tanzania.

I very recently returned from a three-and-a-half week missions trip to Tanzania (it's in Africa, in case you just got up to find a map). And feeling like I'm finally over jet-lag and on my way out of culture shock, I thought now would be an appropriate time to share with you my experience.

I'll start by saying that I'm refusing to call these past three weeks "life-changing." 

It's as if it's become stereotypical to go to Africa and come back changed and saying, "They have so little, and yet they're so happy!" (My team nearly dissected this phrase one night and finally came to the conclusion that this statement is really a facade, masking what one is really feeling, "I have so much, and yet I'm so unhappy.") I feel like it's these very same people who also return from short-term, "life-changing" mission experiences with a lot of empty promises and goals. For instance, they promise to be less materialistic. And for a week, sure. It works! But eventually, they adjust to life in the states and fall back into their old habits.

(If you find yourself identifying with this hypothetical individual I described, please don't be offended. I am confident that God has used that experience to shape you, regardless of whether or not you remain completely impacted by it to this day.)

Thus, my refusal to consider this a "life-changing" experience (though life-changing it was indeed) springs from a desire to not be another statistic. 

I don't want to be one more kid who comes home and forgets about their experience abroad in a matter of weeks.

I want to be the kid who remains changed,

 

who remembers the orphans' names, 

who remains touched by their smiles, 

and whose heart is continually broken for the least, the last, and the lost.

Because, to be honest, my heart was broken, and I am changed.

(Rather than compose a single, ridiculously long post of my Tanzanian adventure, I've decided to write a few posts focused on different, specific experiences. Please standby...)