When people think third world country... They typically think: Starving Children, Hunger, Disease, Pain... Bad things. That's what I think about too, really.
However, if I learned one thing during my time in Ethiopia- It was how to love. And it has to take someone who knows how to love to teach someone to love. And it wasn't like..."oh you're in my life so I am obligated to love you"..... It was "God created you and you'r beautiful and I love you just because and I will no matter what"
And when I think of this... I think how can people who are so hurt, and have so little love so much? And I've been praying about it. I realized that that's how we're supposed to love. We shouldn't love because someone gives us money, or because of how they dress or how popular they are. Instead, we should love because it's how we were made. We were made to love. Love conquors everything, so for the people of Ethiopia- it conquores the pain, the hunger, the suffering.
I know for me... To love this way isn't easy. Here in America, we have so much that we have adapted to the concept of a fake love. It's so easy to see this in my day to day life. For example, I have trouble loving my own father for the sake of just loving him. Yeah, I love him because he's my father, but also because he buys me things and he lets me do what I want. I think we all have these in our lives.
Before we went to Ethiopia, our team shared what we wanted to learn from the experience of going. Caitlin said "I want to learn to say I love you, without actually saying it." And I remember sitting there... thinking "how is that even possible?" I could not come up with any way to do so. But now I see. However, it isn't something that can be described, it's something that you just do I think. They do things like, hold hands and put their arms around eachother, not necisarily in a romantic way either. Actually, most of the time it's not in a romantic way. It isn't uncommon to see two, three, four guys walking down the road holding hands. That isn't weird there. Personally, my love language is physical touch so to me that was awesome and I loved it. And that's just one way.
A language barrier was obviously a huge struggle in the relationships that we built there. Before, it didn't make sense to me that you couldn't just say you loved someone if you wanted to. But if someone there came up to me and said "Ewadahallow" to me, before I knew what it meant... I would be really confused and it wouldn't have the same effect. So I think that's where the affection and other ways of showing love really helped me grow.
To be loved just because and unconditionally did something to my heart. I've never had that before and now I do. I learned that that is how we're supposed to be loved and more importantly that is how our God loves us.
So my challenge for myself, and anyone who is willing to take this on"
Recognize the relationships that don't have the love like this. And search for a way to love them like we're supposed to. Find a way to say you love them without the words.
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