11 Countries in 11 Months
I had the blessed opportunity of being interviewed by Amber Kispert-Smith of the Woodbury Bulletin prior to my trip. She was faithful to follow-up with me upon my return and re-interviewed me post-World Race.
Thank you Amber and Woodbury Bulletin, you did a good job capturing my sentiments!
http://www.woodburybulletin.com/event/article/id/40003/
Categories: Home.
20 September 2011
Hello my readers!
So I wrote my last post in India and haven’t posted since and boy has a lot happened. I’m sorry! I have wanted to write and I just have not had the motivation. Let me share what has been going on in my life.
We started our travel day on August 30 at 6pm, New Dehli time. We all gathered in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at for final debrief. (Final debrief was a blast by the way, we all got together as a squad, saw our squad leaders whom we hadn’t seen since the end of May at the Kenya debrief, minus Lauren who is out on her third world race squad leading the x squad.) We took the bus to the airport for our last bus ride as a squad and arrived at the airport around 7:30pm. We set up our stuff in a giant pile per usual and had some time to kill. I don’t think we were able to check into security until 10:30pm so we had time to play cards and get some food. Once in the terminal we had 4 hours to kill, with over 60 people you need to be really ready for your flight. I knew we were going to be sitting for a while so I spent time walking up and down the moving walk ways. Team WoW got together for the final time on the race and we talked about what we were planning to do for the first couple days home. It was after 1pm and we were tired and ready to be home so it wasn’t as sad and sentimental as I would have expected our final meeting to be.
We boarded the plane around 2:30am and off to Frankfurt, Germany we went. We flew 7.5 hours and I was only able to sleep about 3 hours, but from what I remember the food was good. It was weird when we got to Frankfurt because for the first time in about 8 months (when we were at LAX airport in Los Angeles traveling between Central America and Asia) we were surrounded by primarily white people and we didn’t know them! It was also strange being in Germany since it was the only country we had been in where the USD was worth less than the local currency. We only had a couple hours to kill in the airport. I tried to start saying some goodbyes because I figured that it wouldn’t be possible when we got to JFK airport in New York. I tried to say goodbye to my buddy Becca and tears came to my eyes and I realized it was not yet time to say goodbye. Our flight was around 9am (I don’t actually remember when it was but that sounds about right) and so we had started a new day and I only had three hours of sleep, yay!
I sat by Rebecca on both flights…Rebecca Weaver and Addie Weaver, teammates for eight months and travel buddies for many a flight. I had a lot of fun making Weaver jokes and references with her this year. I grew up not knowing any Weaver’s outside of my family and Rebecca grew up knowing many, so I seemed to think these jokes were a lot funnier than her.
I watched about three or four movies on our flight to America, I don’t remember all of them, but it seemed to help reacclimate me into American culture and catch up on some pop-culture that I had missed out on. We landed in New York around 1pm and had a connecting flight to catch to Atlanta at 2:50pm – Bringham and I ran to customs along with several other squadmates who were also going to Atlanta. Then we all had to wait for our bags to come and by the time they did our whole squad had joined us – I guess we didn’t need to run. It took a while for our bags to come and we ended up missing our flight. But that was a blessing in disguise because I was able to say goodbye to everyone on our squad and to get out of the terminal and see Mama C and Pappy and say goodbye to them as well. There were about 15 of our flight to Atlanta and we were scheduled for the 2:50pm flight and the one after and since we missed the first one we all got to fly home on the second flight.
Several of us, including myself, were flying standby and it was nerve-wrecking for a bit but God is good and allowed us to all get on. In fact there were a ton of seats open so the anxiety was unnecessary – as it always is. The nerves were extra high because at this point we were all ready to be home. I noticed on the flight to Atlanta that my eyes were extremely red and I realized that it could be for several reasons: one, I had only slept three hours in the past 37 hours of travel; two, is that I think your eyes just turn red on international flights; three, I washed my face and got soap in my eyes; and four, I started crying as I said goodbye to the whole squad.
Bruce had just gotten off work and was able to pick me up at the gate! It was a blessing to see family right when I stepped off the plane. We headed to baggage claim and I was able to meet several of my team- and squad-mates’ families, I cried again, and then we were on our way home. It was so good to see and hug my mama when we got home and then roll around with the dog. The one thing I noticed when I went to bed that night and then woke up the next morning at 5:45am (jetlag is fun) is the slience. The silence was overwhelming and it wa something I hadn’t experienced in the past 11 months.
