Follow Me
I have felt melancholy again today. Life feels like it's going faster than ever, while I feel too slow to keep up. I heard a commercial on the radio the other day and immediately thought, "Mom says stuff like that all the time." For a split second my mom was still alive. The thought wasn't "Mom used to say stuff like that." I had to tell myself over again like I've done countless times that Mom isn't here anymore. I still have moments where I think "I can't wait to tell Mom this story" or "I need to get advice from Mom about this" BEFORE realizing she isn't here. It is so interesting to feel my brain re-realize the truth time and time again. Everything is still confusing.
It isn't new that I've been thinking about my mom, but today I also thought about something that happened to me a few years ago during a missions trip to East Africa. Before I start telling you about what happened in Tanzania, let me tell you a little about who I was in 2012 (not that different). I was a 20 year old kid who was sort of at a crossroads before this trip. I was a lazy college student searching for something more. If I'm honest with myself I wasn't a great example of a Christian about to go on a missions trip. I didn't think of myself as a spiritual leader or an ambassador of Christ. I had a heart to help hurting people, and I was excited to explore in a new country. I knew God had given me the opportunity to go, but I didn't really know what for. I was definitely far from the most spiritual or educated individual on my Africa team. I believed that God had put a dream in me to be in those foreign countries for a reason. As the days before the trip disappeared I began to realize how big this was for me. I even made my own will and saved it on my desktop just in case something happened to me. I wanted(and want) to have purpose.
OK, so fast forward to the last couple weeks of the 60 day trip. I had experienced so much already and met so many fantastic human beings. We had traveled through Uganda and Kenya, and were in our final country, Tanzania. We were in the Nzovwe district of Mbeya, a city of about 291,000 in the Southwestern part of the country. We had been working with a local church and school there, preaching and teaching wherever we could. It had been more difficult than the other countries to find ways to make a difference mostly due to the extreme language barrier. Most of the people in that area spoke Swahili. The night before I was scheduled to speak at an outdoor gathering, a teammate and I played soccer in a dusty alley with several younger boys. These boys were probably ages 5-8 and we had a blast kicking a flat ball around pretending to be soccer stars. That night I had a dream. I dreamt that a little boy was crossing the main street outside of our building to go to school. As he was crossing, he was hit by a bus and killed. I remember running up to the boy laying in the street thinking and saying out loud, "No, this can't be happening, this can't be happening" over and over again. All I felt was panic until I woke up. After a few moments I realized it was just a dream and went back to bed. The next day I visited several local shops and grocery stores during the day and returned to our camp later in the afternoon to prepare to speak at our outdoor gathering. When I got back, I was informed that the gathering had been canceled. When I asked a pastor why the event was canceled he told me that a church member's young son was struck and killed by a bus as he crossed the street to go to school earlier in the day. It took me a minute for my brain to catch up, but when it did I immediately sat down and relived the dream I experienced the night before. "What in the world is going on?" is the only thing I could think. My heart raced and my head pounded. How and why did I dream this the night before? I was about to go into a full panic when I felt a voice say "follow me." I didn't hear it audibly but it felt like those words started echoing in my head after I initially felt it. I'm far from an expert on hearing the voice of God, but it felt like I recognized this voice from a few times before in my life. This time was different though. There was a deep sense of urgency. "Uh, hey voice, it would help if you could give me more specific directions." Dazed and confused, I asked where the boy's parents were so we could pray for them. A couple teammates and I found the boy's father grieving loudly, too weak to stand on his own. He had two men at either side of him literally holding him up as he sobbed. He was standing outside of a large room full of women wailing and grieving openly. No one was louder than the boy's mother. "This can't be happening" I thought. I prayed for her at her feet. As we walked back to where we were staying I felt the voice say again "follow me." What the heck am I supposed to do? I'm not a dream interpreter, but a prophetic dream was my proof that something spiritual was taking place. I'm not ready for this. I haven't been extremely close to God or read my Bible nearly enough for this to happen to me...right? I mean if I was going to pick someone from my group to have an experience like this it wouldn't be me! But it is me. I asked the pastor if we could go pray