Interviews and Blessings

Today we were supposed to meet up with Bonnie’s team for church, but since This is Africa, it didn’t work out the way we planned.  Jean Marie was going to drop them off at church by 9am and then come back and get us.  However, by 10:15 it was safe to assume that wasn’t going to happen.  Skip finally called and said their church was an hour away so we told him not to send Jean Marie to get us. 

Caroline had sermon pod casts on her computer from Rock Harbor so we listened to an Advent one on hope.  At first I was kind of unsure about it because he was talking about the birth of Jesus and the people of the Bible that were waiting for his birth, but then he transitioned to the difference between wishes and hope.  It was actually really good. 

He explained that a wish means that we are in control.  We say what and how much we want.  We put together a list of wishes, but nothing will ever measure up and therefore we will always be disappointed.   Hope is beyond wishes.  It is focused on a promise that we will never fully understand.  We have to learn to let go of wishes and start hoping.  God has been faithful to us in the past and he will be faithful to us in the future.  Many of us though, look to our past and think of all the bad things that have happened and wonder where God was in those situations and therefore we have a hard time having hope.  Having hope means that we are trusting in something that is way beyond our imagination and comprehension.  We have to learn to fully trust God in order to have hope.  We always have problems when we lean towards what we wish for, versus leaning towards who we hope in.  We will not get what we wish for, but when we hope in Christ we will be put in a place we never imagined.  Wishes are limited, but hope is limitless.  You cannot give God your wish list and you cannot be a Christian because of what WE get out of it.  Jesus came God’s way, not our way.  Elizabeth and Zachariah had hope and then they had John the Baptist, Mary and Joseph had hope, Simeon even had hope and was kept alive until he saw the baby Jesus, even Anna got to see him.  They all had hope and they were blessed by God.  They did not get what the wished for (Joseph and Mary wanting to marry and then have a baby, Zachariah not believing Elizabeth would get pregnant because they were so old) but they hoped.  We have to learn to wait for Jesus and he will come in ways we never expected.  You have to ask God where we need to change and how we can learn to hope.  We have to be open to God.  He does not disappoint because God has poured out his love for us. 

 

It really makes you think about all the things that we wish for instead of hope for.  How many of us actually sit and wish that our lives were different, we had more money, we had a better job, and better spouse, a new car, etc.  We all sit and wish for things.  But how many of us actually have hope?  How many of us actually realize the difference between hope and wishes?  I never really did.  I knew they were different, but after hearing this message I realize that there is a big difference.  Hoping is waiting on God.  Wishing is waiting upon ourselves.  When we wish, we ask ourselves to make it happen.  When we hope, we ask for God to make it happen.  But God never makes it happen the way we expect.  He goes beyond our imagination as if to say, see I told you that I could not only do it, but I could do it in a way you could not have imagined.  It is like my trip to Rwanda.  I had expectations of what would happen and how my experience would be, but once again the Lord showed his mighty power and showed me way more than I had anticipated.  My trip here was full of life lessons that I never expected to learn.  Some were lessons he had been trying to teach me for a while but I never grasped until now.  Others are new lessons and new desires of hope for future things.  He is sovereign and mighty and works in mysterious ways.

So after our “church service” the girls went back to Bourbon, but I just couldn’t do it again so I went to the Serena and met Steve K., Shawn, and Cameron (Relevant Mag) for lunch.  I helped Shawn make some phone calls to build a data base of local hotels/guest houses for future trips.  I finally got my expense report together which was such a relief.  Apparently the girls finally met up with Bonnie’s team for dinner at Bourbon.  I didn’t go though.  Shawn and I were helping Cameron set up for his interview with Rick.  He was doing a pod cast and video taping it so we helped him record it.  Unfortunately Cameron didn’t get a chance to ask all the questions he wanted to but he will get another chance on the way to Kenya.  Hearing Pastor Rick talk about the PEACE plan and Purpose Driven Life you really see the passion in why he does these things.  It is not because HE wants credit or attention.  It is not because he is trying to make himself be a celebrity or a world pastor, but it is because he has a love for people and because he has an incredible love and relationship with the Lord.  The Holy Spirit moves him and God calls him to do things, and it is not Rick doing these things but the Lord that is using him as an outlet to get His work done.  Which is pretty cool to be able to  see things like that.  Pastor Rick has a great deal of influence but it is not his own influence that he is using.  It is God that is shaping nations and people and churches, Pastor Rick just happens to be a tool that God works through. 

After Cameron’s interview Pastor Rick told Shawn how awesome he is and made a joke that Shawn is his replacement.  He is training him to take over one day.  It was funny but a very nice compliment to the work that Shawn is doing not only over here in Rwanda, but also in his position in the church.

So Cameron, Shawn and I had dinner there and then Cameron was going to interview us for his pod cast as well, but he was had to leave with the Fox documentary crew to visit some local Rwandese music and record it.  So Shawn did the interview since they are rooming together at the Serena and I went home to bed.  

It was another amazing and productive day in Kigali and I am so happy for the opportunities that I get to experience here.  God has been so gracious to me and I would not be able to do any of this if it wasn’t first and foremost for God’s divine blessing, my parents support, everyone the contributed to helping me get here, and all of your prayers.  So thank you!  Words cannot express my gratitude towards all of you!  