So that was the journey back to America. I plan on writing more blogs soon to let you know what I have been up to since being back to America, how I am adjusting to re-entry, and recap the trip by continent (thanks to Alana for that idea). I also want to put together a slideshow but may need some help in doing that. So, all that to say, There is More to Come, so please stay tuned!!Designed by Tim Sainburg from Brambling Design
Categories: Back in America!, Home.
Took a brief hiatus from blogging for the past ten days. It’s a constant battle of trying to figure out when and what I should blog about. Things that would have been blog-worthy in the first couple months are just normal now. And I guess that’s where this blog comes in. What has become normal (which is usually feeling uncomfortable, having to be willing and ready do anything at any moment, feeling like an outsider) will not feel so normal in just over a week.
I’ll tell you about how our ministry wrapped up for the month. We met Pastor Aaron, who works for YWAM, has a heart for the poor and spends most of his time ministering in the slums. He was kind enough to allow us to come along with him and check out his ministry. You could tell that he loves the people he works with. He goes around town and has become friends with many families, going into their homes, listening to them and praying for them. So we were able to do that as well. We went into little shanties that were made of tarps and mud and despite that we ran across believers who were full of joy and loved the Lord.
After constantly being gawked at in Africa, it was nice to come to India and have people not notice us. (Ok, people still notice us but it is so small in comparison to Africa that it seems like they don’t notice us.) But the slums is the only place where I almost felt like we were back in Africa, but this was in a good way. Children were so excited to see us. It was obvious that we didn’t live there, and in a sense didn’t belong there. But the children were willing to put out their hands, ask us our names, and follow us around.
I made friends with a cute ten year old boy named Monish and despite very little communication, he was willing to follow us around the whole time we were there and slip into our youth group meeting. I am pretty sure he was a Hindu and hadn’t come to a Christian youth meeting before but he snuck in and sat by me and I was happy he was there. (There are pics of him and other children I met up on my photobucket account.)
We ended up worshiping in English and in several of the local languages with the youth in the area. People all over the world worship differently, but it is the same God and we are all his children, so no matter. (That “so no matter” comes from me sending too many emails to my African friends that I am starting to talk like them.)
Our last day of ministry was last evening. We waited outside for our contact to take us and we were a little earlier than he told us due to miscommunication. After waiting for a while, I wouldn’t have been too upset if it got canceled. But a minute or two before we said we would give up our contact, Anil, showed up. We walked three minutes down the road (this was nice considering most of our ministry involved taking a bus or an auto-rickshaw for 15-45 minutes). We were told that we would be doing a drama, sharing testimonies, and sharing a word for college students. It was actually a seminary for all men and most were much older than the commonly thought of college age. They were very polite and seemed very eager to listen. Two guys in particular had wide eyes and were nodding their heads the whole time. There were some awkward moments of not knowing what to do next and of talking too much before realizing it was going to get translated – but we decided that was a perfect last day of ministry; the awkwardness has been a theme on the Race.
Our leaders are currently on their way to Delhi and we will be on our way tomorrow evening. Another 30-something hour train ride. We were blessed to be in Bangalore for the month because it is a lot cooler and less humid here than it was in Delhi. Apparently, it has cooled off in Delhi since the beginning of the month, so I am not completely dreading the weather we will be experiencing for our last few days in India, and our last few days on the Race.
“Ministry” in the sense of what we are actually getting up and doing this month was less than probably all of the other months, but it has been nice to be able to complete my re-entry packet and discuss our worries, hopes, and whatever else we have for when we return to the states. At this point, I am ready to go home, but I am looking forward to debrief because I feel it will be a nice time of closure. I may not have too much to say before I return home, but I will definitely be intentional about blogging about how my re-entry process to the states.
Thanks for reading!
Categories: India Month 11.
Posted in India Mo. 11 – 08/11 by Addie Weaver on 8/13/2011
We’re in and soon we’ll be out. And once we’re out, we’re heading back to America. Weird.
