Latest / Far & Familiar / (Pt 2) What Kenya Taught Me About Comfort Zones, Open Doors, and Saying Impossible Things Out Loud
Transcript
- Britt Fisher: Hey friends, today's episode is part two of the pilot episode of the Far and Familiar Podcast. So if you have not listened to part one yet, I would encourage you to go back to that. I am sharing everything that Kenya has taught me about comfort zones, open doors, and saying impossible things out loud. I believe this story will challenge and inspire you. So go listen to part one if you haven't already. And if you have and you are ready for part two. where I dive into the most radical hospitality experience of my entire life. I am so glad you are here. So without further ado, let's do this. Welcome to Far and Familiar, the podcast about faith, biblical hospitality, and courageous adventure for Christian moms who are ready to step outside of their comfort zones and start fully living. If you find yourself feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or uninspired in your everyday life, you found the right place. Friend, you were not made to play it safe and operate in survival mode. You were made to live with eyes up and doors thrown open, chasing the adventure and abundant life God has for you. I'm your host, Britt Fisher, Jesus follower, mama of four, and someone who believes a full dinner table and a passport full of stamps are forms of worship. I've spent years traveling the world with my family, opening our home, and navigating what it actually looks like to live a life outside of my comfort zone. And this podcast is everything I and other mamas who have gone before me have learned along the way. I am so glad you're here. Let's dive in. Which brings me to the next part of my story where I witnessed a local woman live out her values in a way that would often be seen as uncomfortable or inconvenient or honestly impossible to so many of us in how we perceive the idea of hospitality. And I watch this woman live this out in a way that wrecked me to my very core and has changed the way that I forever will view biblical hospitality. And it all began with a pot of chai. So you might think of chai and think of Starbucks chai, and I'm going to introduce you today. I wish I could just perfectly describe how incredible Kenyan chai is. It is called tangaweezy chai. In Swahili, tengaweezy is the Swahili word for ginger. It is a very ginger-forward chai. It's these teeny, teeny, tiny, almost ground-up tea leaves and spices that are brewed in milk with sugar on the stovetop. And then the tea is strained out and it is. One of the most delicious things I have ever tasted in my life. And it was commonly served across Kenya as just a form of hospitality. That was one of the things that was impressed upon me from the moment that we got to Kenya was the heart for hospitality that the people have there. But towards the end of our trip, we were invited to a local missionary's home. We had met her several times up on the missionary base and up at the hospital. She was a local Kenyan who felt called to live on mission for the Lord for her own people. And there were actually several other missions groups that were there. We were there for the month of April. There was also a group from Korea that had come for, I think, one or two weeks of our time there. And we were all kind of leaving around the same time. And so towards the end of our trip, this local missionary invited us to her home. And so the evening that she invited us, we, you know, walked down through the village and followed whoever it was that was leading us to her home. And as we arrived, it was a lot to take in. She lived in kind of what was, I think, a fairly common neighborhood Capsuar. And it was a bunch of really small, kind of like cinder block homes. and each home was, Barely honestly bigger than the home office that I am recording in right now. so imagine yourself in what you would consider like a very small living room, perhaps, or a medium-sized office space in a home. And we walk in and she has these like cheap plastic stackable chairs that were really common in churches over there. And she has probably 30 of them. Crammed into this room, all around the walls, kind of in like this concentric circle. And in the center of the room is a really small folding table. And on that table, she has a pan of kind of like a sweetened corn muffin that was really common there, and then a massive carafe. Like, think the type of carafe that your church that has three or four hundred people in it would have to serve coffee. on a Sunday morning. But she has this massive carafe in her living room, ready to serve us try. And as I took in my surroundings, I'm looking around and seeing what picture she has pinned on her walls and her tiny bed space that she has pushed into the corner. And I noticed there's not even a kitchen in in this home. It's it's a single room home. and at one point I had to walk outside to kind of entertain the toddler who was getting antsy in the small space. And you know, I discovered their kitchen, this this community area. Each house was a single room, and then the kitchens, or there was just one the kitchens. The pl singular kitchen was an outdoor space. There was a stone or brick oven that was communally shared. And then there was like a water pump and another folding table and a bunch of dishes and stuff where you could wash things kind of out in the open and prepare food outside if you needed to. And then you used this communal brick oven. There was also no bathroom in her home. There was a communal outhouse, essentially, a hole in the ground with a little stone area built around it and a little curtain that closed and And this this was her home. and this is where I was deeply convicted. At the time I lived in a 1500 square foot house. and we loved to have