Have you ever had your heart break for something or someone? Maybe it was losing someone you loved so deeply or finding out that the door closed on a job you desired to have. Does your heart break on a regular basis for the people around you or just when something bad happens to you? Murders, divorce, sickness, poverty- are these issues that make your heart break?

Tingly legs and heavy eyes made the 18-hour flight to South Africa one that seemed to be never ending. Not sensing the call of God strongly in my life until then, I had made the split decision months before to take a trip to a faraway land filled with people that I would call my little angels four weeks later.

Issues that we see on the news each day are minor in comparison to the developing ailments that take lives of the beautiful African people everyday. Darkness, sickness, death, sunken faces, hunched backs, infected urine, foaming mouths, broken hearts, a desire to live, a sentence to die, silenced lips, rape– these are only a few characteristics of AIDS. Children are often infected at birth or left as orphans, removing their purity and creating a “lost” generation.

We had one week of training that was supposed to educate and prepare us for what we would see and experience, but I don’t believe there is any amount of preparation that can stop anyone’s heart from breaking for these people. I was able to look into the eyes of girls that had been raped by boyfriends, dads and strangers- rapes that had taken place even as young children. I saw the fear that resided in them.

I was placed in two schools with a curriculum that went through a week-long program on abstinence. It focused not only on saving themselves from AIDS, but also on saving themselves for marriage. Many of these girls laughed in our faces. “Why wouldn’t we sleep with our boyfriends, if we love them”, they would repeatedly say. Or, “I’m already not clean. My male teacher raped me when I was in grade one, and now I have AIDS.”

The timing of God is incredible. I was broken and searching in my own life for a love that was unconditional. I was looking for some integrity, some self-confidence and joy. One of the last days I was in my classroom, I was able to share my broken-hearted story with about ten African girls. I told them about my fatherless childhood, being taken advantage of at a young age, growing up to find that I was falling into all the temptations that the world had to offer without an ounce of integrity to say ‘I’m better then it all’. I allowed myself to be treated badly by guys, everyday slumping deeper and deeper into a hole of despair. As I opened my heart, tears began to fall from all of our weary eyes. We each realized that we were experiencing the same struggles and for once we didn’t feel alone.

I was able to share with these girls the joy of the Lord. Even though I didn’t have it all together at this point, and I too was searching, I knew deep down that the love of the Lord was real. I was able to share and begin to find healing along with these girls as all of us began to see that even though we may not have had dads in our lives and have experienced great pain repeatedly, the Lord can fill the voids and hurts of our hearts. He is the One that helps us to have true God-given integrity and to be mighty women of God.

Many of you may know if you have talked to me for more then a few minutes that I have a compassion for Africa that burns in me daily. I love the culture, the beautiful smiling faces of the African people, their courage and strength in the midst of poverty and death, but most of all their hearts. Just as I was helping to teach girls of all ages to make a decision to stay pure, no matter where they have been or what they have been through, they ministered to me in this same way.

My heart broke for these people. But in the breaking of my own heart, the Lord was able to do some housekeeping in my own life as well. My heart will be forever formed into the shape of Africa.