The New Bourbon Coffee

Well the new Bourbon Coffee opened today!  It actually opened the night before and unfortunately we missed the big event.  Apparently they were giving away free coffee and food and Pastor Rick was there to give the blessing and pray for it.  So the girls and I went this morning to the MTN Center to check it out and it is huge!  It is really cool and the menu is different which makes me happy because after eating there day after day you kind of get sick of having the same food. 

 

We had lunch and then left to UTC (Union Trade Center) where the old Bourbon is to use the internet.  But before we went there across the street from the UTC is a little shopping district with shops of crafts and jewelry.  I bought a few things and then spoke with this lady that owns one of the shops there.  She had some really cool things in her shop.  She had these stuffed dolls, elephants, and giraffes.  I wanted to buy the elephant really bad, but I decided to wait until Wednesday after we go to Amani.  However, she was telling me that the dolls and elephants and giraffes are made by street girls.  She taught them how to make them and then she hand paints the fabric.  They were amazing and well worth the RWF 5,000 a piece.  So I will most likely go back and get the giraffe and elephant. 

 

With no teams in town for us to join it was one of our “down” days.  So after bourbon again we just went back to Phil and Becca’s early.  She made us dinner and as bad as I have been craving Mexican food I was so disappointed.  She made enchiladas but I didn't eat it because I have been sick.  Oh well.  I go home to Taco Bell (a weird craving I know) in a few days anyways!

Gorilla Trekking

My alarm woke me up at 2am this morning which to my surprise I was absolutely ok with me for once.  The driver was supposed to show up at 3:15am but never came so Arthur had to track him down but was unsuccessful in reaching him.  So instead he called a taxi.  We had to be at the Serena at 3:45 to leave by 4:00 and by 3:50 Shawn and I are running down a dirt road that is the farthest thing from flat you have ever seen, in the dark to find this taxi.  We decided it was good training for the Amazing Race though. 

 

We arrived at the Serena at 4:10 just in time to jump in one of the Land Rovers and make the 3 hour drive to the volcanoes.   There are no street lights up this mountain so the only light you have is from the cars.  With our caravan of five Land Rovers heading up the mountain at 4:30 in the morning, life in Rwanda has already started.  There sun has yet to awaken and yet the Rwandans are already headed down the mountain into town to sell their goods.  Men, women, and children, some barefoot, some with babies on their backs, and all with loads of potatoes, beans, or other crops on their heads.  They walk miles and miles from their remote villages to the city in hopes of selling theirs goods in order to make a few francs for the basic survival.  They have no running water or electricity.  They do not have the luxuries of a window in their mud huts or doors that separate their bedroom from their kitchen/living room.  They do not even have a floor to walk on.  They clean themselves with dirty water from streams nearby.  Occasionally they will have a well they can pump clean water from.  Yet this clean water for the Rwandans would make any westerner extremely sick.  The few hundred people that we drove past in the darkness of the early morning have to make this trek back up the mountain to their villages later that evening.  With only four hospitals in Rwanda there is a lack of health care and a lack of ambulances.  This being said my next sight was heartbreaking.  It was four people carrying a sick person on a homemade stretcher.  They were not carrying this person down the mountain, but rather up the mountain.  Sometimes it can take a person two, three, or even four days to walk to the nearest hospital.  Many times there are people that do not have the family members or friends to carry them and they therefore have to walk.  Could you imagine being extremely sick and having to walk a day or even four days to see the doctor?  Or being a mother walking with your sick child or infant to see the doctor, not being able to heal them of their pain?  And yet the push on and do what they have to do because there is no other way.  A man in our SUV was telling us that on separate occasions he came across two sick people on the human ambulance, if you will, and made his driver pull over and put the sick people in his van and drove them to the hospital.  It is in situations like theses that you see the love between people.  Had we not been smashed into our SUV’s like sardines, we too would have taken that person to the doctor. 

 

As we continued our drive the sun finally began to rise.  I don’t think I have ever seen the sunrise as beautiful as it was here.  It was an incredible sight.  The red, orange, yellow, and even purple rays of light dancing across the sky as God awakens his people with a beautiful symphony.  You cannot help but praise him at a time like that.  To see God’s ultimate imagination and creativity at work is a true blessing.  It is in this brief moment that we are connected with God in a way that only you and Him can experience together.  It is as though He is showing you a window into His heavenly kingdom and giving you hope and excitement of a world that awaits us when our time here is done. 

