well the time has arrived for me to break into this posting business… i always have great intentions of keeping everyone updated on my life, and i usually last about three posts before i get over it, so my goal for the next year and a half or so is to keep you all informed with life.
i just got back from Guinea, Africa last sunday, and after spending two weeks with the wonderful people there i had no desires to come back and start working full time and finishing up my last two months of college, senioritis has set in in a bad way… but here i am back at it and attempting to process through those two weeks, so this blog is going to be my outlet, and hopefully anyone reading it enjoys it as well.
i spent the first week of my trip hanging out outside a church in the middle of the road playing with 20-30 kids that spoke french (which i know about two words of) and had the time of my life. the older wiser men in the group were inside running a pastor’s conference, so i took two frisbee’s, a futbol, and my camera outside and it didn’t take long for the kids to swarm. they came and embarassed me in futbol, mocked every word i said in english, and smiled incessently every time the camera came out. i absolutely fell in love with them, and am still struggling with the fact that they are there and i am here.
week two of the trip involved going to different schools around the city and sharing the gospel with kids. it was amazing, we used the “evangicube” which for some reason works wonders over there, and taught the local Guineans how to use it, so that they could be the ones sharing the message, and consequently could continue preaching the gospel once we had left. we also visited some prisons, which was an eye-opening experience to say the least. we walked through and shook as many hands as we could, brought 500 loaves of bread, and did our best to be as encouraging as we could, and in the end, i personally felt like the one who was encouraged… men crammed in a cement cell, with a hole in the floor for a toilet, only receiving a cup of rice water every other day, singing praise songs, and smiling brighter than i ever do here. why is that?
i met people in africa i will never forget, i held kids whose faces now light up my cubicle, and computer screen, and anywhere else i can put them, i received gifts from people who make less in a year than i do a week, and i will never be the same because of it. this was my first time out of the country, and it did two things to me in regards to the world race…
it made me stoked out of my mind, and it terrified me beyond belief. i am so excited to go, and i am so scared to experience it all. not scared or terrified in a bad way, but in a way that i know it will be the hardest thing i have ever done, in a physical, emotional, and spiritual sense. pray. that is all i can do, and i think that is the best thing i can do all at the same time.
