the short of it is that I feel quite confident that God intended for me to spend the last 3 months with the Coptic Mission in Zambia. Anyway, back to what I was saying, I couldn't really figure out why God had brought me to Lusaka. On my first day, I sat down with Fr. Abraham and the one thing he told me was that if I was willing to step out of my comfort zone, then great things would happen and it would be a growing experience for me.

Stepping out of my comfort zone ended up being something I was almost forced to do, cos it was all so new. I felt so overwhelmed by so much (in fact I remember saying that a few times in my first post). But honestly, there was a crowd of new people to live with, an expansive mission with so much to do, a huge congregation to meet and medical work that I felt completely unequipped to manage. I would often find myself in situations where I didn't know how I was going to pull off what was required of me; caring for critically ill patients all on my own, doing 48 hour on-call shifts, dealing with problems from any and every specialty, treating a disease (HIV/AIDS) that up until then I had had no experience of. Add to that the service with the church and the school and visiting groups from overseas that I was literally thrown into. But all that brought me to the first lesson that I learned; relying on God to provide. Later in the trip, Fr. Abraham said something that crystalized it for me. True faith only exists when you are doing something that you know for a fact that you can't do. If you're aiming for something that you know you can achieve then there's no room for faith. When you aim for something beyond what you can do, then you have to believe that God will step in. And the amazing thing is that He absolutely has. For my whole time in Africa, I have seen amazing things happen. I read a couple of verses from Proverbs right at the beginning of my trip that came up again in the very last week "Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established." "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths."

to be continued....