This past month in Zambia I have spent with 11 other guys for what we called manistry. We all lived, ate, hung out, and do ministry together for the entire month. It has been one of my favorite months so far on the race. Others not so much. We spent a total of three weeks in between two villages with scattered days in town. We slept in our tents and cooked all of our meals over a small coal fire. Our toilets were a one foot long by six inches wide hole in the ground and our water was either hand pumped or through a river. I’m making this sound a lot tougher than what it actually was but you guys get the general idea. In the first village there were so many chickens to the point of being able to buy them so a few of the guys did. And boy oh boy did things get interesting. The guys got a total of 13 chickens and proceeded to butcher, gut and fry them. And because were guys, we would do it at the same time and then let the chickens bodies go. And go they did. Some of them took like 5 minutes before the thing finally stopped moving.
Now to the ministry. We did a lot of door to door house preaching and soccer. And towards the end of our stay we gave an all day workshop on leadership and the different types of leadership. It was crazy. There were all of the church leaders of the village as well as some women. They must have thought we had all the answers because as we were speaking, they were taking down notes and trying to keep up with what we were saying. It felt like a high school class where the teacher moves too fast and all the students are panicking through their notes trying to get all of it. But it was really cool to be apart of. After the first village we went back into town for three days to celebrate Christmas before heading back into the next village.
Our second village ministry was a whole lot of soccer and a little bit of meeting the people. A lot less chickens and a whole lot more time in the river. But a lot of the same things as the first village.
This month has been a lot of fun but I am excited for what else is to come for the remaining duration of the race.
