Finding Momentum

When peo­ple hear that I’m going to Botswana, the ques­tions I hear the most are the following:

1. Whoa, is it safe there?
2. What will you be doing?

To which I answer:

1. Yeah, Botswana’s safe. It’s polit­i­cally and eco­nom­i­cally as sta­ble as South Africa.
2. I may be doing multimedia/communication work with Love Botswana. I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I sus­pect it could have to do with Stu­dio 7, the organization’s radio broad­cast­ing min­istry. I really don’t know in what capac­ity I’m going to help out with, so it could be in every­thing from audio production/mixing/mastering to sweep­ing the floors.

Even though Sarah and I have this ideal idea of how we could fit in or how our skills can be used, I think we’re both prepar­ing to go in real humbly and help out in the big things and lit­tle things.

So why are you going?

I’m com­ing along­side Sarah, who’s planned to come on this trip for a long time. It’s tech­ni­cally a “scout­ing trip,” which means that we’re going to get a big pic­ture overview with how the orga­ni­za­tion runs and to bet­ter see how we can fit in. It’s an inter­me­di­ary trip for those who are inter­ested in pos­si­bly com­ing on board for a longer period of time.

To back it up even fur­ther, I knew that Africa was a big part of Sarah’s dreams for her future when we started dat­ing. Which wasn’t easy because I couldn’t see myself in Africa… I had plans to join the indus­try doing what­ever geeky, nerdy, soft­ware engi­neer­ing gig I had prepped myself for at UC Berke­ley. It’s been an inter­est­ing time as we’ve pro­gressed in our dat­ing rela­tion­ship, because we had to talk about the pos­si­bil­ity of God call­ing Sarah and myself dif­fer­ent direc­tions: to Africa and to the States.

That’s a whole ‘nother talk for another time, but I think the con­clu­sion I’ve come to is: live or die in the States or Africa, whether I get to expe­ri­ence life over­seas on mis­sion or state­side on mis­sion in the work­force, I rec­og­nize that a heart trea­sur­ing and com­pelled by the Gospel is far more impor­tant than whether I get to be labeled as “mis­sion­ary” or “engi­neer.” And so may my heart be set by that one pas­sion: to know and love Jesus deeper and deeper, to die to myself daily, to have my  heart changed and moved by the things that move the heart of God.