So what have I been doing in this amazing country? Glad you asked:
Elementary School
We went to a Christian elementary school that took about an hour and a half to get to via three buses and plenty of walking. Once we showed up we spilt up our two teams and our team walked up like 6 flights of stairs to the roof. We had the older kids. They had uniforms similar to the one I wore at New Life Academy for junior high. We pulled out the missionary classic: Father Abraham, which I would say is the Christian equivalent of the hokey pokey. Then we pulled out our “go-to” which is the chair skit. Almost everyone seems to love it and all you need is a chair. You tell the audience to pretend the chair has a “do not touch” sign on it and then one by one we all go over and touch it and become stuck to it until the Christian, complete with a Bible (you can always tell they’re a Christian if they have a Bible in these skits, or a robe…), prays over each person and they become unstuck. We have done this all over the world and it is generally a hit, but I must say this group, and the last time we did it in Tanzania, were the biggest hits. The children were rolling on the floor laughing, literally. And I don’t say “literally” unless I mean it (for real, I learned this was a pet peeve of mine on the World Race, oh the things I have learned this year). The point of the skit is that the chair represents sin and you are able to experience freedom from sin through Jesus Christ. We caused such a commotion that the classroom across the hall invited us over to do it and we got even more of a reaction out of them. This was the first group I have ever had that has yelled out “Don’t touch it!” and then as the children walked out at the end a couple brave ones put out a finger and touched the chair and were relieved to find they did not get stuck. After that, we headed back down the stairs and trekked back. Three hours of travel for a half hour of ministry? Worth it.
Life Challenge
Teen Challenge, the amazing faith-based rehab center for teens and adults struggling with addictions of many kinds, is all over the world. I was blessed to be able to work with them in El Salvador and would love to volunteer in the Minneapolis location upon my return. Well, apparently, there are some inter-denominational conflicts here and so instead of being tagged to the denomination of Teen Challenge, they branched out and opened Life Challenge which is the same program with a new name. Similar to the location in El Salvador (and I found out from Christina, my team leader, to the location in Cambodia where she worked for the month of April) this location was only for men. I was blessed to be able to share my testimony. I hope it made some impact because the guys didn’t seem too responsive. However, I trust that God will use my words in a way to help others and bring Him glory. We also did the chair skit, I thought it would be a hit throughout India. I was wrong. We maybe got a couple of chuckles but we were still able to share the message afterwards. I have such a heart for Teen Challenge and I pray that I will be able to be involved with them somehow in the future, even if it is only through donating.
College Campus
We went to a Catholic college campus that isn’t too far from where we’re staying and were told to just invite the students to a cell group that happens every Saturday. What we didn’t know at the time was that the cell group is just a time for college students to get together and hang out and that it wasn’t necessarily focused on being a Christian group. That would have been helpful to know beforehand, and made our interactions a little less uncomfortable. We were informed that the school was primarily Indian but there were also a lot of Africans, oh and no white people. We stood out a little. Especially because I was wearing the Punjabi suit that we had to buy for ministry this month and everyone else on campus dressed like Americans.
It was strange running into the Africans and feeling an odd sense of familiarity with them, being that we just came from Africa. We mostly met guys from Congo and the Ivory Coast and we mostly met the Africans on the basketball court. I’m not kidding, they told us that whenever they come to the court it is usually just Africans there. I wonder if I will feel an odd sense of familiarity with people from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and India when I return home? Or maybe I will just feel an odd sense of familiarity with everyone I mean the guys we met from Africa weren’t even from the countries we went to…
YWAM
That leads up to today. We are staying at the YWAM base and it was cleaning day. All the DTS teams and our WR teams were gathered together, got put on new teams, and were given an area that we were to clean. I got the roof which is where the kitchen and dining area is. I am not sure how often they do a deep cleaning on this scale, but it was needed today. I had to stand up on plastic chairs and counter tops to clean the beams supporting the roof. Then I helped scrub all the tables and chairs. It was good! We didn’t seem to have a lot of tasks like this in Africa. We were always being served and taken care of in Africa, which was such a blessing, but it was nice to be able to put some of my own elbow grease into the task I was doing. I love the sense of accomplishment this brings. I was reading one of the many books I have read on this race and it encourages becoming a radical Christian in minor ways. There was a team that would go out in their own neighborhood and offer to clean the homes and yards of elderly neighbors, those who were in need of help, or just anyone. What a great ministry that would be, and how simple!