over the boy's body. Even asking that took almost all the courage I could muster. He told me that the mortuary is on the other side of town, and that the boy's parents weren't even able to see the body. Ok I'm off the hook right? "Follow me." Wrong. I heard it again. WHERE? I remember thinking "If I don't see this through I'm always going to wonder what would or could have happened." Deep down, I felt like God was telling me to go find the boy. This doesn't seem safe. There was no time to think or prepare. The voice only got louder. "Follow me, right now. Trust me." So I decided to go for it. I left the camp alone without telling anyone (probably should have), no idea where I was going and with only the boy's name-Noel. Once again, most of the people in Mbeya only spoke Swahili, so I didn't have any luck asking people where the mortuary was. I remember trying to speak to people selling meat on the side of the road as a last gasp effort before I threw in the towel. Out of nowhere I feel a tap on the shoulder. A man in a black top hat is standing behind me asking, "What are you looking for?" ENGLISH! I told him that I was looking for a mortuary. He didn't understand that word. I tried "hospital." The man understood. He immediately took me over to a taxi van, spoke to the driver in Swahili for a minute or two and then told me to hop in. After I got in the van, the driver continued picking people up and dropping people off for 15-20 minutes as I sat in the back. Eventually I was the only one left in the van as we drove without stopping for several miles. I remember thinking, "I'm so dumb. I'm just easy prey for this guy to take me to a secluded place and mug me-or worse. He obviously knows that I don't know the city, and I'm probably the first white person he has seen in a while, if ever." He did not mug me and I tipped him for that. I was eventually dropped off on a sidewalk, and his pointer finger advised me which direction to start walking. I approached a hospital gate guarded by policemen with AK-47s. "Alright, this is the end of the rope. I made it further than I thought I would anyway." Again I felt the voice, "Follow me." After some arguing with myself I felt a little more of a whisper. "I want you to find him." Finding this boy still seems impossible even though I found the hospital. I don't even know if there is a mortuary in this hospital let alone if it is the right one. "Ok fine." I started walking towards the gate thinking "What excuse am I going to use to get in here?" I didn't need one. Somehow the officer I was walking towards didn't even look at me. I walked right past him. ALRIGHTY THEN. I'm so confused. For the next 30-45 minutes I am searching through buildings at this hospital campus. The buildings were labeled in Swahili so it made it difficult to know what wards I was in. I finally found what appeared to be the mortuary building. Of course the attendant guarding the building did not speak English so I stood there saying "Noel, Nzovwe" over and over until a translator came over. With the translator's help I was able to enter the building. The man working the front of the building then spoke with me through the same translator. After sending me to another building only to have me return, the man allowed me to follow him into the back room of the building. He held up 6 fingers to me as we stood in front of 6 body boxes. As the man rolled the first one out, a name tag fell out over the side-"Noel." I couldn't even think. The 5 year old boy lay right in front of me, bruised and bandaged. Lifeless. I felt so helpless. In that moment I believe God let me feel a little bit of how He feels for each of us individually. I most likely hadn't ever had any interaction with this boy, but I felt love for him. I felt close to him. I told the man in the room with me that I was going to pray for the boy. I laid my hands on him and prayed that God would raise this boy to life. I prayed that in spite of how unprepared and pathetic I felt, He would perform a miracle there. I even prayed that He would switch my life for Noel's. As I prayed, the other man began to tear the bandages off of the boy's face. I'm not sure what he was thinking. I remember thinking, "Ok I sort of wanted to keep his face covered. This might get too real for me. Why is he doing that?" I finished praying and looked at the boy's lifeless, unbandaged face; wounds, bruises and all. "Time's up." The other man pushed the boy back into the box and advised me to exit. Just like that I was sent into an even deeper state of confusion.
As delirious as I was on the bus ride back to camp, I felt an overwhelming peace that calmed me for the rest of my time in Tanzania. Yes, I wanted answers, SO MANY ANSWERS. I told a couple people from my team what had happened the next day, and we went to the boy's funeral. Again I saw the boy's father barely able to stand, men at his sides holding him up as he grieved the loss of his son. I felt a voice. "That was me." That was the first time I had felt that voice since before I saw the boy the day before. I tried to envision the God of the universe barely able to stand while loudly grieving the loss of His own son. That doesn't look like the pictures I used to see in Sunday school.
