Tuesday October 1st
Today I woke up at 7:30 in preparation to leave at 8:30 sharp to drive 25 kilometers to a nearby village to do home visits with the locals from 9-noon and have the rest of the day off. Yay a nice and easy day! I ate a quick egg and piece of bread and was off.
Funny thing is we waited outside for our car to pick us up for an hour and a half, and wow it was hot out, around 100 degrees. Lol 10:00 rolls around and 13 of us pile into one pick up truck and we’re on our way! Oh but wait, on our ride to the village we make about 4 pit stops at schools and clinics to drop off supplies and fill out paperwork. Don’t worry each stop meant less stuff in the back which meant the boys had more room to sit. After all the stops we finally got to the village and that’s where we started to hear the music, mind you it was now 12:00pm and we were supposed to be heading home at this time but we haven’t even started ministry yet.
As the truck rolled up we see a group of maybe 20 girls singing and dancing welcoming us to their village. We weren’t really sure what we were supposed to do with this group of 15-25 year olds so we just all sat down and one by one introduced ourselves and told a short story about our lives. Then we played some games and sang and that was it with them. Turns out pretty much the whole village we were in everyone either has HIV or AIDS. Good to know as we start going to homes and visiting people.
We got paired off to go to the homes and I went with my good buddy Jeff and our translator Ty. An old lady walked us around and showed us the homes that we needed to go to. The first conversation we had was with a man who was staining bed frames and sanding them down. We soon looked to our left and realized this man also had like 200 chickens we was raising. He told us that his brother and his sister in law died from AIDS and that he is now raising his niece and trying to care for her since she has nobody. We prayed for this man and gave him some words of encouragement and we were on our way to visit the next person.
As we walked up the dusty pathway up to this shack we saw three women sitting on the ground holding babies and a few small children playing around them. Our eyes quickly darted to the smallest children being held. Something about him didn’t look quite right, he was staring up at his mom but seemed to have no life in his eyes and the look of pain and suffering overcame his tiny face. They then explained to us that the child was disabled and they held him up and we realized what they were talking about. His neck was thrown all the way back, his arms and legs were stiff and bent, and his back was twisted and crooked. This beautiful child was unable to sit up, crawl, or even really move at all because of this disability. This scene literally just broke my heart. As Jeff was talking with the moms and trying to get to know them we learned the moms and the children suffered from HIV. I sat there quiet with tears in my eyes just praying that God would heal this sweet sweet child. We talked some more and as a group prayed for healing over all of them and left as we had one more home we had to go visit.
The last visit we had was with a mom who had twin babies, thankfully we learned that the babies were healthy and not suffering with HIV. As we got to know her she told us that her children’s father doesn’t believe he is the father and is refusing to help support them so this mother is struggling a lot. She told us that they had a scheduled DNA test and a court hearing coming up and asked if we could pray that well goes well with that. We wanted to stay longer but checked the time and it was almost 3:00, the time we had to meet back at the truck. We walked the dirt road back to our meeting spot eager to hear how everyone’s afternoon went.
As we waited for everyone to get back I heard music playing and turned around and saw a group of kids dancing. I don’t know what came over me but I felt like I needed to go dance with them, so I did. Yeah African dancing is very different from American dancing. Those little girls shook their butts and arched their backs as they laughed at me trying to ‘raise the roof’. I ended up gathering a large crowd of children all making a big dance circle, taking their turns to show me their best dance move. At this time the truck pulled up and it was finally time for us to leave so we all packed up the truck and started driving away. Oh wait of course there’s another stop to drop off more supplies.
We were at this clinic in some small village for like half an hour dropping off milk and cookies while filling out paperwork. After this we finally headed home. We didn’t get home until after 5:00, lol to us thinking we’d get home around noon. We were tired and starving as we whipped up some stir fry and rice for dinner (man I really should have eaten a bigger breakfast and something for lunch). We ate our dinner in the dark because we didn’t have power like usual, then I didn’t take a shower either because we didn’t get running water that day as well. Looks like I’m going to bed sweaty. I looked in my room for any lizards or massive spiders on the walls, didn’t see any and deemed the room safe to sleep in for the night. Time to get a good nights sleep to get up and do the same thing tomorrow!
Ps: I’m still fundraising and am past my deadline so if your feeling encouraged to donate, please do!
love,
Brieanne