So, we’re in. We’re doing what we can. We will be done with ministry on the 24th, take the 36 hour train ride back up to Delhi and spend the 26th to the 30th in our final debrief. Then early on the 31st, I think a little after midnight, we’ll get on a plane that will take us home.
I’m taking it all in for the rest of this month!
Categories: India Month 11.
So I updated you on what went on in the bush of Africa and told you that I made it out alive, which is true, but I realized shortly after we got back to Morogoro that I wasn’t feeling the best. Well apparently most of my team and the team that was with us was in the same place. So two days after we got back, we were supposed to go to our translators’, Elijah and Edwin, high school to preach a message. I thought I volunteered to speak to some high schoolers, but I had misunderstood, buy since most of our team was sick I ended up preaching to them anyway.
God has good timing because when we were walking back, me and one of the three other people well enough to come started feeling nauseous and walked to the clinic instead of home. When we got there we saw seven of our teammates already there. I ended up having typhoid but since I caught it early it wasn’t too bad. Most of my teammates had typhoid, malaria, parasites, or some combination. I felt like it was a rite of passage to make me a “true WR’er.”
We ended ministry on the 26th and had a nice dinner and ceremony to say goodbye and it hit me that we were finished with African ministry which made me a lot sadder than I thought it would. We had a couple days to relax so nine of my squad-mates met up at Mikate beach which is a short ferry ride from Dar es Salaam (I really mean short the ferry is about five minutes) and I got to swim in the ocean and see white people from all over the world. I realized how blessed and thankful I am to experience these cultures the way that I have been, because if my only experience of Tanzania was this touristy beach I would really feel that it was lacking.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the beach and being able to relax, and my teammates have told me on this journey that I need to allow myself to do that every once in a while, but it was hard for me to lay out on the beach when I know many Tanzanians who live in mud huts. We were warned at our last debrief that WR’ers have a hard time with re-entry and I am praying that the Lord will give me wisdom to share my experiences in love, while holding onto what I have experienced this year and using that passion to help others while not simultaneously alienating those I love. Re-entry is on the horizon and will be an area of growth where I trust I will be stretched.
So, that leads up to travel “day” – day is always used loosely since with time changes it is difficult to track and it is most often longer than a day. Yesterday (July 31) we left the beach and took a tuk tuk (this is now our third country with this form of transportation: Cambodia, Kenya, and Tanzania – but it is a little different in Cambodia) across the ferry, through Dar es Salaam to the airport where we arrived about five hours before our flight (that’s how WR’ers roll since there are 61 of us) and flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We waited about four to five hours for that flight and left just after midnight on August 1 to New Delhi. It was about a six to seven hour flight and I was able to sleep maybe four of those hours.
We arrived in New Delhi sometime in the morning and had to figure out our next step. We will be working with Team Frontline this month but there will be another team, Team Cavalry, in Bangalore as well so we needed train tickets for 19 of us – wasn’t going to happen today. It was a blessing that our fatigued leaders were willing and able to figure all this out as I, and a couple other squad-mates pulled out our blankets and sleeping bags to rest on the floor of the airport. I am getting to the point where I believe I cab sleep anywhere.
We had to book a hostel in New Delhi for tonight, and they have free WiFi which is how I am writing this, and we will be to the train station tomorrow night for our 40 hour train ride to Bangalore! Whoo Hoo! It is month 11 and I am determined to make the most of this month. I will try to post when I can but it may not be that possible this month, so if you would like feel free to message or email me and I will try my best to respond in a quick manner (be mindful this is still the WR).
Month 11: here we are!
Categories: India Month 11.
I went to the notorious “African bush” and made it back alive!
For the past nine days we went to three different villages around the Morogoro, Tanzania area, where we stayed in our tents that we often filled with dirt and dust. The villages were surrounded by mountains and were much colder than any of the places we have stayed on the race so far. I am glad we were able to experience what I thought the entire race would be like: tenting next to mud huts with tin roofs and taking “showers” from buckets filled with brown water.
