Beauty in the Breakdown

 Oh Namibia...where do I begin?! The third country on our journey has come with it's ups and downs. A major down has been the dryness I've felt in this place, both physically and spiritually; my skin is dry and cracked and so was my spirit--notice the past tense, WAS. I'm pretty sure my mini breakdown was due to a culmination of intense traveling, a busy schedule, missing my family, and many spiritual attacks from the enemy. One day in particular will stick with me for the rest of my life. I started the day with a glass half empty feeling; it took a lot of effort to get through my morning devotionals. I felt like I was completely useless here in Namibia, that nothing I was doing in terms of our ministry was breaking through this dry ground. Anyway, on this particular day our task was to walk around the community of Katatura, on the outskirts of Windhoek, and check on and pray for families of a preschool associated with YWAM Namibia. The enemy was really coming at me hard with things like: "Your prayers are worthless" and, "You don't have the authority to call upon the Lord to help these people". I cracked and I started bawling declaring that, "this place sucks, it is so hard to be here"! One of the preschool staff members could definitely tell that I needed a bit of prayer before we continued on with our own scheduled prayer walk and he just prayed out that there is beauty in the breakdown; the breakdown means that God is stirring something up in you that needs to be addressed. I prayed right then that God would search me, reveal to me what needed to be worked out and then we could work it out together. I knew a few minutes later that it was my unbelief--I thought I had addressed that in Oxford, but obviously we still had work to do; I just prayed again that the Lord would continue to break me of my unbelief. I was feeling a bit better by the time we started walking again. We felt the Spirit leading us to pray for someone with a leg injury so we made a detour from our house visits to do just that. We walked up to a group of men and asked if any of them had a leg injury; they pointed us to a tough looking guy selling goods so we went and asked him about his injury. Turns out he was in a car accident four years ago and his hip was badly broken..he had been walking in pain ever since so we explained to him that we wanted to pray for him and that God wanted to heal his leg right there and then. He agreed to let us pray for healing of his leg. When we were finished we asked him to get up and walk around to see how his hip felt; he said that it felt a little better but he could still feel the pain when he walked. We prayed again as he was standing there and had him give his hip a little shake to seal the deal. All of a sudden he got this astounded look on his face and said something to his friends in his own language. His hip was completely healed, the pain was gone, he couldn't feel a thing and could walk normal! It was so amazing to see the Lord work in that way and I felt like a huge wall came down around my heart and my mind. God is just so much bigger that we can ever imagine--He is in the miraculous healings my personal struggles; what's even more amazing is that both are the same in His eyes! From that day forward my attitude was completely changed; I really began to see the beauty of Namibia!