Jackson Mississippi: Harvest School Extended Outreach

First of all stop for the one who is The One and worship Him, and then stop for the one in front of you, it’s that simple. –Heidi Baker

It's that simple...

 

Alright y'all...Mississippi…where do I even start. When I reflect back on my time in Mississippi I am just filled with so much thankfulness and joy in how good the Lord is. I am so thankful that he uprooted my original outreach plans and paved a way for me to go to Jackson and serve with We Will Go for two and a half weeks. I even got 3 extra days, since flights kept getting canceled and switched around. Thank you Jesus!!! Even with those three extra days it did not seem like long enough, Jackson stole a bit of my heart and it was quite heartbreaking to leave.

To start out the trip, I flew into Jackson very sick. My fever was at 103, body aches and chills, I was feeling quite miserable. When the team picked us up I was immediately wrapped in love. Like, literally! I felt someone hug me from behind and just start praying over me. The peace of Jesus came down as they continued to pray for me throughout our ride. 

I was taken to the hospital by two girls I had just met, Zakiya and Lindsay who instantly felt like sisters. How wonderful that Jesus can do that!! I’m sure we had the nurses and doctor wondering why we were there, as they heard plenty of laughter coming from our room. You want to know what love looks like? That day it looked like, taking a girl they had just meet to the hospital and sitting with, praying over, and keeping the humor and joy flowing for 6 hours.  I felt the love. It’s that simple.

Zakiya and Lyndsey were only in Jackson for one night, and they spent it in the Emergency room with me. Bless them Jesus!

I know my transition back into America from Harvest School was made much smoother by going to We Will Go for outreach. The We Will Go team is such a family, they are living the Acts community and it is beautiful!! So many students after harvest school (myself included) seem to be struggling with transition home and really missing the community that we were so blessed to live in while in Mozambique. I think we miss it so much because that’s how we are meant to live…together, with Jesus as our focus and center, loving him first and for most and then from there, from intimacy with Him we get to see the fruitfulness of the overflow of His love to others. At We Will Go they live in community with each other. I saw His love overflowing from them and into their neighbors and friends and each other. It’s simple. It’s beautiful.

Rebecka's first time to America! :) Papa Dan would make us an amazing breakfast each morning. We were so blessed to have Dan and Ruanne as our outreach leaders!

We ate some southern cookin'...fried catfish, fried okra, fried everything! It's a bit rough on the stomach after rice and beans for two and a half months.

  
Christmas day: My blind eyes opened

I know now why the Lord had put it on my heart to stay through Christmas, besides the fact that it was His grace in allowing me to slowly transition back into America and the craziness that tends to be the holidays. I’ll be the first to admit that it is hard coming from a third world nation where I saw people starving and held babies with bloated bellies with witch doctor bands tied around their waist, lived with a 23 year old mama and her 8 children for a night in a mud hut with holes in the wall that was infested with bedbugs and saw rats running around. My first thoughts back in America were “We are so rich! Even the poor in America are rich!!!” 

Throughout my first week in Jackson the Lord would often ask me as I was talking with a neighbor or a friend “Do you see them Mindy? Do you really see them?” I kept praying that the Lord would open my eyes, because there was obviously something I was not seeing since He was asking me this as I was physically staring right at them. I realize now that I was blind and the Lord was preparing to open my eyes. 

On Christmas day Ashley, one of the We Will Go interns, and I went to visit a few of the neighbors and it was during our visit on that street that the Lord said “Mindy, do you see them? They are much poorer than the ones in Africa.” My heart broke and I realized how blind I had been. Yes, it’s a different kind of poor. It’s a poorness of spirit, and it breaks His heart. The neighbors we visited were alone. It was Christmas and they were alone. The poor I was with in Africa might not have known where their next meal was going to come from but they had each other. The mama has her 8 children and her brothers and her mother that live with her. Many of them know the Lord and have the Joy of the Lord in them, and they trust that He will provide all that they need. Day to day they lean into Him and praise Him for what He provides. Christmas day the Lord really showed me His heart for the poor and lost in America. I will never be the same, in my time in Mozambique I learned the fathers heart for me as His daughter, and He placed His love in my heart. He brought me to Mississippi to see and to transplant His love to a deeper level that I would not have had if I had not gone. I saw the fathers heart in the We Will Go team as I had the privilege of watching them love on their neighbors and truly know them and love them for who they are. It’s that simple. 