The children had varied reactions to us, but it seemed like all of them took a little while to warm up. Some would cry at the sight of us, some would run in terror, some would laugh, but it seemed like most would just stare at us curiously. I can honestly say I felt like an animal in the zoo at times. When we were setting up our tents, it seemed that word quickly got out around the whole village that mzungus were here and they would come and watch. I am not always sure what they were expecting us to do, but they were there in case it happened. I most felt like an animal when I would try to emerge from my tent and you could see heads peering in. They would laugh when I would do something and they would all jump back when I would growl at them. Ok, so I had a little fun with them, because it was starting to get weird for me.
I have found that I am able to entertain large amounts of children with various dancing games and just being goofy, but you still have to be careful because even when most of them have warmed up to you, you can still make the little ones cry.
We had jam-packed ministry for the days we were in the villages with door-to-door evangelism, more testimonies than I can count, and it seems like between the 14 of us that went almost everyone was able to preach a sermon. A couple days we even had two-a-days for church services; gotta get our God fix.
I was blessed to be able to see the beautiful African sunsets, climb a mountain that overlooked our little village, sleep in the crisp air while tucked in my sleeping bag, and eat delicious meals each day. Plus, I was able to celebrate my birthday!
My team is so great and so loving toward me. I have realized more so than prior to the race that I may be a little quarky and come up with a lot of sayings. Well, my teammates decided to put my sayings to use and give me little cards where I had to perform certain tasks (such as demanding that I sing a song during church service, combing Greg’s beard, dancing in front of everyone) in order to get the next card. I am so excited to have all those memories and this is definitely a birthday I will not forget.
It is nice to be back in “civilization” where I have internet, and I am excited to round out our time in Africa. This continent has far exceeded my expectations, but I am learning more and more that expectations just need to be dropped.
Praise the Lord! Bwana Asifiwe! God is good and I am excited to see what is to come.
Categories: Tanzania Month 10.
7 July 2011
Hello, Hello!
Much has happened since I last updated. We left Mukono, it was hard to say goodbye to the kids that I quickly fell in love with, and headed to Jinja, Uganda which is where the source of the Nile is and met up with our whole squad for two days. I just keep getting more and more XTREME and decided to tandem bungee jump with my lovely teammate Angela Bringham and decided to rafting down the Nile.
Oh! and I got baptized in the Nile. I have been half joking since month two debrief that I wanted to get baptized by my squad-mate, Greg Houghton. I was baptized as an infant but I wanted to get baptized as an adult to signify the change that Christ has made in my life. Well, I continued to talk about it and ended up speaking it into existence. Greg and I got together one night in Jinja, with our squad-mate Allen and discussed reasons why I wanted to get baptized. I shared that I wanted to publicly announce that my old life is dead and that I have new life in Christ and both Greg and Allen said, “Ah it’s like an Ebenezer,” to which I had to have them explain. They said an Ebenezer is like a monument or event that reminds you that God met you somewhere and this would be one of those moments for me. Allen suggested we root this in the Word and we all got out our Bibles and he found:
“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” -Romans 6:3-5
I have been meditating on those verses for the past week. So on June 30, 2011, we rafted down the Nile and right after our lunch break I asked our guides if we could quickly have a baptism before we started back up. He said it was no problem and that he didn’t expect me to say that since no one has ever requested that before. So Greg spoke John 15 over me, Allen read Romans 6:3-11, I shared why I was getting baptized and that I viewed it like a marriage: I have been in a relationship with the Lord for a while but I want this to be my commitment, and I was baptized: a New Creation! Freedom in Christ. I felt different when I came up and it was a blessed experience. My squad-mate Paul closed us in prayer and then we were back to the rapids. (All of this was caught on video and I will put it up when I have better internet.)
After that exciting day we got on a bus to head to Tanzania. Jinja, Uganda is not too far from Tanzania (look it up on a map) but because of Lake Victoria we had to go all the way to Nairobi, Kenya and then onto Tanzania. It was a long bus ride! I sat next to my Minnesota buddy on the squad, Phil and off we went. It was hard to sleep on the bus and it was surprisingly cold that night, plus not all the windows would shut. We arrived a couple hours outside of Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, but as we were leaving a part of the bus broke. Then as we were waiting for the part we learned we were going to have to spend the night at the bus station. We were blessed to have the owner of the bus station allow us to stay there for free and he even gave us complementary tea and coffee. I set up my tent in a bus station, a first for me and probably for them, and had a great night sleep.
