There and Back Again

Humbling Moment Number Two

It has come to the point where it has been obscenely too long since I have written something for this little blog.  Most days I find myself having one thought that reminds me that I really should update the blog, and then that thought flutters away as the rest of mind becomes quickly crowed.

You see in order to write something I would have to sit, think, process, and then compose something that I originally did not really want to do.  Therefore, the avoidance game began.  If I kept busy with everything else I had to do, well then I had a legitimate reason for not writing, and therefore did not have to feel as bad.  Honest, yes.  Right, no.

But now I find myself compelled.  Not by any person or thing, but my own desire to tell the story or better said the continuation of the story that has been unfolding in front of me.  If I sit long enough, I see these moments flash by.  The feel of the cold night air, the counting of beans, a flood consuming land, and then the people.  I find myself overwhelmed by the memories of people.  The laughing, sharing of stories, the forming of relationships all come rushing to me.  

This is why I do not sit too long, this is why I find myself always wanting to find the next job to do, because if I am still for too long I am surrounded by these memories.  They make me laugh, they make me cry, but above all they make me remember.  Today I have been constantly reminded of this one moment, and have decided it is time to share it.

During spring break I was translating for a medical brigade.  I had the easy job of simply telling the patients how to take their medication.  There was this flow to the day.  Sometimes there would be nobody waiting for medication, and then in a blink of an eye we would have eight people waiting.  During one of the lighter moments of the day I found myself talking to this older man.  Dressed in khakis, a button up shirt, and a cowboy hat you could not help but fall in love with this little, old man.  Never meeting a stranger, never knowing the awkwardness that comes from meeting people from a different country, this man began to tell me his story.

He told me of his children, of his job, of his life.  Then he told me how he had just received new glasses.  Pulling them out and placing them gently on his nose the man began to ask a question.  Me thinking I knew the answer to this obvious question began to say, “of course you look good in them”.  But before I finished my sentence I realized that he was not asking how he looked or even if the glasses looked good.  The man asked, “Do you have a Bible that I could read?”  You see, the man had not been able to read in who knows how long, and reading the Bible was the only thing on his mind.  In the deepest part of my mind I said to myself, “humbling moment number one of the day”.  

As the conversation continued, the man kept thanking me and the rest of the brigade for everything we were doing.  I told him that there was no reason to thank us because we were just doing this due to God and the love He has for everyone.  

The man looked at me with those full, deep eyes and said, “Yes, but His love is manifested through you”.

Humbling moment number two.  

I cannot express the depth to which those words hit me.  How the truth of those words captivated me.  It was as if everything else fell silent and only those words were in the air.  Mine to grab.  Mine to learn from.  Mine to share.  It was as if all the lies, doubts, fears that I had been wrestling with could no longer touch me.  Truth had been spoken into my life, and nothing can control the power of that truth.  Since that moment, I cannot help but sit and remember all of these memories.  I cannot help, but want to flash back and see all the people that have helped in this ministry.  I can now see that in those moments, in even the smallest of them, God’s love was being shared.

I have no great words of wisdom, no other lesson to share.  I believe my little, old friend said it best, “God’s love is manifested through you”.  So, get out there and share it.  Be a part of this love.  Be a part of this sharing.

The Least of These

It has now been around five months since I have moved here.  I have seen the seasons change, groups come and go, but above all, I have had the privilege to watch God work.  To say my transition was not as expected would be putting it nicely.   I told one board member that it was not that I hit the ground running; it is that I just hit the ground.  I was completely humiliated by the fact that I knew close to nothing about living here.  But God is good, and He works especially when we cannot see it.  My team picked me up, dusted me off, and has helped point me in the right direction. 

You see before I moved here I was a fresh college graduate who was involved in my university.  I participated in intermural sports, was in club, was in LYNAY, took karate on the side, taught middle school girls every Wednesday nights, and did community service.  Whatever I did, I gave it my all, and it typically worked out beautifully.  If I needed something, I would go out and get it, or figure out a way to obtain my goal.  I knew how to live not only a good life, but also a good Christian life in the States.

But I am no longer in the States, and none of what I did there matters.  I had to relearn things that I have been doing my entire life.  How to speak Spanish, how to drive a stick in mountains with no roads, how to live here in Honduras; everything I once knew got shifted.  It was then in the middle of all I knew crashing down that God started building this new thought into my head.  

When one thinks of heroes of our faith we turn to Moses, David, even Paul, but if one takes a deeper look at their lives it is easy to see that they were not the greatest of individuals.  In fact, they had their moments of simply screwing up.  Moses had killed a man, David had a man killed so he could get with his wife, and Paul was on a crusade to kill Christians.   Our heroes of faith were not perfect in fact they had some pretty complicated lives.  But how great is our God that He can take such screw-ups and still use them for His glory.  Our God loves the screw-ups, the rejects, the losers, the whores, the absolute least of this world for His glory. 

