My kitchen table is my favorite place in my house. It’s been this way my whole life.
My kitchen table is not pretty. It’s scratched, over 20 years old, and has too many nail polish remover marks from my sister and I. But its my favorite place. It holds so many memories. When I went home over our layover in Newark on the way to South Africa, my mom, my sister, my 3 best friends from home, and Bree, one of my best friends from the Race, all gathered around the kitchen table. I don’t think I realized until that moment how much I cherish that kitchen table. Everyone I’ve ever loved has sat around that table.
Back in Georgia during training camp, in a season where I left the home I’ve always known, I learned what home actually is. Learning what true relationship with the Lord is and really pursuing Him wholeheartedly for the first time in my life showed me that life was designed to be lived with the Lord. The Lord taught me that He is my home. I was thankful to be home. Throughout training camp, we were asked to ask ourselves and the Lord this question: “Why am I here?”. The night before we left for our first ministry on the Race, I asked the Lord this question. The thing that kept coming to mind was “Now that you’re home, you get to walk other people home too”. My home is Him, and His home is my heart. And because of this, I get to walk people to the home that changed my life. To His heart, to His love, to His goodness. Thats why I’m here.
The Lord really made me excited to go home halfway through my time in Guatemala. Not in a way where I wished I was home, but I was expectant for what the Lord was going to do there and how He was going to grow me and the people around me. Every time I would think about going home, He started showing me sitting at my kitchen table reading my bible. He still shows me that every time I think of home.
I grew up living in hospitality. I know what hospitality is the most because of my Mom. Every time a family member or friend or neighbor came over, she would welcome them in, invite them to sit down at our kitchen table, and offer them a cup of coffee. This hospitality is also very common in South Africa, and the Lord has really highlighted it to me. It reminds me of my Mom every time someone offers me a cup of coffee, and really makes me appreciate that I’ve grown up in a household of hospitality. I’ve lived in it my whole life, but the Lord took me all the way to South Africa to teach me that He wants me to be a woman of hospitality.
Our ministry was a school called King’s College here in South Africa. My team loved it there. We really connected with the kids since we were there everyday for the past 6 weeks. On Monday, we were told that we were switching ministries for the last 2 weeks of South Africa.
Yesterday morning, walking into the new ministry, a preschool called Noah’s Ark, we had prayed a lot about Lord helping us to know this was His plan. To walk in with open and flexible hearts to what the Lord had for us there.
We left ministry yesterday afternoon thanking the Lord for this new opportunity. We left ministry today being even more thankful for this new ministry and the people we get to encourage and be encouraged by.
Sadie and I were filing papers this morning, and a woman walks in and introduces herself and follows up by asking us about ourselves. She is greeted with a big hug from the principal. She walks out, and through the glass doors of the office, I watched her be greeted again with big hug from the school cook in the next room. This woman is evidently known and loved really well. Later on, we started helping the rest of the team with varnishing the playgrounds outside. That same lady comes walking out with a big smile on her face and a Tupperware full of cookies in her hands. She offered us all one. Clayton told us that there was a prayer room he found and that he talked to a woman in there about her ministry with crocheting. We decided to eat lunch in there. Trav and I were the first ones in there, and the woman from earlier walks in. She invites us to sit at the table inside the prayer room and she pulls up a chair for herself. I realized that she was the same woman Clayton talked to. She started telling us about the prayer room and how she invites women from the community to come and learn how to sew and crochet and make things for themselves and others. She then said “sometimes the women come in and I just get to listen”. She talked about it like that was her favorite thing. Yes, she loved what she taught to the women, but hearing their stories was what she loved the most. “Isn’t that a testimony?” She said after she finished her story. It really was. Her and her husband continued telling testimonies of King’s College and Noah’s Ark and all the schools that are connected under a huge ministry here in South Africa called “Victory for All”. Testimony after testimony about how the Lord is so good, the room was filled with awe. She ended up asking to pray for us and encouraged us. “You’re all beautiful people” she said. All I could think the whole time was: “This is the kind of woman I want to be”. I wrote in my journal about this and wrote “I want to be a woman of hospitality that not only welcomes people home, but welcomes people home into their open seat at the table, with a cup of coffee, and a listening ear. A table full of fruitful conversations where we get to praise and seek the Lord in fellowship in His house. A woman of hospitality that lives her life at the table”.
The Lord has been growing my heart to be this way for a really long time, but the Lord opened my eyes to see His faithfulness in that today.
The Lord giving me my Mom that lives a life and creates a household of hospitality.
The Lord teaching me that He is my home, and I’m here to walk people to their home in Him.
The Lord showing me an image of myself sitting at my kitchen table every time I think of home.
He is leading me to be a woman of hospitality because He is a God of hospitality. I am who I am because of who He is. I ask the Lord daily that He would make all that I am be all that He is. Growing into a woman of hospitality is how He is leading me to reflect more of who He is.
How is He leading you to be more of who He is? Ask Him show you. Let Him change and grow you.
I promise its good. He’s always good.
Love always,
Ava 🙂