We were up at 5am and off to the capital. From there we traveled with two other teams to Morogoro, Tanzania. We are working with Team Rodeo this month, which happens to have my baptizer Greg and the rest of the team are squad-mates that I haven’t worked with before. We are staying in a lovely guest house and having great meals provided for us. We will be in this guest house for about a week doing door to door evangelism, leading Bible studies, sharing testimonies and preaching in church and then we are off for two weeks to two different villages in the middle of nowhere, probably. We will be tenting and closing out our African experience with what I thought all of Africa would be like.
So that is what I have been up to. God is GOOD! I am loving my team, my squad, the people we come across, and walking closely with the Lord. Thanks for checking in!
Categories: Uncategorized.
28 June 2011
I haven’t been doing my best at blogging, as you can probably tell. I think it is because things are starting to seem so normal. The novelty of Africa has started to wear off. The novelty of the Race has definitely started to wear. Things that may have seemed like great blog ideas at the beginning of the Race are just another day. On average, it seems like every two weeks we have to repack our giant packs and move them, and us, to a new place. I knew that it is relatively easy for me to connect with new people and develop rapport, but it seems exaggerated on this journey since we are always moving and meeting new people.
We stayed for the last ten days with Pastor Sarah and were able to meet her family and her house help (I was informed by one of the guys there that around Americans they were specifically asked to call them “house help” and I didn’t ask what they normally call them) and fall in love with them. My favorite was a lady named Mary. She doesn’t speak any English but I am learning time and again that it doesn’t always matter. She asked her friend how to say “cry” in English and kept repeating the word to me when we were leaving. They asked if we were going to cry when we left and I overheard one of my teammates saying that we have cried so much on this journey that our hearts are starting to harden. And it’s true. I vividly remember leaving the first two months with tears streaming down my face and thinking this is going to be a long 11 months if every goodbye is like this. I noticed in this month in particular that I haven’t been crying but I have felt a definitive ache in my heart.
This journey is interesting since we have been going to so many new places that it is strange to return somewhere that we have already been. I can only recall a handful of times returning to a place after a couple weeks: flying through the Singapore airport on two different occasions, flying into the Bangkok airport when we were going to stay in Thailand and returning to that airport after our month in Cambodia to fly to Kenya, starting and finishing last month in Nairobi and recognizing it when we returned. Now, this time we have only been going ten days but we returned to the same guest house and got to visit the children at the school we worked at for the beginning of the month. It is strange to be back and it is strange to recognize the children and fell reunited to them. It is hard to realize that tomorrow we leave and may never see them again.
I feel that the Lord has definitely placed some countries on my heart more than others. It is a blessing that almost every month the locals that we got to spend our time with often ask, “When are you coming back?” My safe response is, “When the Lord allows me/sends me back.” But with this country, I pray that the Lord will send me back and that I get to hug these little ones once again.
One thing that I have enjoyed about the Ugandans that we have spent time with is their willingness to receive feedback. I have heard on more than one occasion people ask our opinion on our observations and if there are any ways that they can improve on their ministry whether it is in a church setting, school setting, or whatever. It is a humble attitude that you don’t always find and I really respect it and hope I can adopt it.
Ok, so we are leaving Mukono, Uganda (where we have spent this month) tomorrow and we are headed to Jinja, Uganda which is where the source of the Nile River is. We will be camping there for two nights with our whole squad and some will be rafting the Nile and some will be bungee jumping as well. Then we will be traveling for two days by bus to Tanzania. I think our team will be staying outside of the capital by an hour or two. That’s the plan. This World Race seems to be rapidly coming to an end so I am living each day in the moment and trying to learn and grow as much as I can before returning to the states.
Categories: Uganda Month 9.
19 June 2011
Back in month two in El Salvador I got really close with our translator, Carlos. He had no computer, email address, or facebook. I helped in setting up the last two and one of my teammates donated her computer to him, so he was set! It has been such a blessing to be able to keep in touch with him, learn what the Lord is doing in his life, and to continue to be encouraged by him. Since that time I had been praying that the Lord would provide someone in my path who could use my computer and He was faithful in providing someone who didn’t ask for it, but humbly accepted it in Cambodia.