So in that moment of me feeling like everything I had and was, was crumbling down, God in fact was trying to show me that it does not even matter to begin with because no matter what, His glory will shine through.  In the midst of me being completely humiliated, He was showing me that He would be my pride.  The days where I was so frustrated by feeling like I could not contribute to anything much less Mission Lazarus, God was saying I am not looking for greatness, just you.  

So I will gladly become the least of these, I will fumble through Spanish, practice driving a stick, and continue to try to do a good work here, because no matter what, God’s glory will shine.  What a God.  A God that continues to use my lame attempts to serve, and somehow, unexplainably, still uses them for His glory.  Remember this my friends, remember what I had forgotten, that God is not asking us to be perfect, but instead asking that you just to be you.  Give what little you have, and watch what wondrous things God will do through it.

wsl,

Mallory K. Kornegay

How Our God Works

Summer has ended. Group session is finished. But the work is never done. I have sat and pondered about this past session. What the lessons are I have learned, what stories have changed my life, what people I will remember forever?

When considering this summer, and all the work that has been done I can only stand in awe of how great our God is. People from all over come here to serve of the Kingdom of God and help their fellow brothers and sisters. Some people come here not knowing what to expect, some coming thinking they know what to expect and even others come knowing that there is no way to ever fully know what to expect. And in all of that, despite all of that, God shows up. God rushes in and saves the day. He works.

Today I want to share a story from my own experience, something that has been in the making for over a year now. It has now been one year that I was a summer intern here at Mission Lazarus. During that summer I spent the majority of my time with groups on construction sites. I spent weeks working on bathrooms or roofs; sifting, mixing, pouring cement. Besides the occasional fear of having man hands, I spent every moment loving the work, loving the process, loving the people. Being on a construction site, most of the people I met were male. Some of the men old enough to be my grandfather others younger than myself, but all growing to become dear friends.

We would spend all morning working, play soccer during our lunch break, and then go back to work. It was a dream. It was my dream. Then one day, a thought crept it’s way into my mind. The thought was simple, but potent. And I am sad to say that once it was formed I could not erase it from my mind. The thought was this, “How many of you are men of faith?” From that moment on I have sent my prayers up to God above for my friends here in Honduras. I ask that God raise up true Christian Honduran men. That God would revolutionize this culture, one man at a time.

One year later, I was working with a group from King of Prussia in a town called Santa Anita. We were doing construction on some new classrooms, as well as running a VBS in the afternoon. It was during the morning work I met a man from the church. We spent the morning digging rocks out of the sand and then sifting it for the cement.

When began talking about the usually things, “How old are you?” “Where are you from?” “Is it hot like this where you are from?” And then the conversation took a turn. He began talking about the church, and how much he loves being a member there. He talked of how he loves God and Jesus, and how he loves to sing church songs. And then, he began to sing his favorite church song. I’m not going to lie, I might have gotten slightly embarrassed when this 50 year old man started singing a church song in the middle of a work site. Then I realized what was going on. All the other noises around me were silenced because through that man God was showing me an answer to my prayer. God gave me that moment. God answered my prayer. This man, right here in front of me was an answer to a prayer, and God isn’t just going to stop with him. God will continue to hear my plea I started saying one year ago, and raise up more men of faith. All I could do was praise the God who hears and answers our cries. How beautiful are the ways our Lord works.

That is what I wish to share with you today. That is the lesson that God has been trying so desperately to teach me. Our God has, is, and will continue to answer our prayers. Our God has not forgotten His children. He has not closed His ears to us. He is fiercely striving to find new and glorious ways to share His love with His children. That day in Santa Anita I took one step closer to understanding how great our God truly is and how closely He listens to the cries of His children.

wsl,

Mallory K. Kornegay

Growing Pains

Today I want to discuss moments. Moments where you know you are no longer who you once were. Moments were you feel the growth of experience and life crash down upon you. Moments that while you are in them seem to pause time long enough for the full amount of pain to strike you, but it is from that pain that a new you is born.
Within the past three weeks I have had too many of these moments to count. I got the clear to leave, had my farewell Sunday, packed, bought tickets, packed more, said goodbye to dear friends and family, walked onto a plane, and left my home.
One would think that I would have been better prepared for these moments since I have known since high school that mission life is all I ever wanted. But I believe nothing can prepare one for the hardships of leaving the old life to start a new one. I had placed my roots deep within the lives of others. Handed pieces of my heart to people that now I had to leave. These types of growing pains are rare, and real. They leave their lasting scars. I cannot go back to who I once was, I can only go forward.
So onward I go. Step by step, each day with God walking before me. Time has started again. The pains have passed. Growth has occurred. A new and hopefully better version has been born. Possibly a version closer to whom God has created me to be.
There are dreams that I thought would never come true, I am now living. There are places I never thought I would be, God is now taking me. There are people I thought I could never leave, I am now learning to live without.
It is not easy, in fact most of the time it just plain sucks, but it is what is needed. God moves. God works. God pulls you forward and pushes you to become more than you even dreamed. Praise be to the God who does not let us stay in the compounds of our own comfort, but instead calls us from our ordinary to be His extraordinary.wsl,Mallory K. Kornegay

Alignment.

