I've Spent My Whole Life on This Train To take a train across South Africa (from Pretoria to Cape Town) takes 27 hours (it actually ended up being 30 hours), so there's a lot of time to process our first month of ministry. Some of my highlights include teaching bible classes, leading worship for over 800 South African high school students, playing soccer with bare-footed orphans, and singing and praying in the streets of Pretoria (very spontaneously, I might add). That was worthy of blogging about actually.
During our last full day in Pretoria, my team went for coffee and muffins during our team time. For anyone who has been on the race, or similar trips/organizations, you know what I mean when I say it was just an AWESOME team time session (discussion, confession, laughter, prayer, FEEDBACK). To wrap up team time, we went outside our favorite Pretoria coffee shop to pray, and from across the street, a man RUNS to us and says he wants us to come across the street to tell him about God. This turned into sharing our faith and eventually singing to/with him. One man joined and wanted to hear about what these crazy people were doing, then another man and his mother (I think) wanted prayer. Then finally, a third person, a homeless teenager we actually shared the Gospel with a few nights prior, ran into us. So we just prayed for them all. When God does stuff like this, you just has to step back and think about how awesome He is. For lunch we found this "hole in the wall" bakery downtown. I don't think the place even had a name, but the rolls were AMAZING. I actually just ate one, a day old, and it is still delicious. That afternoon we sanded and painted a jungle gym for the kiddos at PopUp, then we had one more night with most of our squad before heading to the train station this morning.
Alas, here we are. This train has windows, but no air conditioning (I am currently regretting wearing jeans today). And whose child is this running back and forth with toy gun, which has the longest lasting batteries I've ever seen? Oh yeah, and I failed to mention I am not speaking today. For 24 hours, starting at 8:30 AM on Wednesday till 8:30 AM on Thursday, I'm "fasting" from talking. I know, some of you are thinking that this is impossible, but believe it or not, it isn't even for this loud mouth.
That's actually the point behind all this. I tend to be faster to speak than to listen, quicker to give my opinion than to respect someone else's. Sometimes my words come out of my mouth before I even think about what I say. James 1:19 says, "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger…" Maybe in this brief period, God will show me how to use my words a little bit more wisely, and perhaps teach me to discern when it is best to listen, hear, and understand, instead of speaking just to have my voice heard. Saint Augustine (?) once said, "It is better to understand than to be understood." I think I've wasted a lot of energy in the past on trying to be understood. So I'm going to give this whole listening thing a go…
YES. Just found a car on the train that has a little restaurant, with tables and BIG windows (great view of South African countryside). Definitely going to have some tea and/or coffee during sunset and sunrise (yes, I also drink tea now). On my way exploring the train, I also found a naked baby and a man who insisted I turn my bible to Job 28:28 and read it to him. I love Africa…
I guess they won't ever turn off the HUGE flourescent lights at any point tonight… If I could speak, I'd tell the man checking tickets that I think it's rude to wake people up at 4:00 to ask for our tickets. Does it look like I snuck on this train in the middle of the night? No. Nothing within reason could ever tempt me to jump on this sweat shop with the crying babies…
How nice. Just saw a lady who apparently has fallen asleep while breast feeding. Her baby is now asleep, too…
It's ok though, spending sunrise with an open bible and a hot coffee more than made up for it…
This train ride has taken us through a several hour stretch of desert. Dried springs and creek beds, mostly browning brush life. "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf. Mountains!" as Bilbo Baggins once said…
Alas, after several more hours of desert, there they are! We are now traveling through rugged hills that look like some places in the Southwest United States, but as we get closer to the southern coast of the continent, you can see the greater mountain range in the distance…
These mountains are amazing! Only 3 more hours on this train…
By the way, if you stick your head out the window of this train and someone flushes the toilet a car ahead of you, you get wet…
Cape Town is beautiful! Will post more blogs soon!