This is my beautiful friend Ashley, who I mention in the Christmas day story above.

I skyped with a friend this week and we were talking about our transitions since harvest school. I just loved what she said “I am a broken vessel; my responsibility is to just go and leak Jesus.” Wherever we are, wherever we go…we get to leak Jesus. He loves us, He uses us. It’s that simple. Heidi Baker said she told the Lord once "If  you can use a donkey you can use me!" She told us "God can use anyone who is yielded." Yield to Him. It's that simple.  

Note for my Harvest School friends: Farish district is where we planted the tent stake. Please keep it in your prayers! I’m excited to see the healing and restoration the Lord has in store for this street.

Some of the house on Farish that will be restored

The cross above where we put the tent stake

Tent stake from Pemba. From the nations to the nations. This land belongs to the Lord!

Mama Angela

A definition I found for immerse:   enclose or envelop completely, as if by swallowing.

I found this definition fitting for what Harvest School calls immersion. I was given the privilege of living for 24 hours with a mama in the village. We would be immersed into her life, do everything that she did…cook with her over hot coals in 100 degree heat, fetch water from the well attempting to carry it on my head the way she did, clean the dishes in about an inch of dirty water, sweep the dirt yard, play with the children, go to bed by 7pm and attempt to sleep on African day bed with a few grass mats.

I arrived at the mamas house with Anke and Heidi. Anke is from Germany and Heidi from Norway. What a ragtag group of internationals we were. You want to talk about language barriers and culture differences…we had a bit of everything. Our Mama’s name was Angela, she told us she was 23 years old and had 8 children (think about that for a minute...23 years old, 8 children). 8 Children meant there were normally at least twice that amount running around, to this day I’m not sure what kids were hers and what where just neighbors visiting. Within the first 30 minutes of being at her home she laid down some grass mats for us all to sit around and instantly all 3 of us had little girls braiding hour hair. It hurt sooooo bad!!!! I really wanted to tell them no, but I remembered what one of the house moms said before we headed out for immersion “remember the Lord wont give you more than you can handle.” And then Heidi Baker came into my head with “What does love look like?” and for that moment love looked like letting three little girls braid my entire head of hair.

Mama Angela took us for a walk through the village to visit her sister who had a one month old bady. So adorable! She also showed us the market where she bought us some mangos that we had for dessert after dinner. She cooked us some kind of fish stew and was poured over a huge bed of rice. The fish were just mini little guys, with their heads and eyeballs, bones, tails and fins and everything just thrown right in. I thanked the Lord that by the time we were eating it was dark out so I did not have to see the eye looking at me. It actually was very delicious, but I did have a rough time getting over the crunch of the bones.

It gets dark by 5:30pm so we were literally in bed by 7:30pm! The mama gave us her best. We had one African day bed and a grass mat on the floor. Anka and Heidi switched on and off the cot with me until the both decided the floor was more comfortable. I keep checking the time, thinking hours had gone by when really only 15 minutes had pass. It really was one of the longest nights of my life. I was getting eaten by bedbugs all night long. I thought as I laid there in the dark, praying for the sun to rise quickly “Our dogs in America have better beds than this mama will ever see.”

This experience really showed me how blessed I am. Do you realize how blessed you are? I pray that the Lord would continue to give me a thankful heart. Even now that I am back home in America, where we are so so blessed to have too much stuff! We have all that we need and so much more. I pray that I would not forget to be thankful for the little things that really aren’t little things at all. 2/3^rds of the world live like they do in Africa. Running water is a big deal!!! Clean water to drink is huge!! Hot water, wow, such a blessing to get to take a hot shower!!!! A stove to cook on, a comfy bed to sleep in that’s bedbug free, carpet in our living room with comfy couches, food, so much food.

I am reminded today of a something Heidi Baker said during harvest school. “We are called to come with great humility and great love.” Keep me humble Lord, give me your heart and love for each person I encounter today. Give me a thankful heart, help me remember how blessed I am. You are always so good to me!!

This is a picture of my neck after the night getting eaten by bedbugs. Oh these things itch so much!!! They were all over my back, stomach, arms, hands and even my face.