people over, but so often we felt limited because of the space that we had. It felt tight in some ways, you know, to the amount of people that we could theoretically bring in. or sometimes it was we've got this food budget and we're trying to stick to it and you know, figuring out how to feed people and There were so many beautiful rhythms of hospitality that were grown in me during that residency season, the other resident wives that kind of helped take care of each other, and we shared meals and broke bread together often. but to watch this woman who had almost nothing, who lived beyond poverty, in our perspective of what we think about in America, to watch her invite 30 people. Into her living room and not be concerned about how perfectly clean it was or how beautifully decorated or making sure that everyone had comfortable space and elbow room. She literally offered what she had and she valued hospitality so much that she had invested in a massive carafe. A single woman had invested in and took storage space in her small home. To have this massive carafe available to serve people try. And I think what really wrecked me and what has so transformed the way that I view hospitality is she didn't host from a place of abundance. She hosted because she deeply valued it. She valued people. She valued welcoming people in. She valued making people feel loved and sharing of whatever she had, even with people that might have so much more than she did. And that carafe that she had, it wasn't a coincidence, it was a priority. she decided welcoming people was worth owning the thing that made it possible. Even maybe to the exclusion of things that would make her on her own more comfortable. Which brings me to the word that is such a core of the heart of this podcast. In addition to this sense of adventure and courage that I want to share with you guys, I also think while we can roam far and away outside of our homes on adventures that the Lord has called us to, we are equally called to the ministry inside of our homes. And the ministry that we have to our own families and the hospitality that we can show them, but also the ministry that we have. using our home as a base to reach out to the people in the world around us. And that's where I think hospitality is so powerful. the Greek word for hospitality is philexenia, which translates to love of strangers. And I love that that is not the love of people who are easy or convenient or comfortable to us, It says in Romans 12 13 to practice hospitality. And I love that word practice because it implies imperfection and repetition and growth. Hospitality isn't something that is ever going to come easily or perfectly. It's not going to come on the other side of readiness or abundance yourself always. So often hospitality is this. Obedient step forward and willingness to repetitively practice something that might not come easy to you, that might be challenging, that might feel uncomfortable, that you might feel self-conscious about the space that you're hosting people in or what you have to offer. But the reality is that that Kenyan woman wasn't doing something that was just cultural. She was doing something biblical. And as believers, we are called to this. I believe it is a mandate and it is something that we need to learn to be willing to lean into the uncomfortable in order to practice hospitality. And this right here is the heart of Far and Familiar. Far, the idea of getting on the plane when it's scary with little kids, even if someone questions your sanity, and familiar to be willing to throw your doors open to the people right in front of you, imperfectly and generously, like that precious woman with her carafe of chai. Both ultimately require the same thing. They require the willingness to stop living for your own comfort. And start living with your eyes up and doors open, looking outside of yourself. So that pursuit and that tension is what we are going to hold here every week. It's what we are going to explore. And I want to end every episode kind of giving you guys your own little leap of faith, so to speak. And so here is your step for this week. And I want it to be a real one. I want you to name the scary thing, the dream that feels too unlikely to say out loud, the yes that you have been sitting on. I want you to write it down. And then I want you to take one step towards it before next Tuesday when we drop the next episode. Just one. Look up the price, send the text, say it out loud to someone who might open a door. One step is enough. One step of faith, one step of obedience. Father, thank you for meeting with us today. God, will you give the woman listening to this the courage to name the things she's been too afraid to want? Will you remind her that you hem her in behind and before and that wherever she is headed, you are already there first. Help her take that leap of faith, knowing you will be the one to open her parachute, God, and bring her safely to the ground. Lord, we want to hear your voice. We want to be obedient in saying yes to what it is that you're calling us to. Lord, will you open our eyes and our ears to the things that you have placed before us? We love you, Lord. Amen. Friends, thank you so much for listening. I am so excited to share so much more with you in the coming episodes. There are four episodes that I'm launching from the very beginning. So feel free to go ahead and listen to those. My goal is to keep all of these episodes in the 20 to 30 minute range so that you can listen to them on a commute, dropping your kids off at school or homeschool co-op or driving to the sports practice, whatever it is. I want this to be a place that you can come. And be encouraged, but also walk away challenged. And so this is my final send off for you guys. Make sure to have eyes up and doors open. I will see you next week.