We took a trip within our trip! We hit the roads on Tuesday to visit a village about four hours away and this two day trip turned into an adventurous journey.
We rented a car ("Land Rover") to take us to this village and left at about 9 am on Tuesday. We were going to the village to do the same type of ministries we are doing here (preaching and door-to-door), at least that's what we were told.
I sat in the very back with Jenifer on a bench like seat that faces another one similar to it. We were sitting across from Pastor Simon and Bishop who came to the village with us. We rode on very bumpy dirt roads for the first three and a half hours of the trip and then we came to the mud roads. Our Pastor told us, three hours into our trip, that these roads should not be traveled on during this season because of the rain. Needless to say we kept traveling on them.
We came up to a patch of muddy road that would have been miraculous to make it through without sliding off into the ditch and getting stuck. A couple minutes later we slid off into a ditch and got stuck. While Andrew, Pastor, Bishop and the driver started pushing and trying to get out of the ditch about 5 other Tanzanians came over to help. As they are all pushing and the tire is spinning they all get covered in mud, but this didn't deter them from continuing to help. I was amazed at how the Tanzanians just came over and started helping and got all muddy even though they didn't know us.
After about two hours they were able to push us out of the muddy ditch and we continued down this road that no one should be driving on. It's hard to fully explain what we experienced after this but I will try my best.
As we continue there would be puddles of water, but you weren't always sure how deep or if there were bumps under the water, or if it was mud with the possibility of getting stuck if you didn't drive fast enough through them.
We went through the first three big puddles very fast because we didn't want to get stuck and all three of them had bumps in them. Since Jenifer and I were sitting in the back we got the brunt of the bumps and flew off our seats with the luggage flying everywhere. After this with the tension and stress levels rising we could only hold on and keep watching as we faced big puddle after swamp area after impossible muddy areas.
It was high stress riding for the next three hours. We eventually got to the village and were incredibly blessed with a plethura of wonderful food. We ate Rice, tomatoes, onions, chapati, chicken and greens.
With an expectation of going to this village and not sleeping for the two nights we were there, I was pleasantly surprised with a bed on the floor that had the plastic wrap still on it. This might sound obnoxious, but I was very excited because that meant that the bed most likely did not have bed bugs and I could sleep without freaking out about waking up with bites all over!
The people at the home we stayed at blessed us with so much wonderful food the whole time we were there. The next morning we got up ate breakfast and went to the government office for a meeting. What we soon realized was that the real reason we were at this village and visiting another village was because Pastor and Bishop were wanting to start schools in the villages. At the first government meeting we basically sat there until Pastor asked us to give the leaders of the village some encouragement. After Andrew shared a word of encouragement we were asked if we had any money so that this village could start a hospital. (We have been asked to help fund things every day since we got here, we know their hearts are in the right place when they ask so it hasn't been hard, just gets frustrating after awhile).
So we went with Pastor and Bishop, and the whole town followed, to see the plot of land that they were getting for the school. Then at around 12pm we drove to the next village that was fifteen minutes away and about forty-five minutes later arrived at the government building there. We sat through another village meeting with the leaders, this one was about 2 hours and ate lunch there. Then we went to another meeting in the streets of the village, that we were told was a meeting to share the gospel but we found out it was really just a "town meeting" to get the school approved in their village. 🙂
We did have a little bit of time to share the gospel and Andrew and I shared. After the meeting we went back to the other village ate dinner and headed to bed.
The next morning we got up ate breakfast and headed back to Tabora. We were all ready to return although it had been raining for about 5 hours that morning so we knew it was going to be a hard journey back.
We had the same sort of ride on the muddy roads. We ended up hitting many bumps, getting stuck twice for a total of 5 hours and eventually made it home around 9 pm.
Our eight hour round trip turned into an eighteen hour round trip.
I can definitely say God worked on my control issues through this trip and used the high stress time to remind me that I can keep Him at the center even when I feel stressed, or I can focus so much on the stressful situation that I'm miserable. I'm going to make it through either way, so I might as well learn to do it keeping Him as my focus.
We are continually looking at this month and acknowledging the hardness, but keeping in mind that we are going to look back at this month and realize all the fun, crazy and amazing stories we will have to share.
