And We Climb On.

This week has been a bit different than most weeks here in
Jeffreys. Because our ministry sites are
still closed for Easter Holiday, we had a bit more room in our schedule to
really try and challenge the students this week. So we took advantage of the extra time and
decided to structure our days around a couple spiritual disciplines that
Richard Foster discusses in his book Celebration of Discipline. We focused on solitude, fasting, prayer and
celebration. Each day has many
testimonies of the things God did within our students and within me, but for
this blog I wanted to share what God did on our solitude day. On Tuesday we took the students hiking up a
mountain and gave them the day to reflect and mediate on the semester and allowed room for God to speak into their lives.
Before we were allowed to hike we were to pick an object that
represented something we needed to surrender to God. Once we had that object we were released to
start the climb. My attitude this day
was not poor, but trudging through the bushes in Africa
and rock climbing isn’t necessarily the way that I prefer to find God. But I don’t think God really cared about how
I preferred to find him, because He’s found in everything! Tiredly I started trudging through the thorny
bushes and stumbled upon a bush with flowers that were perfectly intact, but
had obviously been through a fire. They
were completely scorched, but somehow they were still beautiful. I picked one and used it as my object, and
began asking God to reveal himself through this scorched flower.

A few minutes later
one of our students approached us and asked if we wouldn’t mind her tagging
along with us, of course we said we didn’t.
She was really scared about trudging through the bushes alone and I was
reminded that sometimes on our journey through life we need the help of others
to get us to where we need to be.
Because of her vulnerability with us, God allowed that truth to
penetrate my heart. So we prayed and
continued on our upward climb. After a
while we stopped on some rocks and took some time to start journaling about the
truths God was bringing to our hearts.
As I began journaling I was reminded of my attitude in starting this
hike, so I confessed that and asked God to speak. We moved forward and the higher we climbed
the more of God’s beauty we were able to see.
When we were a bit higher we took another break and soaked in the beauty
of God’s creation around us and I started reflecting on my little scorched
flower. I realized why I picked it; it
was because this was and is how my heart feels. My heart still intact, but so
scorched, I felt almost dead inside. The
flower was obviously dead, but somehow it was beautiful. And I realized that even though my heart may
feel dead and that there may be nothing to give, God is still beautiful and that beauty radiates any scorched
heart.

When we reached the highest place, I was blessed enough to
experience three of our students explain their objects and what it represented
to them, and then see them yell “I surrender!” and throw it off the
mountain. Again I was reminded that God
uses the weak to lead the strong. The
whole day I felt so weak in every area of my life, but God used me and others
to forge the way up and down that mountain, and to help students experience
freedom from things that were hindering their journey with God. That is a true blessing of doing what I do
and I am so grateful to have experienced that.

That is just one of the many things God spoke to me this
week. It truly was a great week, tiring in some ways, but renewing in
others.

“And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your
desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a
watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” Isaiah 58:11

Thank you all for your steadfast and faithful prayers. We are approaching the end of the trip with
just 4 weeks left! Please continue to
pray for strength for me and that I would be able to just pour out everything I
have. I look forward to seeing most of
you if not all of you this summer.

All my love,

Heather