I know now that there were 3 hospitals that were closer to our camp than the one I ended up at. God has taught me many things from that experience in Tanzania, and He is still showing me more as time goes on. Everything about that day still seems crazy to me. He has revealed individual truths from that journey every so often for the last few years. The answers definitely didn't come all at once, and truthfully I still don't have all the answers to why everything happened like it did. What I do know is that God wanted to tell me that I was dead once. Really dead. He had to search for me. He wasn't going to stop. He found me. He ripped off the bandages covering the real me. He wanted to see my wounds, my scars, my secrets. He saw everything and loved me enough to want to give everything for me. He gave me life. This past Fall He confirmed all of this again while I was sitting in church one Sunday. He even allowed me to pass on His words to another person He was speaking to and calling for. This is what I heard--
"You were not in a suit in a casket when I found you. You were dead, naked and locked in a cold cell. But I found your cell and unlocked it. I brought you out of your darkness and saw you for who you were. I saw you in your darkest moments. I tore your bandages off and saw your wounds-bruises, cuts, scars; your hurt and your sin. I didn't hide anything and nothing was hidden from me. I saw everything and I loved you. Make no mistake about it. I found you."
Today I remembered the day my mom died. Insane confusion. Holding it together for as long as i could. Finally falling apart and crashing with the rest of my world. I remember being so anxious for my dad. He was rushing home from out of state after hearing the news. I wanted to comfort him somehow. I hated that he was alone. He has loved our family relentlessly ever since he married my mother. He has been the hardest worker I've ever known. His family has been his biggest joy in life. My parents saw their last child head off to college less than 3 years ago. I lived with my parents for a year before getting married last June. They were in the first year of having all 3 children living out of their city. Four days before my parent's tropical island vacation, my mother suddenly and unexplainably died. I was standing in the driveway around midnight when my dad was dropped off at his house. It was about 9 hours after we had found out. As he got out of the passenger side all I could think of was the Tanzanian father that was unable to stand on his own. All I could do was grab him when he got out. We were both weak. I had never seen his face so melted. The only thing he could think of once I was there was Joelle and Danielle. They came out and embraced us. We were all so hurt and confused. The only thing we knew is that we could cling to and trust each other.
We are still confused and hurting, but maybe someday more answers will come. It is my parents' wedding anniversary today and my heart is torn for my dad. Dad, today I want to let you know that you mean the world to me. I love you so much and have learned so much from you. I want to be like you when I grow up. You loved this woman with everything you have. You still love her. I know God is so proud to call you His. It doesn't feel right that this happened to you. There is only One that can say truthfully, "I know exactly how you feel." I pray that He will comfort and bless you. Dad, I want you to know that I have never been more proud to call you my father.
It isn't new that I've been thinking about my mom, but today I also thought about something that happened to me a few years ago during a missions trip to East Africa. Before I start telling you about what happened in Tanzania, let me tell you a little about who I was in 2012 (not that different). I was a 20 year old kid who was sort of at a crossroads before this trip. I was a lazy college student searching for something more. If I'm honest with myself I wasn't a great example of a Christian about to go on a missions trip. I didn't think of myself as a spiritual leader or an ambassador of Christ. I had a heart to help hurting people, and I was excited to explore in a new country. I knew God had given me the opportunity to go, but I didn't really know what for. I was definitely far from the most spiritual or educated individual on my Africa team. I believed that God had put a dream in me to be in those foreign countries for a reason. As the days before the trip disappeared I began to realize how big this was for me. I even made my own will and saved it on my desktop just in case something happened to me. I wanted(and want) to have purpose.
