by Presley Scott, 3-month Namibia Immersion team member
The summer Immersion team in Namibia just finished their 3-month journey. Here's a reflection from their time in the Namib Desert at J.P. Brand School.
It was Wednesday morning and I walked into my classroom, where of course there was no teacher. 48 second graders ran around screaming and causing chaos. I took a deep breath and entered the room with a positive mindset, believing I could in fact control them (I was wrong). After many tactics, I decided to let the kids have their free reign and focus on the kids who wanted to engage.
I approached a set of desks in the back corner where a sweet girl sat, and I began to just ask her questions to get to know her. Her name is Ubasen and she comes from the Kovango tribe, which is several hours away. She told me about her mother Maria and father John who she loves very much and then she pointed to the boy sitting next to her, Together, and explained that he was her brother. As I continued to ask questions, I noticed that she began to slump down and her eyes drifted downward and a spirit of sadness took over and suddenly little tears fell onto her shirt. I tilted her head up and asked, "What is it? Is everything okay?" to which she responded "I just really wanna be with my daddy, I miss him so much and I only see him not that much." As I looked into her little 7-year-old eyes, full of tears, I started to think about how hard it must be to be so young, yet have to be apart from your parents and learn to take care of yourself.
Later that day, I was thinking more and more about what happened and God revealed something to me. In our earthly realm, as we grow up from children to adults, our goal is to become independent enough to survive without our parents and take care of ourselves. Yet, as we grow up in our faith and in the realm of the gospel, we are actually becoming more DEPENDENT creatures. It is as we come to understand more of God's ability, love, and grace, that we come to rely more on him and draw closer to his house. One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes explains that if we find our hearts desiring something which this world cannot satisfy, the only explanation is that we must be created for another world. God is showing me that the more we grow in him, the more dependent we become on his provision and control in our lives. In Hebrews 11, it says "...they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one."
These kids in the Namibian desert are expected to be separated from their parents at ages as young as 5 and 6 years old. My prayer for them is that as they struggle with finding fleshly independence at such young ages, they might find rest by placing their complete dependence on God. He says in Psalms that He is the "father to the fatherless," and my hope is that these kids would come to know their perfect father, in surrendering all to Him.
God doesn't want us to grow to a point of being self-sufficient, doing things for ourselves. Instead, He desires that as we grow in Him and become more attuned with His power and love in our lives, we become more DEPENDENT on Him. We are not growing up so that we can move out of the house on our own, instead we are growing up and he is preparing our place to come home to.
LEARN MORE | Join a 1, 3 or 6-month IMMERSION team in 2016!
Site developed and hosted by Skycog, Inc.