Day One

Blog Post from Resurrection Lutheran Church’s Mission Team

Day One

Today was, in a word, overwhelming. We had our first day of VBS with the children in Mareetsane today. As one of the three people on this trip who haven’t done this before, I had no idea what to expect. Until this afternoon, my experience in Africa had been similar to my experience on mission in Mexico. The best way I can describe it is to say that most things here are basically the same as they are at home, except they’re also much different.

The village we’re serving is about an hour’s drive from where we’re staying, and as we drove we saw goats and cattle and sheep and chickens along the side of the road. Eventually the (mostly) paved road we were driving on turned to dirt, and we pulled up to a small building with a tent set up next to it. We were told that because the wind was picking up, we’d be having VBS inside. So we walked in to meet our group of kids, who greeted us politely and excitedly and laughed at Shawn’s hair.

We sang a few songs with them and they were good sports as we tried to remember all the words to our songs. (We brought with us a small projector and I had made a powerpoint, but there isn’t any running water or electricity in Mareetsane, so we had to go on our own brainpower which is spotty at best.) We did the rest of the VBS and they seemed excited about the games and the lesson.

There were two moments in particular that stuck out to me today. The first is this: after we were done with the VBS, the children sang us a couple of songs and then the pastor, Papa Joe, prayed. And when he prayed, he thanked God for us. I’m just a kid from Phoenix. I really have nothing to offer these people except what I’m already giving them, which isn’t a whole lot. All day, I was trying to work through that, and then after everything when he thanked God that we would come to visit them… it was overwhelmingly humbling.

The second moment: during the games, Georgia was taking pictures of each child and all of us for our nametags, and one of the local women who was helping out offered to hold my cameras and she called me “Sister.” This surprised me… not that I haven’t been called that before by other church folks, but this woman and I not only live on opposite sides of the world, but we also have absolutely nothing in common. As soon as she said it, though, I realized that the thing we have in common is Jesus Christ. It affects me so deeply to realize that this woman and all these children we’re serving are our family — they are part of the same body that I am and that’s all the commonality we need.

This whole trip seems very surreal. It’s all going by so fast that it’s hard to really process what’s happening and yet it feels like an entire lifetime has gone by since I left home. God is moving mightily and I’m excited to see the ways that He’ll continue to move throughout the week.

By Emily Cooksey