From There to Here

My oh my has life been crazy! Crazy in all sorts of different ways, some have been really wonderful, while others have been a lot more challenging. Through it all, God has been continuously blessing me. I feel completely unworthy of this unexpectedly strong flow of His favour, and I know that I do not deserve it. His love is so massive and overwhelming. I often find myself sitting on the bamboo mat in the shade of the cashew tree in the front yard of my family's grass roof hut in complete awe of what He has given me. Sometimes it is easy to get used to the idea of me being here..on this trip, but thankfully, there are constant reminders of what an unbelievably precious and rare of an opportunity this actually is. Not only have those thoughts of these recent occurances ungulfed my mind, but reflecting on what I have been blessed with back in beautiful CO (and Illinois!!) has been taking up a large portion of my thinking time as well..which I have quite a bit of with such a thick language barrier. But I mean really..no matter how terrible of a day I am having, how little I feel like I may have, or how small or unwanted I feel, there is no good reason to let those lies overtake me. I have heard this many times before, but meditating on the concept over and over gives me an oddly positive outlook on life. I have not one thing to be sad about. Quite frankly, some one always has it worse than I do. Complaining is pointless. So instead of using energy to sulk, I have chosen to use it to celebrate. Celebrate everything..like it says in 1 Thessalonians 5, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ." God doesn't want us to live our lives in sadness or depression. He made us beautiful in His image..Genisis 1:27. No matter what things are being darted at us my the devil, be thankful and take joy in those things. Take Job for example. He had it all; he had it good with God, a spotless reputation, ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred oxen, five hundred donkies, and a ton of servants. What the heck! That is so crazy!!! Think if someone in today's time had all of those things in his possesion..now imagine what it meant in biblical times. Yipes. Ok sorry for the rambling-back to the story..within a short amount of time, all of his wordly possessions..gone..through army attacks, fires, and collapsing houses. All with the permission from God. Oh wait, and then the Lord allows Satan to take Job's health as well. Through it all, Job doesn't even hesitate to praise His name. That is the commitment that I long to live by.

After the farewell from Vredendal, I got the opportunity to meet some of the wonderful people the rest of my team spent time with in Lambert's Bay. It was a great thing to kind of be on the outside; not necassarily being able to feel like a part of the progress made in the community, but to be thrilled to see the affects on everyone else involved was a huge blessing. I often find myself having a difficult time relating to the rest of my team's reminiscant stories, but excited nonetheless because of how joyful they are from the relationships and experiences. I love hearing all about it, and its nice to be able to put faces with names too.

We left Lamberts Bay to head to a city just outside of Capetown called Belleville. There we met our new temporary community partner, Donny. He is a fulltime missionary in northern Mozambique. He graciously agreed to join us on our long trek from South Africa to Macuba, Mozambique. By long..I mean really long. 68 hours of bus riding. Sixty Eight. Ay yi yi. And that is only the time that we were actually on a bus. It doesn't account for any other travel or layover hours in between the four seperate legs of the journey. But God is good and He totally provided. He got us all here safe and sound, we crossed over the border with ease, and we had nice places to sleep and good food to eat. I couldn't have asked for more. I even made a friend on one of the rides. I can't remember his name, but I can recall everything that we talked about. Ah that 21 hour bus ride was the sweetest of them all. God knew what I needed and He gave it to me on a silver platter!

Our team arrived in the middle of town in the middle of the day..tired, smelly, thirsty, and a tad bit grumpy. (I, of course, was still ready for another bus ride if need be..keep 'em comin!) All of those negative vibes blew away the moment that Donny pulled up with thirteen taxis. Taxis here are a little different than those in the United States. They have much better air conditioning systems and are a lot better on gas. Stumped? They are motorcyles! (African style, of course) I can't quite describe the concoction of my emotions.. all of the excitement, exhaustion, shock, and perplexity was unlike anything I have felt before. The reason behind the recipe is mainly because I have a 40 lb. hiking pack on my back and a 10 lb. backpack in my hand. Is this a joke? There was no way in any of our minds that we could fit on the back of one of those things..no stinkin way. Something else I have learned here is in Africa, there is always a way. As we all are giggling and smiling and shaking our heads in disbelief, the crowd of eager Mozambiquans rolls up in front of us, picks one of us out, and 'tells' us to hop on. Ha. Hop on? Seriously? Yes. They were serious. So then we did. We practically paraded through the middle of Macuba. Front wheel, handle bars, driver, backpack, me, hiking pack, back wheel. (Don't worry Grandma, I was lucky enough to have one hand free to hold onto the guy's shoulder) It was awesome. I couldn't dream of any better way to transition from a tiring busride to the next chapter of our trip.

