Continued from part one, here are a few more quotes. It’s month one, day 20-something on the race, and we’ve already caught ourselves (and the people around us) saying some pretty absurd things. Here are some quotes and some interesting situations we’ve been dealing with.
“We fit 17 people!”
On the way to the seashore (which was about two and a half hours away), we crammed 17 people into a 6 person van. This is an example of what has been happening multiple times a week. We fit our whole team into a tuk tuk a few days ago. That’s like 7 on our team, plus Joel and Melina, plus the driver into an almost-5 person vehicle. We’ve learned how to compact ourselves very nicely.
“Is this beef or buffalo?”
We’ve been served beef 5 days so far. They call it beef. They give us every part of the animal. We’re not big fans. We asked if it was a cow, and they gave us a look like, ‘are you kidding me?’ We’ve been eating buffalo. It’s not half bad, just very fatty. It’s funny how communication can get so confusing especially with the different languages and dialects of speech. It’s hard to understand even something as simple as cow versus buffalo.
“Chicken! Get Out!”
Our church is open-air. We leave the door open a lot, and the chickens here are very curious. We’ve had to chase them out more times than I can count. I’m not sure if we’re calling Kaitlyn or Garrett the chicken-wrangler. They just strut on in. Such arrogant farm animals chickens are.
I’m gonna have a really good poop story in about a minute.”
(Sorry, this is kind of disgusting) At least once a day, we hear this phrase. We never know what the consistency of our poop is going to be. We’ve had to kick out people in the shower to drop it like it’s hot. Things that usually would be easy, like having a team meeting, turn into an almost-poop-story.
“Let it air dry.”
This quote applies to more than one thing. Toilet paper is not always available. There’s no such thing as a clothes drier or dishes drier. I haven’t really seen one cleaning-cloth. Learning to air dry has been a challenge that sometimes smells bad.
“Do you guys feel like you’re in the Bible?”
Best of all, and what makes all of this worth it, is the impact we’re having. We get to walk from house to house, village to village, and tell everyone about Jesus. We’re not only talking about the great commission, but we’re living it.
