J.B. Long had the moment he’s longed for where he felt closest to God and it happened on a mountaintop in Africa.
Long was part of a team of 31 American college students who traveled to South Africa for nine weeks last summer on a mission sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) and the International Sports Coalition to minister to locals.
“The entire mission was an incredible experience but at the end of the summer we had a ‘solitude day’ where we weren’t allowed to talk to anybody,” Long said. “They took us to the side of a mountain and told us to find a spot to be by ourselves for the day. I climbed to the top and sat there looking around at it all. I never felt closer to God than in that moment. It was an incredible feeling.”
Long, the son of Trent and Margaret Long of Bruce, said he was called into the ministry while still in junior high at Bruce Schools.
“Throughout high school I was blessed with so many opportunities like Super Summer and the support of my youth ministers Clay Palmer and Turner Moore,” Long said. “And sports played a huge part in my faith. Christ always drove me, because I was never the most talented at anything, so I had to work extra hard. My parents and my home church (First Baptist in Bruce) laid the foundation for me and the Lord took over.”
Long is now a junior at Mississippi College in Clinton majoring in “Sports Ministry.”
The major is a combination of minors in kinesiology and Christian studies. Long’s ambition is to be involved with FCA at an administration level and possibly one day become a team chaplain for a major university.
Long said it was through his work with FCA that he learned of the trip to Africa and was “called to go.”
“I felt the Lord telling me ‘I want you to experience a full summer out of your comfort zone. I want you to stretch yourself,’” Long said. “I checked with my FCA director about an overseas internship and found this opportunity.”
Long decided he couldn’t afford to make the trip at the time, but a week later, while on a spring break mission trip to Barbados, he met the director of the South African trip.
“It seemed like the Lord took over from there and everything fell into place,” Long said.
They made the trip to South Africa in June where Long quickly realized his calling to get out of his “comfort zone” had come to fruition.
“The first five nights I slept on a concrete floor with a thin strip of carpet in a tin shack and the next several nights on pizza boxes,” he said. “It was cold, but we all realized people there live like that every day and the Lord loves them just as much as us. I lived their life for only a week, and it changed my views on a lot of things.”
Long and his counterparts would spend the next two months working in classrooms and conducting outreach projects in the local community.
They hosted several kids’ camps, which Long described as similar to Vacation Bible School here. They would visit area homeless shelters each week, ministered to students at the local university, and visited the prison from where Nelson Mandela was released and witnessed to and played soccer with the prisoners.
During another outreach project they served as team chaplains for rugby teams in a huge tournament in Johannesburg.
“It was as big as anything we have here,” Long said. “They had the greatest rugby players in the world under age 18 participating.”
Rugby proved a great conversation piece for Long as he worked to introduce himself to the local culture.
“I know on campus, I met several watching rugby on television, so I related it to American football, and that allowed us to communicate and get to know each other better,” Long said.
Initiating conversation wasn’t always difficult, Long said, because the locals were very interested in their American visitors.
“The different culture was often overcome because they sought us out,” he said. “They were interested in our accents and would ask us questions.”
“The greatest challenge of the experience was accepting the fact that I wasn’t in my comfort zone,” Long said. “Trusting in the Lord and my faith to overcome any apprehensions and to put everything into reaching out to these people and sharing Christ, that’s what was most important and rewarding.”
Long said everyone he visited with spoke multiple languages, so he could communicate with them, but then a roadblock would develop.
“They could speak English with us, but would then speak to each other in different languages, so you were uncertain how they were interpreting it,” Long said. “But everyone seemed very receptive to everything we were trying to say and do.”
Among the more memorable experiences from the trip for Long was an exercise in releasing his burdens.
“We went out and chose a large rock from a river and were told to write all our weaknesses on it and carry it from the top of the mountain to the bottom to a bridge crossing the same river where the water moved the fastest,” Long said. “There we threw our rocks in to symbolize getting rid of the weaknesses. I could feel the release of all my burdens. It was a very freeing experience.”
“The whole trip was an incredible experience that did so much for me,” Long said. “It was an incredible gift from God that I want to share with others.”