INTERFACE Papua New Guinea 2024

I have my black hiking sandals in my left hand. The Velcro tore loose from the strap on the right shoe a few weeks back, when Interface had just started. I think at the time I was swimming over a coral reef off the north shores of Papua New Guinea. Now, thanks to the broken strap on my shoe and the slick reddish mud on the mountains we’re hiking up, the shoes do more harm than good. Our guide, an elder in the village church, told me to take them off miles ago. My bare feet certainly get better traction on the steep parts.

We’ve reached another fallen tree — the jungle version of a bridge. This log is narrower than my shoulders and black with wet slime. It spans a deep ravine. I look up at our guide, who is already out on the log, balancing effortlessly like he is taking a stroll down the sidewalk. He’s looking back at me with concern.

If he can do this, so can I. … He wouldn’t lead us across this bridge if he thought I couldn’t make it — [but] he’s watching my every move, poised to spring back and try to grab my hand.

I step out onto the log one foot at a time. I’ve actually crossed dozens of logs on this hike already, some narrower than this one. But this one is unusually high and long — it must have been a huge tree before it fell. I look at the ravine below. It’s 30 feet down to a rushing river full of boulders. I don’t usually get queasy just from looking down, but pure logic has got me upset this time: If I fall, I am either dead or seriously injured. In the best-case scenario that I’m badly hurt, I am miles out in the jungle. Once I get back to the village, there is no way for me to get to a hospital. We would have to wait for a helicopter to medivac us out. And I volunteered for this hike!

So, I do what my little brother tells me to do when we play sports: “lock in.” I narrow my scope from the magnificent, green, shiny-with-moisture-and-leaves jungle around us. I block out the river and the muddy far side of the ravine and even the mud and twigs stuck in my clothes and hair, and I focus on one thing: the feet of the person ahead of me. Every time he takes his foot off the log to take a step, I put mine right where his was. I am not particularly good at walking across slick logs over steep drops into rushing rivers miles out in the jungle. But he is still upright, and if I put my feet exactly where he is showing me, I’ll make it too. For me, the key to the jungle is being so focused on the feet of your guide that you don’t even see the path.

I went to Interface hoping that God would just strike me with a lightning bolt of revelation about my life’s purpose. That’s probably what every Christian senior in college wants. But I got back off the plane in Los Angeles with the same two suitcases and memories of what may well have been the best six weeks of my life, not a play-by-play set of marching orders from God.

While I was at Interface, I learned amazing truths about how good, good, GOOD God is and what a gift we have in His Word. I met people and saw places and learned customs so different from my own — some of which I loved and some of which made me cry and some of which I hated. I heard the stories of the [people groups] who are out there waiting, dying as they wait for the gospel, just as they’ve waited for thousands of years. Haven’t they waited long enough?

I lived so much life in six weeks that it was hard to explain when I got home. It was a jungle of beautiful and exciting and the best and the worst. I am thrilled and terrified to be part of sharing the gospel to the furthest ends of the earth. And I don’t know exactly how I ought to do that — but God keeps showing me the next step. Right now, I am watching His feet, ready to put mine where His have gone before.

As you may have guessed, I made it across that log.

After Interface, I am committed to watching the feet of my Savior so closely that I don’t notice the anxiety, pride and unknown dangers that want to consume me. By His great saving grace, I will walk behind Him until one day I look up and see the glorious, thrilling vista He saves for those who follow Him with everything.