I feel right now like I am clashing between realities; between what has been real for me for the past seven months and the reality of going home to a completely new reality.  We were at church on Sunday and the pastor mentioned something about how we had been gone from home for seven months and it was in that moment that I had the realization of where life had taken me.  The life that I have been living is almost like a different world and soon, very soon I will be reentering the world that I have known my whole life, but I know that I see the world now with different eyes and I know that going back to "normal" will never be quite the same.  I almost feel like time has frozen and that when I come back home things will be just as they were, like I put the pause button on my life in America and when I return I will press play and everything will be as before; but I know that this is not true.  It is hard for me to grasp the idea that life is still in motion, especially when these separate worlds are so different.  I have kept in touch with several people and hearing about how they are moving along with their lives and how things are changing with them; they are living in different places, dating new people, growing up, you know living life.   It's hard for me to imagine that when I come home things will be different than when I left.  It's exciting in a way but if we are being honest I am a bit terrified of stepping back into a life that has become somewhat unfamiliar. 

At the beginning of my time in Africa, God gave me a vision of the person that I was to become from this trip.  I remember expressing to God the impossibility of me becoming this person and He reminded me that it would not be by my own efforts but by His grace that I would step into this new self.  I look at myself today with only a little over a week left on this trip and I stand in awe before God with this transformation within me.  I see that every day I take one step closer to becoming this person that God has called me to be and He is truly preparing me for greatness.  My fear in this is that when I step back into a reality where I know only the identity of my past, I will fall back into that role and I will fail to live my life worthy of the calling that God has put on me.  But in sitting with God this week and simply being still in His presence, He has really spoken a lot of truth into me.  I was reminded that "It is by God's grace that [I] have been saved through faith.  It is not the result of [my] own efforts but God's gift, so that no one can boast about it.  God has made [me] what [I am], and in [my] union with Christ Jesus he has created [me] for a life of good deeds, which he has already prepared for [me] to do" (Ephesians 2:8-10) and "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).  I am not who I was, and it has not been by my own efforts but it has been by God transforming my inner self.  By the grace of God, I can walk in confidence knowing that this change in me is not temporary; for it is ingrained in my heart and it is who I am.  In dying to myself, I have taken on the identity of Christ eternally and by faith I can rest assured that because it was nothing that I did to become who I am, nothing that I do can will destroy this new self.  And what is really cool is that God has already anointed me with a purpose and He has already prepared for me this life of a higher calling, meaning that there is nothing I can do to change my destiny.  God is with me wherever I go because He is in me and in this I have courage and strength to face all things. 

But this journey is not yet over.  I still have a week left in Africa and even then, this is only the end of the beginning.  In my final days I am making every effort to make the most of what little time that I have left here and in seeking God's will for this upcoming transition, I admit that I am all over the place.  But in all the craziness of these two worlds colliding I find myself remembering in Hebrews when it says "[L]et us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith" (Hebrews 12:1-2).  This adventure has been long but I still have the last stretch that I want to run full force to the finish line; but, it is only in faith that I move forward, trying my best to take full advantage of every situation.  One thing I must remember is that this faith that I live by is my strength and Jesus is the source of my faith and so to really grasp every ounce of the realities of both my clashing worlds and to be able to run through with any kind of endurance, my eyes must be fixed on the source of my strength.  My eyes must be fixed not on my fears, my surroundings, or any other distractions, but on the will of God which is made perfect through Christ.  If my eyes are fully fixed on Him, what have I to fear?  Come what may, in either reality, for I am certain that wherever I go "by God's grace I am what I am, and the grace that he gave me was not without effect" (1Corinthians 15:10) and I can rest assured that He will be with me wherever I go.  Things will never be the same going home, but then I find myself asking, would I want them to be? sdf 

So, I don't really know how to put into words the craziness of life in Africa.  If I had to sum up this past week and a half I can only think of a whirlwind of emotions, changes, hellos, goodbyes, realities and adventure.  As many of you might know, we finalized the decision, based on a series of unfortunate events, to leave Mbita and go to work with True Vine Ministries in Torroro, Uganda.  Within a few days we said our goodbyes and left for a weeklong vacation before entering into our final stage of this trip. 

So we went on vacation all over Kenya.  We kicked off our vacation with a safari in Maasai mara, where the Maasai tribe lives (ya we stayed in a Maasai town, they are so cool!).  Oh my gosh it was the coolest experience to be standing about 20 feet away from wild giraffes, ostriches, zebras, baboons, hippos, elephants, cheetahs, water buffalo, antelope, gazelles, warthogs,  lions running free and together just as God intended. It was unreal, I must admit that I am still in shock that we had were at one time surrounded by hundreds of elephants, chased down hippos, had a giraffe standing on the side of the road as if to catch a ride on our bus, watched a cheetah eying breakfast, woke up to the sunrise over the Savannah, and got within petting distance of a pride of lions.  All I can say is that seeing God's creations living freely as they were intended makes me all the more determined to fight for freedom of man.  There was a point when our tire blew at the end of the day from driving through open fields and through rivers when my team got out and ran free as if we were the animals.  We ran full speed on the same land as these exotic animals run across every day and it was definitely one of those moments that you go "Oh my God, this is my life".  It was crazy incredible! 

