Just came back from a 3-day and 3 night crusade in literally what you would picture as a true African village you would see on a movie (the others were too but there was just a different feel about this one, more community)…no running water, no electricity, everyone living in huts, cows, goats, and chickens walking around everywhere, lots of land for crops, and village chiefs, group chiefs, and a head chief!!
So I just want to walk you through an average day in an African village…yes most times on the world race I stop and think, wait is this really my life? Haha I love it I love it I love it…
4:30 AM: Start to hear the village people stirring because people here get up when the sunrises J
7:00 AM: Get out of my tent that is pushed up so close to someone’s mud hut that they made and kindly let us spend the night on their porch made of mud…why you may ask? Oh just because there are tons of hyenas around here is all, much safer this way, no biggie J…so I wake up but my tentmate is still sleeping, so I decide to get out on the side closest to the hut which is about 1 inch away and as I am struggling to do this I literally fall into their home through the door! I thought it was a wall but it was a door! Needless today I met some of the people that lived in the house that morning!
7:15 AM: Decide to bathe because it’s been a few days, so I grab a bucket filled with water we gathered in the village in a well and a cup for pouring the water. Went into these awesome “shower huts” made of sticks. I had the most wonderful experience and best “shower” except when it started to get really really windy and one the the shower walls started blowing over so I had to shower while holding a wall up!
9:00 AM: The village chief (he is the uncle of one of the men from Great is God Ministries which is the ministry we are working with here) came over with his assistant to greet us and welcome us into his village. He told us to feel most at home here and he was happy to have us.
10:00 AM: Three of us got to go meet the head chief…he knew we were coming because we had to get permission first but it would be very rude to not go and present ourselves while being in one of his villages…I was so excited for this experience! Ah once in a lifetime! So Head Chief Kanga has 9 group chiefs under him and then under each of those they are over 5 villages, which have around 600 people per village, which means the head chief is over about 27,000 people! When greeting him you can either bow with both hands over your chest or you can put out your hand to shake hands while using your other hand to hold your forearm, this is a sign of respect. (Funny thing once when I was using this handshake meeting someone’s mother I grabbed her forearm instead because I forgot! She laughed J)
The Chief wore dress pants, white long skirt over them, button down white dress shirt with a nice suit jacket, a pink and white long scarf around his shoulders and a cool chief head piece! He told us we were most welcome in his village and we were free to do as we came to do with our crusade (which was awesome because he knew we were Christian and we were coming to share the word of God but he was Muslim). He told us they never have Americans come to these villages and this should not be our last time coming, it was a honor having us there and he said he believed God himself brought us all together. When talking about building these huts and how long they took he told me if I would ever like to come back he would gladly give me a piece of land and he would send someone to build my house…I told him before I was impressed with the huts because I would have no clue where to start!…ps during this conversation he also asked me if this is what America looked like and the houses there like his, showed me a TON of insight to how little is known in these far out villages with no movies or internet what they know about other places…He told me to make a nice mud hut with the stick roofing takes about 2 ½ months from start to finish, including all the time of making each brick from dirt and collecting all sticks!
11:30 AM: Hut to Hut house visit time! We went around inviting people to the crusade that would be later that. It just floors me at these crusades because no one has a bible here, so when you share the word of God with them and read the bible together it could be months again until they get to read the word, this is why my heart is for one on one’s where we sit and read the bible and discuss it…
we met 3 women in the fields under a tree, started talking about the Lord and also about mangos…they ended up taking us to a mango tree and teaching us how to discern which mangos are ready to eat, they got a big stick to hit them down, you can also use other mangos to throw at them to knock them down or people use rocks…they could not stop laughing at us talking about eating mangos, taught me how to get the strings of the mango out of my teeth by using my rappa (the African skirts/material everyone wears here and so do we!).
Something I will never forget…we found two little boys, mango peals surrounding them, completely out of it sleeping…we were standing over them looking at them when they woke up, one went running and started bawling behind a tree and the other bolted off but kept his eyes on us the whole time…they both probably thought they saw a ghost!! Can you even imagine, once day you fall asleep eating mangos and then next you wake up to a person who is WHITE starring at you! When you have never seen white skin I can imagine that would be very scary!! Whoops!