The other day my mother and I were out shopping for a gift when we ran into a man we knew from church. After chatting for a little while he turns, looks at me, and asks “so why Honduras?”. I was kinda caught off guard by his question and in return asked, “what do you mean?”. He replied, “well, you could do any of that stuff you are doing here, so why Honduras?”.

I gave him an answer and it was a truthful one. One about my calling. One about my passion. Filled with reasons and facts and statistics. His curiosity seemed to be satisfied, and began talking to my mother once again. After leaving the man, I quickly realized I had given the wrong answer. Yes, it was truthful and honest, but it was not my reason.

I am not moving to Honduras because I think it will be a grand adventure or because I need something to do. I am not going because I want to leave home or because I am trying to prove my independence. I am not even leaving because I tired of being stagnant. I am leaving because for those few moments when I am out on the missions field, whether it be building a house or giving out bags of food, I feel perfectly aligned with the will of God. That’s it. That’s all that matters.

In this stage of my life everything seems to get complicated by all that I have to do. I have to raise funds and I have to pack my things and I have to sell things and I have to raise even more money, but none of that matters. None of that truly matters. Because I am not doing this for the money or the prestige or the materiel objects. I am doing this because there is a God and He has some kind of great love that I have to and get to share. And I have even been given a chance to share this love with people from a different country. I get to live, love and share in experience that otherwise I would never know about.

It is easy for me to forget this. It is easy for me to focus on what is only directly in front of me. It is easy to grow weary of the task at hand. But I don’t want easy, I don’t want safe, I don’t want known; I want God. And God calls me to places that are difficult and God calls me to be in places that aren’t safe and God calls me to places that aren’t known, but I will be with God. I will never go where He is not. 

Alignment with His will. That’s why I go. That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I am who I am.
wsl,
Mallory K. Kornegay

So… it’s been a while… my bad.

The other day I found myself reminiscing about this past summer when I suddenly realized that I had a blog… and that I hadn’t even looked at it in about 6 months. My bad. But here goes; I am up and running again.

To give an idea of what my life has been like since this summer I’ll give a quick summary:
Moved back home for a month, went to language school in Guatemala for 9 weeks, moved back home for now 2 months, and worked a job where I had no idea what I was doing.

See, you didn’t really miss that much. Besides me having emotional breakdowns during language school, some of the funniest awkward moments of my life, climbing an active volcano, deep loneliness, awful readjustment shock, and most importantly, me explaining all the moments where I just feel stupid.

But as of now, I am back on track. The reason I went to language school was due to the fact that I felt called to return to Mission Lazarus. And as of two weeks ago, I got accepted into the program with a two year commitment. Therefore the blog returns so that I may try to capture in detail what it’s like to have to fund raise, get packed, leave home, work in a foreign land, try to speak Spanish, and most importantly: deny myself, pick up my cross, and follow Him.

I will try to update this once a week, and be as bluntly honest as possible. shocker.

as always, wsl,
Mallory K. Kornegay

The Reason Why

I find my words failing me today. I have thought for some time how I was going to start this little update and I can never seem to find the right words or the right train of thought to follow. So, I will simply write what comes out and allow that to be enough.

When I think back on the past few weeks I can’t help but smile. What a life. I spend one day helping kids with their horse therapy time and then the next day I’m mixing cement to help finish a roof. My clothes are now covered by dried concrete, my face is burnt, my arms are cut and bruised, but the only thing that gets me going are the faces.

The other day all the girls went to help give a charla aka a woman’s talk. I was fortunate enough to help out by holding up posters so Rebecca could point and demonstrate what she was talking about. Now granted, it’s sometimes funny because a part of me never left my five year old days, but there was another part that was absolutely haunted.

I saw every woman’s face. Every expression. Every smile and every hint of pain. I stood there holding up a poster of some human biology yet I was witnessing something far greater. It seems to happen from time to time, I will be working on some project and then I will just look at the people around me, and be changed. It so easy, too easy to get lost in the job of the day. Mix cement, lift buckets, lay bricks, count beans, milk cows, I get so wrapped in those job that the true purpose of performing all those actions gets pushed away.

