7 July 2011
Hello, Hello!
Much has happened since I last updated. We left Mukono, it was hard to say goodbye to the kids that I quickly fell in love with, and headed to Jinja, Uganda which is where the source of the Nile is and met up with our whole squad for two days. I just keep getting more and more XTREME and decided to tandem bungee jump with my lovely teammate Angela Bringham and decided to rafting down the Nile.
Oh! and I got baptized in the Nile. I have been half joking since month two debrief that I wanted to get baptized by my squad-mate, Greg Houghton. I was baptized as an infant but I wanted to get baptized as an adult to signify the change that Christ has made in my life. Well, I continued to talk about it and ended up speaking it into existence. Greg and I got together one night in Jinja, with our squad-mate Allen and discussed reasons why I wanted to get baptized. I shared that I wanted to publicly announce that my old life is dead and that I have new life in Christ and both Greg and Allen said, “Ah it’s like an Ebenezer,” to which I had to have them explain. They said an Ebenezer is like a monument or event that reminds you that God met you somewhere and this would be one of those moments for me. Allen suggested we root this in the Word and we all got out our Bibles and he found:
“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order
that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” -Romans 6:3-5
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order
that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” -Romans 6:3-5
I have been meditating on those verses for the past week. So on June 30, 2011, we rafted down the Nile and right after our lunch break I asked our guides if we could quickly have a baptism before we started back up. He said it was no problem and that he didn’t expect me to say that since no one has ever requested that before. So Greg spoke John 15 over me, Allen read Romans 6:3-11, I shared why I was getting baptized and that I viewed it like a marriage: I have been in a relationship with the Lord for a while but I want this to be my commitment, and I was baptized: a New Creation! Freedom in Christ. I felt different when I came up and it was a blessed experience. My squad-mate Paul closed us in prayer and then we were back to the rapids. (All of this was caught on video and I will put it up when I have better internet.)
After that exciting day we got on a bus to head to Tanzania. Jinja, Uganda is not too far from Tanzania (look it up on a map) but because of Lake Victoria we had to go all the way to Nairobi, Kenya and then onto Tanzania. It was a long bus ride! I sat next to my Minnesota buddy on the squad, Phil and off we went. It was hard to sleep on the bus and it was surprisingly cold that night, plus not all the windows would shut. We arrived a couple hours outside of Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, but as we were leaving a part of the bus broke. Then as we were waiting for the part we learned we were going to have to spend the night at the bus station. We were blessed to have the owner of the bus station allow us to stay there for free and he even gave us complementary tea and coffee. I set up my tent in a bus station, a first for me and probably for them, and had a great night sleep.
We were up at 5am and off to the capital. From there we traveled with two other teams to Morogoro, Tanzania. We are working with Team Rodeo this month, which happens to have my baptizer Greg and the rest of the team are squad-mates that I haven’t worked with before. We are staying in a lovely guest house and having great meals provided for us. We will be in this guest house for about a week doing door to door evangelism, leading Bible studies, sharing testimonies and preaching in church and then we are off for two weeks to two different villages in the middle of nowhere, probably. We will be tenting and closing out our African experience with what I thought all of Africa would be like.
So that is what I have been up to. God is GOOD! I am loving my team, my squad, the people we come across, and walking closely with the Lord. Thanks for checking in!