All of this to say that I was very happy and blessed to be able to donate my computer, but it has made blog writing more of a challenge. Especially this month, since we don’t have regular internet. So, I am now at the internet cafe in town and will try to crank out a blog, but I am not sure about the quality since blogs are not always the best when they’re forced. So, without further ado…
Preaching
I preached a sermon this morning. I preached basically the same sermon last Friday but I felt that the Lord was calling me to share this message again. I based sermon on Colossians 2:8 which states, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow or deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” I focused a lot on “hollow” and “deceptive” philosophies in this world. The hollow philosophy being the idea that you will be happy or contented when … (fill in the blank). Until we learn to be contented where we are, we will continue to be striving for more. As for the deceptive philosophies, it is the lies of the world that promise fulfillment through the things of this world: money, success, food, sex, drugs, alcohol, relationships… I was deceived by the philosophies of this world but have come to find that Christ is truly the Living Water.
School Ministry
From June 6-16, we worked with Pastor Joseph at his primary school and his church. I was blown away with how much I love these children. I found myself in whatever spare time I had going down to be around the children more and more. Some of my teammates have expressed that they are surprised that I never mentioned how much I enjoyed kids…and that’s because I didn’t realize that I did. Pastor Joseph has adopted around 20 orphans who are still in school and living at his house and I have fallen in love with so many of them. I really believe that the Lord is expanding my heart for children and orphans in particular.
Last Saturday, we had a “play date” with the children from the school. At first I didn’t like the idea of scheduling about seven hours to play with a bunch of children. I know I am only 24 but I find my energy runs out much faster than these little ones. However, I loved it! i was able to play futbol – typically an automatic bonding point for me – with a bunch of the young guys and was able to “prove” myself via my futbol skills.
Door-to-Door Evangelism
Last Friday, I went with a group of three others to another part of Mukono and we were each paired with someone from the church to do door-to-door evangelism. I got paired with Pastor Lawrence, the pastor of the church we were visiting, and the two of us set out to evangelism. It is not my favorite thing. I have never done door-to-door in America, but I imagine it would be much different. In Africa, everyone is willing and usually excited to welcome visitors in their homes and it’s not too difficult to share Jesus with others. I was noticeably uncomfortable about this at first and shared my reservations with Pastor Lawrence but he was very kind and gave me tips on how to approach others. We ended up being a great pair. Though I didn’t convert anyone, it’s not my job to. I simply shared my story, shared time importance of Christ in my life, and allowed others to ask questions or ask me to leave – however they responded was up to them.
It did end up being a good bonding time for me and Pastor Lawrence and he shared that he was blessed by being able to hear my story and I can say the same for him. I ended up returning to his church last Sunday and it was again a blessing to see my new friend and brother in Christ. Shannon, our squad leader, was with us that day and ended up preaching the sermon and Pastor Lawrence was the translator. At a couple points I had to translate Shannon’s English into English for Pastor Lawrence since he wasn’t used to her Michigan accent but apparently had no trouble understanding my Minnesotan accent.
Pastor Sarah
On June 16, we packed up our bags at the guest house we were staying in, got in the van, and traveled less than five minutes down the road to Pastor Sarah’s house. She is allowing us to stay with her and work with her ministry until June 27. We will return to be with Pastor Joseph for June 27-29 and then it is off to Tanzania. I knew that I was going to see those children again, but my heart was still saddened as we hugged and said our goodbyes.
Our first day with Pastor Sarah, we went to several of the elderly church member’s houses and “shared a word” (we seem to be asked to “share a word” a lot on this trip – I am starting to find that can almost mean anything). These old men and women were so filled with joy that you couldn’t help but leave their homes smiling and praising the Lord.
Yesterday, I went to my fourth wedding of the race (1st – Guatemala, 2nd – Malaysia, 3rd – Kenya) and helped decorate for the reception. This wedding was a riot and I will be posting videos at some point so you can see for yourself. All I have to say was hands-down this was the most entertaining wedding I’ve ever been to.
I met an orphan at the wedding and only knew him for a couple hours and my heart was melted for him. I’m telling you, the Lord’s doing something in this heart of mine! It was hard to say goodbye!
And then I preached this morning. The blog has come full circle so it must be time to end.
P.S. I titled this blog because I am learning that in many ways Africans are very different and that we have a lot to learn from them. I was going to spell out all the ways that we are different, but I am going to trust you to be able to read between the lines.
Categories: Uganda Month 9.
