*click*
I open my eyes to see the camera phone. It’s another travel day in Africa, and the big guy next to me just took a picture, and now he’s sending it to all his friends.
“Look at the white girl sitting next to me!”, is what I imagine the caption reads. It’s a great start to being smashed into the same bus and getting all kinds of close to the same African for 10 hours. Now we are off roading it, in a bus that is way over crowded and has zero shocks. My mind wanders to two words of the past, air conditioning. What is that again? The sweat rolling down my back doesn’t remember.
We get to our ministry location and I will admit one thing, it is beautiful. Mostly because there is a mountain near the town. But, it is hot. Very hot. I’ve lost the ability to tell what temperature it is outside, but I would say in the upper 90’s and feeling like triple digits with the humidity. We get to our home for the “month” (12 days) and are over joyed when we see the ceiling fans. Sleep still evades me most of the month, despite the ceiling fan. I blame the lack of sleep partially on the heat, partially because of the spiritual atmosphere.
Tanzania is a very heavy spiritual place. Very dark, very heavy. We recognized that there were some very ungodly spiritual forces warring against us pretty quickly, some lies that were being whispered in our ears, attempting to hold onto our hearts. It was a battle all month to not let these things take hold and affect us. Needless to say, Tanzania was not my favorite African country. And that’s putting it nicely.
After 12 days of ministry, we got back on that bus and headed back to Kenya. I danced across the border. We three squad leaders did a leadership retreat for all of the team leaders and logistics leader, it was a beautiful time! We spent three days together to get unified and filled up. So much joy and love was flowing, I truly love our leadership team so much! After three days of rest and refreshing, it was time to travel again, this time to Latvia!
This travel day started at midnight, when we left our hostel and headed to the airport. Arriving at 1am, we soon found out that the airlines system was completely down, and all the tickets would have to be hand written. TIA folks. TIA. Finally, we took off at 4:40am and were able to get a few hours of sleep before arriving in Turkey at 10:30 am. Because of the debacle in Nairobi, all 48 of us had to reprint our tickets in Istanbul, with an hour and a half layover…. it’s ok to laugh, we thought it was funny too. Through a lot of running, literal running, 46 of us made it onto the flight. 2 got left behind in Turkey because the flight was overbooked. Arriving in Latvia was like a dream, a beautiful snow dream. Picture Latvia as a mix between Russia and Germany. I am constantly thinking that I am in a Jason Bourne movie, which is A-OK with me! When we left Africa, we had just finished 9 months of high heat, 6 months in Asia and 3 in Africa. When we got to Riga, Latvia, it was snowing!!! To say the least, we were overjoyed! So much laughter and screaming and giggling was happening in F squad as we walked across the tarmac and into our 10th country.
We were quite the sight, again. Walking with our full packs and not very much clothes on, through the snow, to the city bus and then through downtown Riga to get to our hostel. We can’t carry much on the field and so we were all severely underdressed for the weather shock. You can’t exactly carry a coat and boots in our backpacks. Our frozen fingers and toes were so thankful for the end of one crazy travel day, once we finally arrived at the hostel!
We are now staying in downtown Riga for a few days before heading out to ministry on the 2nd. The first 24 hours here have been so full, so beautiful, and I can’t wait to share more with you soon!