OK, so fast forward to the last couple weeks of the 60 day trip. I had experienced so much already and met so many fantastic human beings. We had traveled through Uganda and Kenya, and were in our final country, Tanzania. We were in the Nzovwe district of Mbeya, a city of about 291,000 in the Southwestern part of the country. We had been working with a local church and school there, preaching and teaching wherever we could. It had been more difficult than the other countries to find ways to make a difference mostly due to the extreme language barrier. Most of the people in that area spoke Swahili. The night before I was scheduled to speak at an outdoor gathering, a teammate and I played soccer in a dusty alley with several younger boys. These boys were probably ages 5-8 and we had a blast kicking a flat ball around pretending to be soccer stars. That night I had a dream. I dreamt that a little boy was crossing the main street outside of our building to go to school. As he was crossing, he was hit by a bus and killed. I remember running up to the boy laying in the street thinking and saying out loud, "No, this can't be happening, this can't be happening" over and over again. All I felt was panic until I woke up. After a few moments I realized it was just a dream and went back to bed. The next day I visited several local shops and grocery stores during the day and returned to our camp later in the afternoon to prepare to speak at our outdoor gathering. When I got back, I was informed that the gathering had been canceled. When I asked a pastor why the event was canceled he told me that a church member's young son was struck and killed by a bus as he crossed the street to go to school earlier in the day. It took me a minute for my brain to catch up, but when it did I immediately sat down and relived the dream I experienced the night before. "What in the world is going on?" is the only thing I could think. My heart raced and my head pounded. How and why did I dream this the night before? I was about to go into a full panic when I felt a voice say "follow me." I didn't hear it audibly but it felt like those words started echoing in my head after I initially felt it. I'm far from an expert on hearing the voice of God, but it felt like I recognized this voice from a few times before in my life. This time was different though. There was a deep sense of urgency. "Uh, hey voice, it would help if you could give me more specific directions." Dazed and confused, I asked where the boy's parents were so we could pray for them. A couple teammates and I found the boy's father grieving loudly, too weak to stand on his own. He had two men at either side of him literally holding him up as he sobbed. He was standing outside of a large room full of women wailing and grieving openly. No one was louder than the boy's mother. "This can't be happening" I thought. I prayed for her at her feet. As we walked back to where we were staying I felt the voice say again "follow me." What the heck am I supposed to do? I'm not a dream interpreter, but a prophetic dream was my proof that something spiritual was taking place. I'm not ready for this. I haven't been extremely close to God or read my Bible nearly enough for this to happen to me...right? I mean if I was going to pick someone from my group to have an experience like this it wouldn't be me! But it is me. I asked the pastor if we could go pray over the boy's body. Even asking that took almost all the courage I could muster. He told me that the mortuary is on the other side of town, and that the boy's parents weren't even able to see the body. Ok I'm off the hook right? "Follow me." Wrong. I heard it again. WHERE? I remember thinking "If I don't see this through I'm always going to wonder what would or could have happened." Deep down, I felt like God was telling me to go find the boy. This doesn't seem safe. There was no time to think or prepare. The voice only got louder. "Follow me, right now. Trust me." So I decided to go for it. I left the camp alone without telling anyone (probably should have), no idea where I was going and with only the boy's name-Noel. Once again, most of the people in Mbeya only spoke Swahili, so I didn't have any luck asking people where the mortuary was. I remember trying to speak to people selling meat on the side of the road as a last gasp effort before I threw in the towel. Out of nowhere I feel a tap on the shoulder. A man in a black top hat is standing behind me asking, "What are you looking for?" ENGLISH! I told him that I was looking for a mortuary. He didn't understand that word. I tried "hospital." The man understood. He immediately took me over to a taxi van, spoke to the driver in Swahili for a minute or two and then told me to hop in. After I got in the van, the driver continued picking people up and dropping people off for 15-20 minutes as I sat in the back. Eventually I was the only one left in the van as we drove without stopping for several miles. I remember thinking, "I'm so dumb. I'm just easy prey for this guy to take me to a secluded place and mug me-or worse. He obviously knows that I don't know the city, and I'm probably the first white person he has seen in a while, if ever." He did not mug me and I tipped him for that. I was eventually dropped off on a sidewalk, and his pointer finger advised me which direction to start walking. I approached a hospital gate guarded by policemen with AK-47s. "Alright, this is the end of the rope. I made it further than I thought I would anyway." Again I felt the voice, "Follow me." After some arguing with myself I felt a little more of a whisper. "I want you to find him." Finding this boy still seems impossible even though I found the hospital. I don't even know if there is a mortuary in this hospital let alone if it is the right one. "Ok fine." I started walking towards the gate thinking "What excuse am I going to use to get in here?" I didn't need one. Somehow the officer I was walking towards didn't even look at me. I walked right past him. ALRIGHTY THEN. I'm so confused. For the next 30-45 minutes I am searching through buildings at this hospital campus. The buildings were labeled in Swahili so it made it difficult to know what wards I was in. I finally found what appeared to be the mortuary building. Of course the attendant guarding the building did not speak English so I stood there saying "Noel, Nzovwe" over and over until a translator came over. With the translator's help I was able to enter the building. The man working the front of the building then spoke with me through the same translator. After sending me to another building only to have me return, the man allowed me to follow him into the back room of the building. He held up 6 fingers to me as we stood in front of 6 body boxes. As the man rolled the first one out, a name tag fell out over the side-"Noel." I couldn't even think. The 5 year old boy lay right in front of me, bruised and bandaged. Lifeless. I felt so helpless. In that moment I believe God let me feel a little bit of how He feels for each of us individually. I most likely hadn't ever had any interaction with this boy, but I felt love for him. I felt close to him. I told the man in the room with me that I was going to pray for the boy. I laid my hands on him and prayed that God would raise this boy to life. I prayed that in spite of how unprepared and pathetic I felt, He would perform a miracle there. I even prayed that He would switch my life for Noel's. As I prayed, the other man began to tear the bandages off of the boy's face. I'm not sure what he was thinking. I remember thinking, "Ok I sort of wanted to keep his face covered. This might get too real for me. Why is he doing that?" I finished praying and looked at the boy's lifeless, unbandaged face; wounds, bruises and all. "Time's up." The other man pushed the boy back into the box and advised me to exit. Just like that I was sent into an even deeper state of confusion.
