It’s been seven years since I stepped off a plane onto African soil. Seven years. Even now, all I have to do is think of it, and I’m back there again.

In June 2016, my husband and I boarded a flight headed to Pemba, Mozambique. A land of red dust, thatched huts, and vibrant colors. A divine encounter whispered to our hearts for two years that we should go, and at last, we did.

We left behind a hot Alabama summer and arrived in the African winter. For us, the weather there was mild with temperatures ranging from the low seventies at night to mid eighties during the day, a welcome respite from the sticky heat of home. The locals wore jackets and bundled their babies in warm blankets against “the cold”.

During our time in Pemba, we participated in several outreaches led by the ministry hosting us. One such outreach was specifically for ministering to widows in a nearby village. For this, our large group was divided up into smaller teams of five or six missionaries plus an interpreter. Each group was then paired with a local widow. Our team was introduced to Zinnia who had two daughters in tow. Natalia, roughly sixteen years old, and baby Sabina. After a time of prayer, we headed out with Zinnia leading the way to her home.

We walked streets and paths of dirt until we reached a mud hut situated on the back corner of a plot of land. This was sectioned off from other similar plots by bamboo fencing. Zinnia and Natalia pulled a wooden bed made with woven straw into the shade of the bamboo and invited us to rest. Soon, a gang of small children from the village gathered in a giggling cluster around us. This happened everywhere we went in Pemba. They wanted to touch us, braid our hair, drink from our water bottles, and of course, play. Neighbors dropped by curious about the visitors who had come all the way from America. Conversation through our interpreter was challenging and slow, but we managed to communicate on a very basic level.

Though we were enjoying this time of interaction with the local community, the shifting afternoon sun nudged us to be on our way to the market. We needed to secure supplies for the family and make it back to base camp before evening set in.

Once again, Zinnia led the way.

It seemed like we’d walked a very long way for a very long time. With no grid for where we were or where we were going, it was hard to get a sense of the distance we’d travelled. After what must have been several miles, the market came into view. A giant cluster of open-air booths where you could buy anything from food to phone cards rose from the dust. We moved from booth to booth while Zinnia inspected the goods and made her selections. Our purchases consisted of large bags of beans and rice which the men carried across their shoulders, a heavy container of cooking oil, and a live chicken.

I couldn’t make a connection on-the-fly between the value of Mozambican money and American dollars. We dished out the foreign currency right and left as though it were Monopoly money with no of idea how much we were actually spending. How did we know we weren’t paying two or three times what these items were worth? Were we being taken advantage of?

I became distracted by these thoughts and began to lose focus on the reason we were there.

Once we’d finished with the food purchases, I assumed we were would head back to Zinnia’s hut. I was wrong. We were pulled into a maze of booths closed in and sectioned off by cardboard and clothing hung from makeshift clotheslines. Following Zinnia through twists and turns, my husband and I became separated from our group. The air was hot and stale, and the light dim. There were no familiar faces in sight, not even our interpreter. We couldn’t communicate with anyone, including Zinnia who was on a mission to find the baby some shoes and a dress.

The word ‘foreign’ had never been more real to me than it was at that moment, and I became overwhelmed by a feeling of isolation. For the first time since we’d arrived, I grew fearful. We were in a part of the world where Boko Haram and ISIS were more than headline news. Were they lurking behind the eyes that watched me now? We trailed Zinnia’s every step. Each time she stopped to admire something we scanned the sea of faces for one we recognized. When we rounded a corner and spied the rest of our group, I could have cried with relief.

As we picked our way back to Zinnia’s hut through trash-littered paths and across rickety footbridges, I wrestled with the fears and emotions I’d just experienced. Wasn’t I supposed to be Jesus to these people? Yet, here I was struggling to trust him myself.

I was turning these things over in my mind feeling like a failure when Natalia came alongside me and slipped her hand into mine. She smiled broadly as we strolled along swinging our hands back and forth between us like a couple of school girls. Had she somehow sensed what I was feeling? We walked like that for a little way then she dropped behind, and Zinnia took her place holding my hand in the same way. She began to sing a song in Makua and encouraged me to sing too. I fumbled with the words but made my best effort. We walked and sang the rest of the way back to her house where our team left Zinnia and her family with enough supplies for a couple of weeks and a new outfit for the baby.

On the return to the compound, the gravity of their situation sunk in. A mud hut, a straw bed, a dirt floor, and a hole in the ground for a toilet. I understood for the first time what it meant to have nothing, and I felt ashamed of the fear that these people would take advantage of me. I had come here to minister to them. Yet they had given me something far more valuable than the material things I’d given them.

I thought I had come to Africa to bring Jesus to the natives. What I found instead was that he was there waiting for me. When I was overwhelmed, he walked beside me. When I was afraid, he took my hand. When my heart ached with my own failure, he gave me a song to sing.

I don’t know if I’ll ever return to Africa, but I know for sure, Africa will never leave me.