So, the race is all about community living right? You have little to no alone time,and the alone time you get is you usually having your back to your team mates with a pair of headphone in. It’s a real stretch for us introverts. You also sometimes just get into these moods, where you just really don’t like your teammates. But it’s in these “moods” that you usually experience the most growth. Well, You could say I was in one of these so called moods. I mean being constantly surrounded by people is something that I wasn’t used to but, now I kinda enjoy it. Back to the story though, let me begin by painting a picture of what the month looked like.
It was April, I was in Swaziland, it was Manistry month. (For those of you who do not know, on the race there is at least one month dedicated to Manistry. In other words it was a month free from estrogen and those who carry them hormone, aka the ladies.) Now, don’t get me wrong I love the Q-squad ladies! But, it was time for a month dedicated to testosterone and manly shenanigans.
At the start of the month I was dreading it, one reason being that the month prior I had somehow torn my calf muscle. I figured I would just get the month over with and enjoy it. Our days began with waking up early, getting in that morning energy, I did so with my daily dose of oatmeal, Oh, how I miss my oatmeal! (It’s been awhile since I’ve had any.) Followed by hiking to our daily ministry.
So we get to ministry at around 7:15 and we are informed we will be doing some grass cutting in other words, it meant machete swinging. The reason we were doing this was to help prepare for a fire break. (A fire break is the controlled burning of a strip of land to prevent fire from spreading onto the property due to wildfires, twas the season.) We were entering the dry seasons in Africa.
So we get started with a lovely hike to the edge of the property, it was quite the hike. We had our Swazi guide who just blazed the trail for us. So let’s jump ahead a good two hours. We had just stopped for a short break and there’s this cell phone tower in the distance. Jason chimes in “Lets hike to that tower over there!” All the guys seemed pretty enthused by this but, I on the other hand was not. Our guide said it would take another three hours to get there. He was being serious, however all the guys seemed to think he was just kidding… He wasn’t. We get about halfway by then I was over the stupid hike I was in a rather pissed off mood. I wanted to go back. My calf was killing me. (It was still in the process of healing.) I was hungry… At this point it was being discussed in if we should continue on. Two guys stated “let’s keep going because I’d be pretty bummed if we didn’t make it to the top.”
So we continued on. About ten minutes later we Reached the foot of this massive hill. My two friends said we could climb it in 20 minutes. I stared at them with disbelief, not quite sure if I heard them correctly. Our Swazi guide said, it would take us 30 minutes. So we were off climbing this hill that was practically a mountain. Our guide gave us a good 5 minute head start before he decided to join us and, he started sprinting up the mountain surpassing us all with his speed.
After seeing that, I knew I was done. I just wanted to ignore everyone and pretend they didn’t exist. Maybe push a few people off the mountain. With that being highly illegal I decided not too and instead, took some quiet time by myself. So after finishing the climb I found s nice rock to sit on and just spent some time with the Lord. It was by far one of the best times I’ve had listening to Him. He gave me a vision of this gorgeous sunset. The mountain and hills had a beautiful orange hue behind them and, the skies were like a water color. This was also the first time I received a picture.
That image I received made the hike worth while, it also brought inner peace. It took away any vicious or negative thought that I had. After that our break we had the very lovely thought of returning back down, which is a whole nother story on its own.
