Unqualified

This summer, in our mission in Haiti, we helped nine young adults grow in their faith, be committed to daily prayer, and live out their missionary calling for four weeks.

It was part of my job this summer to lead this part of our mission, although I think many of those responsibilities came by accident. When I began dreaming and planning, I had no idea what I would be getting myself into, and didn’t realize that I would be the one primarily responsible for carrying out that plan.

Let me tell you all the reasons why I am unqualified for this.
I cannot speak Haitian Creole 100% fluently.
I have never led summer missionaries before, even in English.
I am shy.
I cannot think of hundreds of things to say in English, much less in another language.
I am scared of people.
I cannot sing. (It’s a cultural thing in Haiti that many people lead prayer by starting with a song.)
I am lacking in confidence, and afraid of failure.

And yet God used me. I’m not sure how or why. I am humbled by it and thankful.



When I first became a missionary, I used to hope that even if I did a terrible job, hopefully the benefit of that would be that someone else would look at my mess and say, “Well, if Sara can do it, then maybe I can be a missionary too.”

I still have the same hope. I hope that people see that if God can use this shy, insecure girl to speak about him in a language she doesn’t fully know, then He must be able to use them with all of their weaknesses, imperfections, and insecurities too.

I saw firsthand this summer that all God really needs is our yes. I relied a lot on the holy Spirit, and a lot on my community. The Lord taught me that I can be confident in Him. For some reason He delights in using the weak to lead the strong.

I am thankful to belong to this God whose plans don’t always make sense.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Does it Mean to Give?

There’s something I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around lately.   I live in a country where people don’t have a lot of material possessions. They also don’t have a lot of food, and the food that they do have is not the most nutritious or balanced type of diet. Their houses are not great; they don’t have cars; many don’t have jobs. The question: What is my response? Many times, people here ask me for things. It seems that I can’t leave our mission base without someone asking me for my water bottle, my sweater, my shoes, some money. I’m pretty sure they see me as a rich white person. What I’ve realized recently is that in many ways, this is actually true. If you look at the big picture of the whole world and all of the people in it, I am rich, even though I am a missionary and I have to ask for money for everything that I have. I am rich, even though I buy almost all of my clothes on sale, and have many that were given to me. I am rich, even though my laptop is five years o
Read more

From Naivete to Growth

Image
I remember sitting caffeinated, late at night, in the library with a friend in college, talking about foreign mission. One day, we could live in Africa, we said over our lattes and laptops. It seemed a glorious thing to me, this missionary life in a foreign country. At the time, I wanted to travel. I did have a true and real desire to love and live among the poor, but the rest of it was a dream, built on nothing – I had barely left the country then. In fact, I don’t think I had ever met a real live missionary. I had heard about mission trips, but never been on a foreign one. My imaginary life was just that, imaginary. A little more than a few years later, I was moving to Haiti to start a mission there with a few other people from an organization that I loved. I don’t think I could have admitted it then, but it definitely felt glorious. I had read a few books about missionaries, met some missionaries, been on mission trips, been inspired by the passion, zeal, and sacrifice of others
Read more

My First Dance Class

Image
Picture this: seven Haitians teenagers and a white American girl with no rhythm dancing on a stage to the beat of a conga drum (or "tanbou" as they call in Creole). The man playing the drum is named "Ti-roro". He is in his seventies and is also the dance teacher. Yes, he did teach them their dance moves by doing them himself. This was my first of a few experiences dancing with Ti-roro's dance class. Three or four of the girls had grabbed my hands and pulled me onto the stage after asking me to dance with them. I couldn't say no, so I took a dance class for the first time in the 24 years of my life so far. While I have only danced with them a few times, these girls are a part of most of my favorite experiences in Haiti. They often come by after dance class, and even on days when they don't have dance class, just to say hello or hang out with us. One day I was learning Creole from a book, and it was teaching me actions and body parts. As I was readi
Read more