I Finally Have Internet (TIA!!)

September 30, 2012

One of my least favorite questions in the midst of my preparations for and arrival to Kenya has been, “What are your expectations?”  Honestly, that has to be one of the broadest, most unspecific questions.  Five months ago this whole trip was unexpected; I was sitting at a desk, enduring my last few days stuck in a high school classroom, wondering which country I was going to be in during the year which, by all expectations, would be my freshman year of college.  But I could sense that was not what God had planned for me at this point in my life.  And so, through a long series of events, I now find myself sitting in the shade of a foreign tree, surrounded by rough grass and orange dirt paths, and the longer I sit here the prettiest birds I have ever seen and a toucan-like thingy venture closer and closer to me.  By no means did I expect any of this.  (Well, except for the orange dirt, I was looking forward to that.)  Nor did I expect to spend my entire first day in Kenya walking the streets of Nairobi in flip-flops for a trip to buy laundry soap (Africa Time!!!) or staying behind from a 4 hour long church service with my fellow North-Westerner friend, Lisa (who has already threatened cannibalism, which isn’t a completely insane idea for us to come up with at this point, actually…), for a chance for some quiet and to finally start to process all this CRAZINESS!!  But, here I am.  The truth is: I have very little expectation.  (I will get moderately sick at some point and I will meet some very incredible people, but I will never completely conquer all of these language barriers-unless I feel like learning: German, Swiss-German, Norwegian, Canadian-English, Swahili, Ugandan, Dutch, and a handful of tribal languages.  But honestly, that’s about it!) And that is exactly what makes this moment so perfectly beautiful!  I never could have dreamt of a moment so incredible, yet here I am!  I do not have expectations of this trip, or of God; He has expectations of me.  He is in the process of doing a great work in me over the next few months!  And while that is incredibly exciting, it’s a little scary at the same time.  Bob Goff’s words could not have come at a more perfect time (total God thing!) last Sunday, “God wants to blow your mind, so be not afraid!”  No matter what these next five months have in store, I know they are from God and are a part of His plan for my life.  I am therefore choosing to embrace every part of the work God is doing in me, without expectation or prejudice.  Because through it He is going to blow my mind in big ways!! SAWA-SAWA!
~Chloe Anne