- Popcorn for Breakfast (best in the world)
- You can’t eat chips without having a soda!
- Drinking enless amounts of soda! :/
- Hand sanitizer is the only way to wash your hands.
- Power cuts every day
- Peeing by candle light
- Showering in the dark with a bucket
- Showering with black lizard’s that can also be mistaken as snakes when you’re in the dark!
- Brushing your teeth with bottled water is a pain.
- Amazing Coffee- A.K.A Rocket fuel or a laxative
- Parasites and amoebas have become normal life!
- Unwell Team mates every single day!
- Pills galore with every single meal
- Typhoid!!
- Malaria!!
- Rashes!!
- Almost more hospital visits than ministry visits
- Toilet paper is the greatest blessing when you are in desperate need
- Trying to poo in the tiniest jar over a squatty potty!
- Urine, stool and blood tests weekly!
- Waiting for hours in the hospital
- Blacking out in the hospital
- Realizing how blessed you are back home when you are sitting in the dirtiest hospital you have ever seen.
- Experiencing my first earthquake
- Crazy dreams
- Crazy spiritual warfare
- Sitting in a hair salon for 3 days because I had the crazy idea of getting an African weave – painful!
- Sitting for 5 days trying to get the weave out! – painful
- Hairdressers cracking open a bottle of Brandy at 11am while doing your hair.
- Realizing that they drink because when they go home it won’t hurt as much when their husbands beat them!
- Tooth picks are not only used for teeth but also for picking up fruit, cleaning the dirt out your nails and picking out a weave.
- Dirty 24/7
- Sweating 24/7
- 11 people crammed into one 5 passanger taxi
- Being asked to marry a Muslim man in the middle of being crammed in the 11 person taxi ride.
- Seeing couches strapped to the back of motor cycles!!
This month has been so rough! Africa is rough! But despite the hard month full of sickness we have also had a great month. We have had funny moments and sad moments with the differences in culture.
But… Isibania is wonderful. We have had amazing ministry and met some of the most incredible people I know. Here is just a few things that I have loved about this month…
Pastor Abraham and Jane
Pastor Abraham and Jane are our hosts and ministry contact. They have 4 kids- Ronnie, Peace, Bella and Victor. Pastor Abraham runs Deliverance Church. The church is incredible, it’s just along from his house and is full of believers that are passionate for the Holy Spirit! Pastor and Jane have been like a mum and dad to us all. During the sickness they have took care of us and went the extra mile to make sure we are o.k. They are passionate for the community and do a lot of different ministries for others including – police ministry, hospital ministry, prison ministry, school ministry and home visits. They are truly amazing people that love so well. Seeing Pastor Abraham work is a true joy. You will walk with him through the town and he will stop to speak to so many people. He is a man that gives his time. Jane is someone that shows love so well – she will come in and rub your back and make you feel so loved. Going through this hard month of so much sickness I can’t think of being with any other host! God is good!
John
John is a guy that comes to church. We met him the second day we were here. John got saved when the last WR team was here in Isabania so he was excited to meet us and be around us. John is a great guy to be around, he brings such joy when he is around you and has a smile that would light up the whole place! John has had a hard life. His mum died around 5 years ago a little after his younger sister was born. He was left to try and look after the family because his father is an alcoholic and can’t always look after the family the way they need. Every time I am with john he loves to talk about his mum constantly and how much he misses her. He asks me questions like “do you love your mother?” It breaks my heart to hear him talk like this and makes me so thankful and grateful to God that I do have a mum and dad and I haven’t had to worry every single day in life. Johns belief in God is incredible. He is one of the most positive boys I have ever met and believes he is going to get places – I believe he will too because he puts all his trust and hope in God! John has dreams of becoming a lawyer. Pray that he will hold on to his dream and keep running his race!
Jackie
Jackie is our cook! She cooks amazing food for us every day! She is only 24 years old and has a hard life as her eldest son is 12 years old! Jackie has had to grow up fast! This month she has been working as a cook which has been great as it gives her family a little extra money. She told Aisha that she is so happy to be here working because before she would sit in the house and worry about how she was going to get money for her family. One day we gave her a jar of orange marmalade because none of us liked it and she told us that she was so thankful for it. She said that her husband Jacob and the kids get so excited every day to come home for a novelty such as marmalade- it’s crazy the things we take for granted!
Sheila
We met Shelia our first week at church. She stood up at the welcoming announcements to say it was her first week at church. She said that her kids had been going to the church so she decided to come along and it just so happened that it was the same week we arrived. She asked us that day to go and visit her at her home. We went a few days after the service where she prepared us a lovely lunch. We have made Sheila one of our ministries and have visited her a few times now. We love being in her company and she loves ours too. Sheila has had a hard life. She has 4 kids and finds it difficult to get by as she is a widow and has no help. We then found out that in African tradition if a women’s husband dies the family will come back and claim everything they have. They are disowned and no longer part of the family. Sheila and her kids were left with nothing (as if losing your husband wasn’t hard enough). Sheila is an incredibly strong woman who is trying so hard to give her kids the best life. It’s been great to see her coming to the church and getting to know others. She needs strong Christian women in her life to mentor her and help her to stay on track. I know she will get this at Deliverance Church. It’s amazing that the kids are bringing their parents to church when normally it would be the parents bringing the kids.
School Ministry
Going into the schools has been awesome. We have been able to go into 3 different schools and talk to the kids about life. Sharing our life stories and talking about the differences with having God and not having God. We have also been able to talk to the girls about personal hygiene and sex education. I believe some of the things we have done in the schools have had great impact. We have already had feedback that some of the girls have come and spoke to the teachers about some of the issues we had spoken on that day. And In the high school four of the students came to the front for prayer that they needed. Things are happening! To know more about our school ministry check out my last blog about FGM!
Police ministry
Police ministry has been great. We have been told over and over again about the amount of corruption within the police force in Kenya. So we went in and spoke on "Choosing Justice." It was a very weird experience as these officers sit with very straight faces and we really don’t know what they are thinking ,but when we got home the same day they had already been on the phone to Pastor Abraham asking us to come back again and speak because they loved the devotion so much! We went back again and some of the guys had said that they had been on to our blogs and read encouraging stuff. So even when we don’t know what seeds we have planted we must trust that things are happening that we might never even know about! Praise God!
Prison Ministry
Sadly I could not be there at the Prison because of illness. But I heard amazing reports when the girls got back. God showed up and 40 men gave their lives to the Lord! Hallelujah!
Tea and Cake ministry
Aisha decided that she wanted to put on a ladies night of teaching them how to bake cake. We all thought it was a great idea and thought it would be a night of them coming to Jane’s house to watch a demonstration, but they planned it even better. We managed to get all of the ladies to come to the church with their own stove fires and coals so that they could cook along with Aisha. We then got taught how to make mandazi which is like an African pastry. It was an awesome night of fellowship and learning. Women coming together in fellowship is such a great thing! The pumpkin cake was a great success. The Africans loved it!
So despite this being a very challenging time for our team we have also had a very blessed month! It is going to be very hard to leave these incredible people and ministries. I know that some of my team mates are already talking about coming back. My heart is for Honduras but I know that if I was ever to come back to Africa to visit, that I would be coming back to Isibania!
Love Dani xx
