I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the slightest afraid of spending my birthday away from family in Africa.
But I awoke to my pastor’s voice message, “Whatever you’ve sacrificed, even having your birthday alone in the field, God will return to you as a big gift. That’s just His heart.”
Weeks before deployment, even before I found out where I’d be deployed to, Cliff and I had prayed intentionally for a sense of divine purpose and belonging here.
Things out of my control. Yet, God has been faithful.
Yesterday, as I found myself training 80 rural health mobilizers and covid-19 survivors in public health, I realized God had chosen this specific day to gift to me- the privilege of wholehearted service to others, flourishing in the fullness of my giftings, with the little I had, the little I owned.
The day unfolded as a series of little gifts – unexpected phonecalls, Instagram messages, notes…… But most of all, was His gift in the evening.
When everyone had left, and I was alone, God sent an angel.
This is Noni, my Eswatini mother, my team lead for Risk Communications and Community Engagement 
Just as how I had fervently prayed for God to choose the place of my service, she, too, had prayed my presence in Eswatini into existence. “You are family to us. I’m here to pick you, let’s go.”
The cake shocked me- the biggest, tallest cake I’d ever received- complete with the Eswatini flag and my Siswati name on it- BUSI, meaning “We are blessed (because of you).”
To be loved like a daughter in a foreign land, to be affirmed in my gifts, however broken, for the service of others and glory of God, that is the best gift I could ever ask for.