My life is pretty full of adventure. I call my friends to meet for lunch in Kampala, Uganda, one of the more sketchy cities in the world. I hire motorcycles for my local transportation on a regular basis. I remember events according to countries, not months. I carry goats home on my shoulders. The gardens I weed have mango, banana, papaya, passion and jack fruit trees in them. I walk down the street and have dozens of kids yell “mzungu!” (white person), waving and trying to grasp my hand.
But sometimes, I lose sight that these things are actually quite adventurous. Sharing them helps remind me that my life is far from average, and I love that! Here are a few.
Adventure One: Cooking
I get up and start my morning routine which now includes something precious that I have missed from home, a coffee pot. This is the first month we have had a coffee machine since leaving home. To see it sitting on the counter of our contact’s home when we got here was like seeing a little present from heaven.
So I wake up every morning to a cup or two of coffee and my time with the Lord. Same same as home, but different. After that, we learned how to make Chapati with Mama. Mama is, well, our African mama for the month. She is married to our host, Pastor Moses, and we are staying in their home this month. She cooks, she cleans, she loves on us. Mama told us that she wanted us to each gain 4 kilos, about 8 pounds, before we left. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she accomplishes her goal. Mama taught us how to make Chapati, one of the yummy dishes she usually makes for us. We cook it over charcoal, using my hands to turn and flip the chapati on the cast iron “skillet”. I only got burnt once, not too shabby.
Adventure Two: Preaching
The main church we are working with this week is doing a week of dedication. A week to dedicate themselves to the Lord by fasting from water and food for twelve hours a day and holding church services from 2pm-7pm. During those church services, they are praising and praying, hollering and dancing. Putting EVERY American church to shame with their enthusiasm, even when it’s 90+ degrees and no one has had water since 7am. They put us Racers to shame too, crying shame. We come in every day at 4pm. While they all have their hands raised and are walking around praying, they usher us straight to our chairs and tell us we can sit. The Americans who just had lunch and have a full water bottle are told to sit. The Ugandans who haven’t eaten or drank for hours sing and dance. Awesome. I tell them nicely that I can stand, and end up walking around in prayer, singing my own songs because I can’t understand the ones the congregation is singing.
After worship, I preached to about three hundred Ugandans on Rom. 5:1-5, focusing on the transformation from suffering to perseverance to character to hope. One of my many lessons on the Race.
Adventure Three: Meeting a Soldier
After I preached, we left quickly and walked to the “ghetto” to do ministry. The ghetto is just the poorer part of town, though if you weren’t used to Africa, you probably wouldn’t notice the difference from this street to the others. The biggest difference from the normal streets and the ghetto is there is a lot of drinking. The majority of the adults we saw were completely drunk, the kids ran around the streets together and a few women wore scantily clad dresses, a sign of their profession.
Becky and I stopped outside of a “bar” and talked to two guys. By bar, I mean a shack that sells home brew beer from a cooler. The two guys we were talking to were completely drunk, very friendly and honestly welcoming. I started talking to one of them who told me he was from Sudan. We started talking about Jesus and he told me he was catholic and was going through a hard time, but that he loved Jesus. So I let him talk about that for awhile. Then, I found out that he was a solider. I guessed him to be about 30. He told me that he had fought in Sudan, Somalia and the Congo. Let’s just think about this for a moment. Sudan, Somalia and the Congo. Three not so savory places that have hosted some incredibly brutal conflicts in the last few years. Anyone who has fought in all three of these places probably was working for a not very good army, filled with not very good people, but I didn’t get much out of him on who he fought for.
I asked him about being a soldier, if seeing the things he did had made his life a struggle. He said no, but I had a hard time believing him. He did say however, that Jesus was with him as a soldier and even saved him once in Mogadishu, Somalia. A land mine went off right next to his foot and he should have died. He was knocked backwards, but wasn’t injured at all. Obviously the drunk, hurting soldier in front of me was an incredibly wounded man. When I started asking him more questions, trying to share more healing and hope with him, I realized he was much too drunk for conversation. I invited him to church with the hope that the invitation from a mzungu, white person, would mean something to him. Before we left, drunk as he was, the man had Becky and I pray for a disabled boy that lived in the bar/house. The man saw some healing and hope in us, he saw some life in us and saw the need to share that with the young boy. Quite remarkable really. I have great hope for my knew friend to find full healing in Jesus, and I’m praying we meet again.
Adventure Four: Rafting the Nile
It was a day that I had been anticipating for months. A day that had to get put off earlier in the month to focus on the squad before debrief. A day of complete fun and adventure, fun I have been wanting and needing. We got on the still waters of the nile about ten and learned how to paddle, get down into the raft and what to do when we flipped. The nile is deep and wide. The majority of the nile is very calm and takes some paddling to get anywhere quickly. Towards the beginning, in the stillness of the water, I asked God to reveal himself to me during the day of fun.
I was nervous for the first rapid, a class 5. But after that, it was just plain fun. We rafted class 3, 4 and 5’s all day but also spent plenty of time in the slow waters with our life jackets, floating down the still parts of the nile. We laughed, we rested on the raft, we let the current of the huge river carry us down stream with no cares and then more fun, more rapids. We flipped the boat once, three in the boat flew out on another class five rapid. It was great.
So in the end, how did I experience God on that river? He overtakes me like a great, rushing river. His power is hard to explain, it certainly cant be controlled. His love is like a mighty wave, crashing over me in power. And when I really need it, he brings me peace, rest and calm. He allows me stillness to recuperate and rest, to get ready for the next big adventure, whatever it might be.