From there, we got on a night bus and traveled all the way to Nairobi where we stayed at this really cool hostel called Milimani.  It was a little piece of home because we were walking distance from this amazing coffee shop  called the Java House where they had coffee and American food!  Being in Nairobi was a reminder of Phillipians 4 when Paul talks about being content in any situation because we can do all things by the power that Christ gives us because we had gone from staying in very contrasting circumstances.  We pretty much just hung out and went for a nice dinner. There was a moment when we were praying together over dinner that I looked and couldn't help but praise God for getting to share this sweet moment of victory and feasting with this team after all that we have been through.  We have lived the reality that through Christ we are conquerors.  There is a time for fasting and for feasting; but it is because of those times of fasting that makes the feast all the more extraordinary.  We stayed in Nairobi for a couple of days and then got on another night bus to Mombasa.

In Mombasa, we got to go to the beach on the Indian ocean and marvel at God's masterpiece and beauty.  It felt like a true vacation to just sit on the beach and enjoy a time of rest and simple pleasure.   I not only got to go swimming in the Indian Ocean but I definitely rode a camel across the beach!  Ya, it was awesome!  We stayed there a couple of days and got on a final bus to go to our new home in Uganda.  The bus ride in itself was quite the adventure because our bus broke down in the middle of the night in a random town and we were stuck on the side of the road for a good four hours.  But we, through many obstacles and over 24 hours on a bus reached our hopefully final destination in Africa. 

We are now in Torroro, Uganda working with an organization called True Vine that we have worked with before and we are all really excited to spend our final weeks in partner with them. There are mixed feelings of missing Mbita but having high hopes for our time here and thinking about the reality of coming home in less than a month.  You could say that our time here has become a whirlwind flying by faster than what I can even grasp.  I think it is safe to say that at the moment my head is spinning rapidly.

We are soldiers; its behind all of our eyes.  It is a frustrating position to hold because we are the chosen ones, chosen to fight injustice, chosen honorably because we are strong enough to fight, but with that our eyes are opened and forever ingrained in our hearts is the injustice that we see.  The heaviness of the honor comes from the obligation to fight in the battle.  We are soldiers chosen to fight in this battle for justice and truth; we did not choose this, but by the King we have been chosen to represent Him and we cannot reject the call.  How have we gotten into this mess?  It is in the honor that we have been given the eyes to see the injustice of the church through living it, being right in the middle of it for a long enough period of time to see its destruction.  We could not simply dip our toes into the water; we had to dive into this sea of religion to see its realness and to conquer our fear and blindness of it.  We are being  trained:  to know it, to recognize it and to fight it.  But with that comes the heavy exhaustion and the defeat that reminds us that it is not by our own efforts that we can fight this, we are not the heroes, we are just soldiers.  Without Him, we are dead, we are blinded, and we are lost.  Lord could I not have simply lived contently in my ignorance; I never asked to fight, I only wanted peace.  But we have been chosen and called to fight, not by words but by actions, we have been called not to simply bring the truth but to believe it and live it; for if we speak it, shouldn't that be an indication of our beliefs and if we truly believe it, does it not affect our ways of life?  For what is religion if not a way of life?  It is a bunch of empty words and from those empty words comes lies and from those lies, people fall away from the truth.  Where have we gone wrong?  Religion, it is killing the world, it is destroying the name of Jesus.  How do I deal with seeing Jesus crying because His own body is killing him?   What do we do, how do we fight this?  We live by truth and freedom as we have been called.  This is our battle.

My teamate Jenessa did a really awesome job elaborating on this post, you should check it out at jenessaorcherton.myadventures.org (We Can Look You in the Eye and Say We Are Not Afraidto Die)

On this journey I set out to change the world, when really God's plan all along was to change mine. I have been on this roller coaster adventure of self discovery. And in this self discovery, I have discovered that, indeed, this journey is not my own. I was listening to Jon Foreman's song Learning to Die and in the chorus he sings "All along thought I was learning how to take, how to bend, not how to break, how to laugh not how to cry, but really I've been learning how to die". There are not too many other ways that I can describe the changes in me except to say that I have found freedom through dying to myself. Luke says that to follow Christ we must deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23). With that comes the surrender of self in expectations and in the concept that everything that happens is for the purpose of benefiting our own lives. With the denial of self comes the humility of Christ. Paul tells us in Philippians that "in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you in the interests of others" (Philippians 2:3-4). A common theme on this discovery of self has been humility, it has been the constant reminder that the world does not revolve around me and everything that I do is not for the purpose of fulfilling my expectations or earning "good Christian points". The truth is, that there is no deed great enough for me to prove myself worthy of the calling that I live by but it is in Christ's love and grace for me that I have my identity and it is this grace that leads me to act on the injustices of this world. I have come to the realization that it is not by my own efforts that I live this life of purpose and truth; it is by God's grace that gives me strength in my inner self. Humility is, I think, the hardest lesson for us to learn because our pride is so quick to defend ourselves and to bring a good and honorable mention to our names.   We often even deny the wisdom of the Lord for fear that we might not be the greatest; for fear that this life is not all about us. But the truth is this life is not ours and in reality, there is great freedom in that humility.