It has been and always will be about the people. Why do I mix cement? To build a house for a family. Why do I count beans? To help feed a family. Why do I milk a cow? To help provide milk for children. The action without this purpose is absolutely meaningless.

So I will gladly hold a poster, but the purpose behind is worthy of my ability. I will gladly chase goats around, or wash pigs or even scoop up some poop because the purpose behind it all is worth more than me.

wsl,

Mallory K. Kornegay

Beans and Bricks

As always life here is an adventure. Just when I think I’m starting to understand the flow of life here, something new and surprising arrives and I once again find myself confused. It’s easy to get lost in the desperation that is so evident in this place. However, I have come to rely on two things here. Reguardless of whatever goes on I will always have beans and bricks.

You see I have been put with agriculture and groups for the past week which I absolutely love. I may not speak spanish, I may not play football that well, but I can lift bricks and I can count beans. It may seem silly, it may even seem a waste, but with every part of my heart I love it, and not because of any of the reasons you may think.

I love doing all that work because when I look at a bag of beans or a stack of bricks I don’t just see that. I see hope. I see people no longer hungry and children growing. I see houses built and families safe and warm. I see a better future than this world has allowed. I see more than just beans and bricks, I find my hope in those beans and bricks because God works through them.

So that has been my past week and if that were to be how the rest of my time here was spent, that would be enough for me.

wsl,

Mallory K. Kornegay

So I learned to paint toenails, no big deal.

So I haven’t blogged in two weeks… my bad. So to give everyone a heads-up on what my life has been like I will try to condense it.

I have: left home, arrived at Mission Lazarus, driven to surrounding cities to meet and greet people, milked a cow, scooped some poop, cleaned some pigs, fed a horse, gathered some chicken eggs, sorted 7,000 peppers, filled bags with 100lbs. of beans, downloaded books, filled bags full of coffee, watched it rain for 4 days straight, went horse back riding, floated down a river, got leeches stuck on me, and have been viciously attacked by mosquitoes. Life is good.

But more importantly, I have seen the face of God. Every time I turn it seems like I am captured by another side of God. Whether it’s by watching the clouds dance upon the mountains or by making a child laugh at my lack of Spanish skills. Our God is alive and he is good.

One of the fist days we were here we went to a charla (a women talk). I stood there in the back and listened as best I could to Rebecca inform and challenge these women. So I might have been getting a little crunk… no big deal. Anyways, after the talk we the interns were instructed to paint the women’s nails. Now I realize no one here knows me, but let me say this, I don’t even paint my own nails much less someone elses. I was a little intimidated. Well I finally got the guts to grab some polish and proceed to paint these lovely ladies nails. Then I get to this one woman. She looks at her fingers nails, says “no” and points to her feet. I thought to myself, “oh Lord, I’m going to pain this woman’s toenails”. I sit down and with shaking hands began to paint her toe nails. In that moment I realized something, if my savior can wash someone’s feet, surely I can paint them. In that moment of clarity it all became clear, in that moment of clarity life made sense, in that moment of clarity I found God. If I had to go home after that day, it would have been a summer worth living for.

Well I believe that is all for today. Sorry for being lengthy, but I figured I needed to make up for my lack of writing last week.

wsl

Mallory K. Kornegay

The Final Farewell

There is never a right time for good-byes. The tearing of relationships broken by the new distance found between them is at times too much to carry, yet that has been my burden for some time now. I have been caught between two worlds, my present and my future, and to be rather honest I have hated every minute of it. At times I wish I could just be there in my new life living this grand adventure I have set out for myself, and than there are others time where all I want to do is stay sipping my coffee and listening to old friends tell even older stories.

I am heartbroken. I have tried to look back on this past year and count all the moments that I wasted doing something pointless when I should have been spending more time with the people I love. Atlas, my time has come. Graduation was the final component for my catalyst and I am now days away from leaving my home, my friends, my family.

I have no doubt that once I get on the plane I will be overjoyed, but I’m not there yet. I’m here, at home, with all my memories surrounding me. I wish I could be braver. I wish I could be stronger. I wish I wasn’t so full of fear. But I am.

I have been so overflowed with doubt that I try to avoid certain duties… like buying bug spray and getting my shots… and even packing (my bad). I find myself fading in and out of memories from winning waterball, to passing my belt test, to making costumes, to winning Sing Song, to becoming a rodeo queen and finally becoming a college graduate. These moments I will treasure for they are all I have left of a time that is now over for me.

While my departure brings forth sadness and doubts I hadn’t not truly expect, I place my confidence on Christ. I may not know what this summer has in store for me, but I know my God goes before me. Wherever He leads, I must follow.

So farewell my home. I will miss you. Farewell my family… I might call you. Farewell my friends, I will remember you.

wsl,
Mallory K. Kornegay