Taxis scare me. And by taxi I mean the 15 passenger buses that violently fly down the roads honking like a flock of geese. And by 15 passenger buses I mean 15 to 30-or-more passenger buses.
This one only had 21 passengers and as it barreled up and down the hills many of us noticed that shifting seemed to become more and more difficult. Then while heading up a hill the van decided it was not going to shift at all. Then it died. The driver made a miraculous u-turn to face our taxi the wrong way and we started to roll down the hill. With our rolling start our driver started the van back up, turned around and tried the hill again.
I started to pray as I channeled the little engine that could “I think we can, I think we can, I think we . . . ” We could not. The van refused to shift and it died once again. This time there was no turning around. The driver and the caller (the guy who sits right behind the passenger seat and hangs out the window to call for new riders) got out of the vehicle and started to push us up the hill.
No one in the taxi moved. No one demanded a new ride. They just all took it for what it was and let these two men push the 20-something of us up the hill. Then out hopped Brooks from the front seat and Derek crawled over a few people to make it out the side door. They went to the back and pushed. Everyone else in the taxi found this hilarious. Two “Mzungos” (the common slang for white/rich people) pushing a taxi, what a sight.
We finally got to the top of the hill and started coasting down. Everyone piled in and our driver got the van started back up. Luckily for us, we were the next stop. Unlucky for us, the taxi could not get back in gear after stopping for us to pile out. So Derek, Brooks, and James pushed again.
This episode was the highlight of our week. I laughed so hard that my sides hurt. A broken taxi had brought us joy.
So our week had not been the greatest. There had been some miscommunication and misunderstanding with our host and things were not working out. James and I learned a lot about bonding with our team, staying positive, finding joy in the simple things, and finding hope amidst the helplessness.
We felt helpless. Our village had no name (that we knew of). We had no way to tell people how to find us. Many of the adults only spoke their native language. We could not get anywhere without help. And our work felt pointless.
We were on our own to find the Christian ministry that we came to do. Our host had us working on updating the “volunteer house” and school that we were staying at (not really the type of ministry that we were sent out to do, or that our host promised, but we put some elbow grease into it). The building has not been used in two years as the school had to close down and we have no idea when it might be used again.
Our host had a variety of ideas for the future of this place . . . but nothing that can be implemented in the near future. So we cleaned the cement walls and sandpapered the metal windows not knowing if the cleaning would even last. Who knew when this building would be used again. The open slats of the windows let in unending amounts of dust causing the room that was the main hall to look like it had been abandoned for a decade or more.
Then our builder made us start painting, before things were even truly cleaned. We cringed as we painted over dirt, dust, and remnants of wasp nests. We felt helpless to truly do a good job. We all wanted to do our best, but our watered-down-paint (watered down with paint thinner that is) just did not want to cooperate.
We finished painting the first classroom room. And then the mason came in and made a cement “skirt” and patched some of the walls leaving cement chunks, streaks, and strips. Rendering a large portion of our paint job useless. We felt so helpless. Everything seemed backwards, but we had to do what we were told and in the order we were told to do it in. So helpless.
But not hopeless. Our hope was that God would use us to bless the families around us. Our hope was that God would either show us what our ministry should be or that we would be moved to another place where God is working. We were willing to do whatever it takes . . . or at least we hoped we would be. But we all knew that we were stressed and stretched.
So when we got the call that we were moving to a new location we prayed prayers of thanks. And we prayed prayers for the family we were staying with, that we could bless them for two more days and that God will continue to bless them in the future.
This weekend we are hanging out at the Nile, enjoying some wifi and electricity. We are recharging and spending time with our friends from another team from our squad. It was a blessing as we got to recharge each other and pray for one another. Both of us had experienced some kind of “helpless” feeling during the week. Helpless, but never hopeless.
Thank you God for our hope for our team and our hope for your healing love in this world. Our hope is also to see you working in our next ministry, which sounds like a mix of door to door ministry and also helping to vaccinate baby chickens. We not sure how the two are connected, but we will find out!
You can read Brook’s version of the taxi pushing story on his blog.
My teammate Carson also has a great post about how we invested in those around us for the week.
