Central Asia OR Team - Entry One

While living in America for your entire life, the face of poverty is often given to us in pictures of kids with no shoes, dirt and frowns on their faces, typically staged in front of tin and clay houses. The picture we’re given of these truly beautiful countries and these truly joyful people gives us a lie of what joy really comes from. We are shown that any third world country is a waste land full of disease and depression, and we wonder why Christians are so hesitant to reach out to these places. And what a lie that is! What we are so used to calling comfortable in our homes in the states is so constricting of what freedom and joy we can experience if we leave what we’re used to. The truth behind the picture of poverty that we have always seen is the joy of the Lord. The reality we’ve experienced on outreach are God’s people singing and dancing together for hours. Some people dance barefoot too! They are eager to gather with other believers. Everyone, including us, will walk for around an hour for these gatherings. There isn’t a frown or grumble anywhere. The reality of poverty isn’t a lie, most people only have a couple outfits, tin and clay houses cover the hills, and there’s trash covering the streets, but that’s not what the focus is on like you’d expect. Here, it’s so easy to praise God for the little things. We rejoice on a sunny day because we can see the mountains and our clothes on the clothesline might dry a little faster. We pray for popcorn quite often, and get it almost every time we do too. We do the macarena every day with the same smile on our faces as we teach the kids and families the dance. We laugh so hard at the dinner table as we talk about our sickness after eating some mysterious food or maybe after accidentally drinking the water. We are grateful for running water, even if it is freezing, because we can wash our hair and clothes. We wake every morning, ready and surrendered for whatever God will lead us to that day. When you set your eyes on God, the only one who really matters, the only poverty you see are within those who have never met him. Which is why we go. As we are sent into the nations, we joyfully endure any struggles sent our way — “in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” -2 Corinthians 6:6-10