On the Real World Race

Well, we’re in Africa now.  It’s hard to believe that I can finally say that, as many of us have unofficially deemed this period as the commencement of the “real World Race,” complete with high expectations of huts, squatties, zero Internet, some kind of clicking language, and lots of topless women with naked babies straddled across their hips.  We showed up in Mozambique after a bus ride from Chisinau, Molodova, flight from Bucharest, Romania, flight from Istanbul, Turkey, and bus from Johannesburg, South Africa.  8pm Thursday to 12am Sunday.  52 hours of travel days.  We arrived at our primary contact (Angie)’s house exhausted, seemingly encapsulated by hoards of mosquitoes.  After a hearty midnight dinner of rice, beans, and chocolate cake, we spent the night under the protective cover of our tents before heading to our ministry location in Guija the following morning.
 

Each day, we pump millions of buckets of water at the nearby well, hold babies so their moms can get their daily supply of water buckets filled, and admire them as they carry them back home on their heads.  Oatmeal, coffee, and a brief devotional comprise our daily breakfast, shared with our contact Tienie (a friendly, 40-something South African man) and his staff:  Weldon from Zimbabwe and local Mozambicans Flora and Silverton.  After cleaning up around the base, we make our rounds in the surrounding villages to encourage and pray for single moms, orphans, the elderly, men and women struggling with AIDS, paralysis, blindness, cancer… all kinds of hardship you can imagine.  Honestly, it’s been rough.  Because the need is so great, we don’t have the opportunity to spend extensive amounts of time with most of the people we visit, and it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all we cannot do.  Thankfully, though, Tienie already knows these people, and he is frequently able to assist them in getting medicine, wheelchairs, and other things that would help them fare a little more easily.
 

 

I’m continually reminded – and thankful – how little the first impressions of our new locations are anything like how we will regard them the rest of the month.  We always show up in the dark – literally and figuratively – with the fear and mystery of what our new lives will resemble looming over us.  The comforts of Europe/Pretend Home are long gone, stowed away in a forgotten corner of Angie’s with my chocolate, 3-in-1 instant coffee packets, and travel pillow.  Time to adapt, grow, become.  Wash some feet.  Preach a sermon.  Get those gosh dang lice out of my teammates’ hair.  Look more and more like Jesus at the end of every long, hard day.
 
It’s going to be a good month.
 

Hey!  I still need to raise $1,500 by July 1^st to be fully funded for The World Race.  If I don’t meet the deadline, I will go home.  Will you partner with me in this ministry by donating toward my support account?  Just click the SUPPORT ME! link in the list on the top left side of the page!