As delirious as I was on the bus ride back to camp, I felt an overwhelming peace that calmed me for the rest of my time in Tanzania. Yes, I wanted answers, SO MANY ANSWERS. I told a couple people from my team what had happened the next day, and we went to the boy's funeral. Again I saw the boy's father barely able to stand, men at his sides holding him up as he grieved the loss of his son. I felt a voice. "That was me." That was the first time I had felt that voice since before I saw the boy the day before. I tried to envision the God of the universe barely able to stand while loudly grieving the loss of His own son. That doesn't look like the pictures I used to see in Sunday school.
I know now that there were 3 hospitals that were closer to our camp than the one I ended up at. God has taught me many things from that experience in Tanzania, and He is still showing me more as time goes on. Everything about that day still seems crazy to me. He has revealed individual truths from that journey every so often for the last few years. The answers definitely didn't come all at once, and truthfully I still don't have all the answers to why everything happened like it did. What I do know is that God wanted to tell me that I was dead once. Really dead. He had to search for me. He wasn't going to stop. He found me. He ripped off the bandages covering the real me. He wanted to see my wounds, my scars, my secrets. He saw everything and loved me enough to want to give everything for me. He gave me life. This past Fall He confirmed all of this again while I was sitting in church one Sunday. He even allowed me to pass on His words to another person He was speaking to and calling for. This is what I heard--
"You were not in a suit in a casket when I found you. You were dead, naked and locked in a cold cell. But I found your cell and unlocked it. I brought you out of your darkness and saw you for who you were. I saw you in your darkest moments. I tore your bandages off and saw your wounds-bruises, cuts, scars; your hurt and your sin. I didn't hide anything and nothing was hidden from me. I saw everything and I loved you. Make no mistake about it. I found you."
Today I remembered the day my mom died. Insane confusion. Holding it together for as long as i could. Finally falling apart and crashing with the rest of my world. I remember being so anxious for my dad. He was rushing home from out of state after hearing the news. I wanted to comfort him somehow. I hated that he was alone. He has loved our family relentlessly ever since he married my mother. He has been the hardest worker I've ever known. His family has been his biggest joy in life. My parents saw their last child head off to college less than 3 years ago. I lived with my parents for a year before getting married last June. They were in the first year of having all 3 children living out of their city. Four days before my parent's tropical island vacation, my mother suddenly and unexplainably died. I was standing in the driveway around midnight when my dad was dropped off at his house. It was about 9 hours after we had found out. As he got out of the passenger side all I could think of was the Tanzanian father that was unable to stand on his own. All I could do was grab him when he got out. We were both weak. I had never seen his face so melted. The only thing he could think of once I was there was Joelle and Danielle. They came out and embraced us. We were all so hurt and confused. The only thing we knew is that we could cling to and trust each other.
We are still confused and hurting, but maybe someday more answers will come. It is my parents' wedding anniversary today and my heart is torn for my dad. Dad, today I want to let you know that you mean the world to me. I love you so much and have learned so much from you. I want to be like you when I grow up. You loved this woman with everything you have. You still love her. I know God is so proud to call you His. It doesn't feel right that this happened to you. There is only One that can say truthfully, "I know exactly how you feel." I pray that He will comfort and bless you. Dad, I want you to know that I have never been more proud to call you my father.
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