While serving God in Botswana this summer, Haley Teel realized there was one other person God wanted to minister to in Africa – her.

It feels rather stereotypical to talk about what I have learned about myself since coming to Botswana, how the Lord pulled me halfway across the world to reveal more of himself to me.

I guess that makes me cliché because that is exactly what happened.

Seronga, Botswana isn’t densely inhabited by any meaning of the word. It’s in the bush; goats outnumber the people and threaten property invasion anytime a gate is left open. Cars brake for the donkeys and cows that meander down the country. When the sun sets, the sky explodes into a seemingly impossible array of colors, as if God is using it as a canvas to reveal more of his majesty to the people living here.

The night brings with it a deep silence and impenetrable darkness; it blankets the village in a serene calm that surpasses anything I have experienced, even in the most remote areas of Texas and Colorado.

The natural splendor of this place overwhelms the constructs of man: civilization, cities, and even conveniences like the internet.

Time moves differently here, and value is placed more in relationship than a “to-do” list. Botswana is far from the things that I know, the places I’ve lived and the majority of the people I love. The only constant thing in both places is God, the Protector and Provider of my soul.

Words escape me as I attempt to form sentences to describe his magnitude and wonder, especially when it comes to what he has done in me. A lot of the things I have learned, or re-learned, on this trip are so simple it makes me laugh—truths I’ve heard hundreds of times in song lyrics, conversations, and sermons.

Here, though, they are real. These truths about God have unfolded magnificently to me. He opened my heart and quieted my mind to make me really reflect on what it means that the Almighty God of the universe is jealous for me. He took on the weight of my sin when I still despised and ran from him, and that when I still run from him as a believer, he stays beside me and within me—patiently reminding me that I am his. His grace and power is sufficient through any trial and weakness of my own.

I came to Africa to share what I know of God with the people of Botswana, but in coming here, I found there was still so much I didn’t even know about him.

In the still recesses of this beautiful country, he has sharpened, humbled, and pushed me to step out of the things I think build who I am and into the position of a child, loved and treasured by the Most High King.

He urges me to once again press into him and lean on him when I’m tired after five days of buses, ferries, and planes; to let him be my strength and use me when I don’t feel like being used.

There are so many things I could say about my time here, things like how my wonderful team has become a constant source of light in my life, how the children I played with showed me the joy and hope, how the classes that we are taking on evangelism and Christian foundations are awakening a love for God’s Word and the lost of this world that I have never known before.

The list goes on and on.

Those things haven’t been the most overwhelming part of this trip though. They all have funneled and redirected my attentions back to Jesus, to our Lord.

The different parts of this trip only make me see God all the more behind all of this world, in all things, working in his people, bringing about his plans for this world.

In a moment of divinely ordained irony, I was taken far away to come to know him who is most near to us.

One of the great mysteries of mission trips is that often times as we go to serve and find ourselves being served, we go to share God’s love with others and sometimes end up re-discovering it for ourselves.

Have you seen this in your life? Is God calling you out of your “normal life” now? Passport trips have been posted for 2016; where is he calling you? Click here to find out more.