After about a ten minute ride, we arrived at our contact's property. Bernadette Jensen is a woman from South Africa who was called into missions in Mozambique about twelve years ago. She has built an amazing oasis for so many in the community. I am so eager to write further into detail about her ministry in another blog, so definitely look forward to it! For now, know that this place serves as my team's base for our weekends and training period. We had a few days to adjust to the area and to prepare ourselves. Those few days were great, but a lot of complications came about in that small amount of time. One of our teammates very unfortunately had second seizure within a two week time period- and because of the severity, the amount of variables, and the lack of health system here, needed to go home for his sake. It has had a huge impact on our team, but we all know that God has a plan in it, and we are thankful he is safely back home now. So please pray for Josh as he is trying to figure it what caused these episodes and how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

One of the inexplicable joys that God has blessed me with is my host family. I love everything about them. God obviously fit us together perfectly- I couldn't have wished for a better family. Lorinda is my mom, she is 34 years old and is a mother of six. Deno is the eldest son and is 19, Manuel is 14, Amina is 12, Vitoria is 9, Inacia is 4, and Lucia isn't quite 2 yet. The coolest part is is how well we get along with each other, and they don't even speak a word of english. I have been soaking up being able to be quiet, to sit, to watch, and to learn. I think one reason that my first week has been so positive is because of the dynamics in the home. My mom seems to be a wonderful mother. She has instilled dignity and strength in the girls, and a sense of respect in the boys, which is often difficult to find in boys their age here. Because they are all her children, they have responsibilities around the house and in the community that they know are a priority. My mom asks me to just sit on the mat and rest for a lot of the day because I am a guest in her home. But thats not what I am here for. I am here to learn how they live life. So when I have gotten the chance, I will sneak up off my mat to go run off to one of the wells to help my sisters get water. They even taught me and allowed me to carry a full bucket on my head! This was huge progress in the transition I have been trying to make between a guest and a sister. Of course when my I got back home with the bucket, my mom saw me carrying it and smiled, clapped, and laughed. The following day, I had the honor of her taking me to the social well where she let me carry a bucket of water on my head quite a few times. It seems like such a small task, but it means so much that she is now letting me help her work. It was even entertaining and a foreign sight for the people in the community to see. She has let me cut tomatoes and onions, she has let me stir the rice of massa. (which is crushed up cassava..a nutritionless crop.. made into a white, sticky dough-like roll-they eat this as a substitute for rice since they don't have money to purchase it) She will also let me sweep the yard in the morning. The very early morning-I normally get around 4:30 or 5:00. Crazy, right? But it works out when we fall asleep with full stomachs after a dinner cooked under the moonlight at a whopping 8:00 at night. Another huge progression I have experienced this week was I began eating my meals with a spoon. I quickly observed that they don't. When we have dinner in the dark is normally when I would practice eating the soupy beans and rice with my hands. The first night that she served me dinner with my family and didn't get my any silverware was an accomplishment for me. Now she doesn't ever serve me a meal with a spoon. The small things like that really mean the world when they could have never imagined having a white guest in their house, let alone one like me, or someone who actually wants to learn how they do the things they do every single day. It gives them an honour that cannot be put into words. It makes their hut a real home. It gives them a sense of pride and ownership that has never been instilled in them before. It is very humbling that the Lord is using me as a tool to help a family feel this amount of worth.

I don't have pictures yettttt, but they will be coming soon. I have chosen not to bring my camera with me to their home until a feel that it is an okay time to bring it out. When I do, I will be able to show you the strength and the miracles that I have been blessed enough to be a part of.

That is all of the time I have for now, but there will be many more stories to come. Pray for the teammates of mine whose stomachs aren't handling the food or water well..and pray that mine continues to enjoy it as much as I am (which is a lot!)..minus the fish. Oy. I couldn't eat fish before I came here..but let me tell ya-I've learned to smile while I chew!!