Discipline & Love

“Mission isn’t about what you’re doing but it’s about affirming people and walking beside them.”

Hein

This past week my team and I have been busy working in several communities in Pretoria. From packing food parcels at Kairos, serving meals for Blessed Hands, to being apart of the after school care program and working with MYDO ( a ministry dedicated to supporting the Malusi youth). I’ve gotten to teach 4th & 5th graders math (still don’t know why God put me in that subject). Helping serve food for the students, and providing them with extra help in their homework, dancing and laughing with them. These experiences I’ve had, I will forever remember.

One of the days we took a tour of the school and Principal Chris shared with us his passion of why he started Kairos. We got to learn about the importance of why we pack the food parcels and where it goes to. What is so cool is that many of the kids in the after school care program are the ones who receive the food parcels we pack. Packing meals sometimes seem such like a small thing I’m doing but it’s not about how much I do but the bigger impact it has for the families and children who receive the food.

Just across the school there are squatter camps. For those who don’t know what a squatter camp is, they’re homes that are 4×4 walls and 50 people in that community share only one bathroom. My heart breaks to see that poverty happens closer to us than we realize. That day, I was reminded what Hein said earlier on this trip. Once we see the brokenness of poverty ourselves, we discover the brokenness that’s inside of us…

God answered a prayer I had asked for a couple weeks ago and He gave me a choice to walk through a “door” that I realized quickly it wasn’t the door I was meant to go in. I felt like I was being led astray by what seemed to be the right decision. I believe sometimes the hardships or difficulties we face in life, is the testing of our faith.

For awhile my mind was only concerned with how unpleasant the situation I was in, but in the midst of my struggling I started to see more clearly how God used the experience I went through to discipline me for something greater. I’m still trusting in Him as I hope to someday understand that greater plan. All I can say for now is that His discipline I endured, created a deeper maturity in my faith journey.

Lastly, I remind myself the experience of what I went through didn’t mean I was being abandoned by God or that He was punishing me, but just like it’s written in Hebrews 12, the unpleasantness that I had to go through was meant to correct me away from somewhere I wasn’t suppose to be. I learned that sometimes God disciplines us because we need to grow and the only way we can do that is by getting “trained” into a deeper faith. I have to look beyond the process of what I went through to see the beautiful result of where I am now.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” —Hebrews 12:11

Thank you for all the prayers and support as I finish my last weeks here in South Africa(:

Caili