It’s amazing how time goes by so quickly. I spent about three weeks in Livingstone, Zambia and to me it seemed like it was a life time. My team and I were not scheduled to actually go to Zambia. We found out that we were going to Zambia the last day of launch in Chicago, and our chances of going were one out of nine. Our lead logistical person Ryan read out all the ministry sites before they were actually assigned to teams and while he was reading I was praying. I said, "Lord please please send me to the bush….I want to go to the bush". Praise God, our Squad leader Ben said, Team Genesis Zambia bush!!! I was so excited. I even sung a song for my team mate Alexzandra who was flipping out because she really didn’t want to go to the bush. "We’re going to the bush, we’re going to the bush, to the bush, to the bush", is what I sung loud and proud for all the way to Africa.
We landed safely in Johannesburg, South Africa and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m really out of America, is what I kept telling myself. There was no turning back now, the adventure had begun. It really reminded me of what God told Abram in Genesis 12:1 "Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you". This verse came to mind, because I know the Lord had clearly told me to go, and here I was out of my country, away from my family, my life and anything I knew to be comfortable and I was okay with that. I had answered God’s calling and I wasn’t afraid to see where he would lead me. We stayed two nights at Jabez training Center like 35 minutes outside of Johannesburg and then it was time to say good bye to our squad mates again. My team and I had to take a bus from Johannesburg to Zambia, and we were told that this bus ride would take about 30 hours. A simply 30 hour bus ride turned into about 45 hours on ONE BUS. I thought we were never going to get off the bus. I mean this trip was downright crazy. We stopped at a gas station to get gas and the hostess and the attended at the pump put the wrong type of gas in the tank. So everyone had to get off the bus and wait for them to get all the gas out the bus, wait on a bus technician to check to make sure everything was okay and then fill the tank back up. That took about 2 and half hours just to do that. After we finally got back on the road, it was so late that we got stopped by every police officer on the road and our bus driver had to pay these police officers off so we wouldn’t be on the side of the road all night. I say this without over exaggerating, but we got pulled over like every 30 mins to any hour. Then the bus started having problems and we had to pull over a couple of times through the night to check things out. Needless to say we had a lot of complications along the way but thank God we arrived safely. We were picked up in Livingstone, Zambia by our contact Jack Matutwia, who was driving an old ex-military truck. I was kind of nervous that I wouldn’t be able to climb in this truck because my legs were still asleep from the long long long bus ride there, but I made it. We had quite the adventure getting to Zambia but it was worth every bit of the head ache, because God had just placed us in a country that was hungry for the word of God.
To be continued…….