12:30 PM: The day before at the crusade I met a girl named Joyce and she told me we should come to her school and greet everyone and say something to all the kids! I said well we will have to talk with your principal and then maybe (really thinking haha on such short notice yeah right…still got some of my American mindset). So we went by the school and the principal met us outside when he saw the kids all flocking towards us.
When we got to the school I imagined this may be how Jesus felt…the kids all looked at us starring but to timid to come up to us (never seen white people) but as we walked they followed right behind us…with hundreds of little kids behind us we continued to walk to meet with the principal…within minutes he said yup all is well you can come here tomorrow and speak with the kids, and now you will greet all of them under the big tree…without having to be told twice the kids ran off excited to sit under the tree…some ran inside to grab us all chairs…so we all took seats under this big tree with 300+ children surrounding us…each of standing to greet them and say something to them and tell them tomorrow we will come and teach you English!
They were so excited and the teaching the next day went AMAZING! Kameron and I taught for an hour in 7th grade (they call it 7 standard) about how to write a play, had the kids act out a play, and then helped them with their English while writing the play! Funny thing here if you are a teacher with a child you carry your own child around on your back using a rappa! Hardcore! The children here are SO respectful it AMAZES me when I compare the schools here to American schools. That is one thing I have got to say gets me every time because I am not used to a classroom of 60 7th graders being so incredibly respectful…even the young children here, ridiculously respectful.
2:30 PM: Time for the crusade! At these crusades we do worship, they have the coolest songs here ever, we dance, we sing, someone preaches, shares the gospel, and encouragement, usually 3 people speak, then we do prayer where people can come up if they want prayer for healing or anything else…All of the women and children come and sit in the front of the ground and then men sit along the sides…they do not mix men and women here at crusades, each village is different in this I have noticed. At the crusades each day we had between 200-300 people come and the crusades take place in open fields. Many people accepted Jesus these three days and God was really moving and working the entire crusade!
6:00 PM: Headed back home I see someone making this interesting food with rice balls and onions and dough and orange sauce fried around it…so I stopped to talk to her as she cooked and her children ripped up pieces of palm leaves to weave together a floor mat for the hut J, and ended up buying one from her for 10 Kwatcha when is less then a penny I realized!
So I know it sounds crazy, it does to me too trust me…and don’t freak out yet my sweet family, the Lord has not confirmed anything J…but something happened in my heart when the head chief offered me a piece of land and someone to help build me a hut, the longer we stayed in this village the more I thought about what it would be like to live here and disciple people, pour the word of the Lord in them, teach these children the ways of the Lord, and show love to people who are broken, hurting, and desire God’s love. These people are hungry for the word, they love to worship, love to hear the word of God, and do not have bibles here and no way to get them (the ministry at this time does not have enough funding to give out bibles to the hundreds of people we meet each week). There are also a lot of people here that do not know the Lord at all…to be able to minister to them and live side by side them.
Who knows…living in a small village in a hut with no running water, no electricity, killing my own chickens for food (which we did the other day and I plucked the chicken once boiled!) and being the only white person…not exactly what I would have ever thought a season of my life would look like…but then again I never in a million years thought I would be in the middle of Africa in a small village having just ONE of my days look like this…welcome to the world race, this is an everyday type of day for us out here in Africa…loving every moment of it.
PS…Mom, there was one night I laid in my tent looking up at the moon and stars thinking about you and tears started rolling out of my eyes, yes because I missed you but it wasn’t the typical kind of homesickness it was more out of joy and missing you because I can just picture you here…I can picture you in one of these African skirts, in the middle of no where, worshipping and dancing for the Lord, finding beauty in the simple life, being like one of these women who is on our ministry team who spend hours and hours each day cooking us meals on a small fire outside on the ground and they do it with such joy. I see them and pretty much live with them because we are always out crusading and it always reminds me of you. I love you so much, thank you for teaching me about the Lord’s beauty in people and in the simple life.
PSS…Missy, I see rainbows at every crusade and I always think of you. I have seen more rainbows on the world race then probably all the rainbows put together over my life! I always get tears in my eyes when I see one and I say that’s my sister. You are always with me lissy, always close to my heart and I am always thinking of you and praying for you. I love you more than anyone in this whole world! You are so precious to me J