 

We finally arrived at the base camp to the volcanoes.  We signed our lives away and wrote down our next of kin, and then were broke up into two groups of eight and one group of five.  My group of eight was a great group.  I had the CEO of Relevant Magazine who is here covering the PEACE Plan, a newly wed couple that is now living in Rwanda for the next year and a half doing God’s work, a woman from Iceland that came here by herself to see the gorillas, and the rest of the group was from Church.  We had an orientation with our two guides where they explained that we needed to maintain a safe distance of seven meters from the gorillas and there is no flash photography, food, or drinks allowed near the gorillas.  In fact as we got near them we had to leave everything except our cameras to go see them.  Once orientation was over we hopped in our Land Rover and drove about forty minutes to the base of the volcano.  The reason for the forty minute drive is because on the dirt roads you have to drive slow and what would normally take fifteen minutes on a smooth road takes at least twice that long on these dirt roads.  We made it to the base just in time as most of us in the car were starting to experience motion sickness from all the rocking back and forth and bouncing up and down.  Once we arrived we were met by a group of porters.  They will come with you if you request them and either carry your bag or help you hike through the jungle.  We were told that once they had to carry a 300 pound woman to see the gorillas because she was too big to walk, they help an 83 woman get up there, and another time they helped a blind man walk through the jungle to “see” them as well.  They handed us walking sticks that were hand made and even had little gorillas carved into the tops, and we started our journey. 

 

It began with a long walk through various potato fields.  We were welcomed by excited children running through the crops waving excitedly and using their little English to say “Good Morning” to us.  We finally arrived at a wood chopping station, this is where they chop down trees and cut the extremely large and thick wood logs into smaller pieces to sell.  It is a very tedious process that is done by placing a large log on top of a wood stand, while one person stands on top of the log sawing through it while another person stands underneath the log and helps pull the saw through.  At this station we were met by two soldiers carrying AK47’s.  They will be joining us for protection from leopards, elephants, or any other large animal that we may encounter, as well as for poachers.  Since the gorillas are extremely endangered and the poachers are very prevalent the soldiers will shoot to kill the poachers on the spot if necessary.  Which makes for an exciting day of hiking through the jungle.  We started up the volcano and when I say we hiked through the jungle, that is exactly what we did.  There was no nicely paved trail or open path that we walked through, no, one of our guides carried a machete and he would chop through the brush when necessary for us to go through.  There is also this lovely little demon plant called “Stinging Neddles”, let me just tell you, we got along great!  I took the first hit for them team when I backed up into one and the little pricker came straight through my jeans and stabbed me in the back of the leg.  It is like a cactus needle, but called a neddle, and it stings like bee.  If you have ever been stung before then you understand my pain.  It takes about five to ten minutes for the pain to subside and then you only feel it every once and a while.  As we trekked, others in the group were hit by the little demon plant as well.  I even managed to almost fall face first into one on the way back down after sliding in the mud, but by the grace of God I caught myself and only stuck my hand in it.  I wanted to cry.  My middle finger got stuck with about six of them and it swelled and had little white bumps all over it.  I thought it was an appropriate finger to sting based upon my feelings for this evil little plant.

 

Thankfully it was not raining on our hike because there was enough mud to begin with and many people in our group were slipping and falling down left and right.  It was so beautiful and tranquil in the jungle.  The trees are incredible.  They are the kind of trees that you will only find in Africa.  As we trek along I am once again reminded of God’s astonishing handiwork.  The view of the town below is one that you usually only see from an airplane.  As seeing as how we hiked to an elevation of over 9,000 feet we were almost to cruising altitude. 

 

We finally caught up to the trekkers, the guys that search the jungle before the groups go up in an effort to find the gorillas location, and then they radio the guides their location.  Once there we were instructed to leave everything but our cameras, money, passports, and any other article of value behind.  We walked to a clearing and there they were!  Our family consisted of Charles the silverback, his three wives, and his four children.  Apparently Charles skipped over the part where God said man should only have one wife, but none the less he feels he has something to prove to the other gorillas  in the region.  Charles was lounging in the sun while two of the babies chased each other around in circles and then started wrestling with each other.  One of the babies was with its mama just hanging out in the brush and the other baby, affectionately named “Nakebazo” , which means “No Problem” in Kinyarwanda, was climbing in a little tree.  Our guide said we were lucky because not only was the whole family together, but they were in an open space where we could see them and they were actually interacting with each other.  They were extraordinary!  Every once awhile they would stand up and bang on their chest and make gorilla noises and the guides would make this gorilla noise to them telling them that we are friends.  They would run around and stop and almost pose for us.  One of the babies even decided to sit and pick his teeth for us.  We were so close to them.  Seeing a gorilla in the wild as opposed to the zoo behind a glass wall is so different.  They just seem so friendly you just want to lay down with them and cuddle them.  After about thirty minutes or so they decided to leave and search for more food.  So we followed them up the mountain a little more and watched them play and eat.  When one of the mothers started leaving a baby jumped on her back and they took off together.  We even walked past a baby who was separated from the group and it was sitting there crying for its mother.  It was so sweet.  We were only allowed to spend an hour with them and then we had to leave, so I took over 200 pictures of them and we started back down the volcano.  The really cool thing about being on a volcano is that you can see the top of it from where we were.  Although it is a dormant volcano I was still willing to hike three more hours up to the top of it to see it. 

 

The hike down, although faster as it only took about a hour, was just as slippery if even more since we were descending a steep mountain.  Even more people we slipping and falling, I have to admit I was excited about the fact that I was the only person not to fall, until Shawn reminded me that pride comes before the fall and then I slipped.  I tried to not to completely hit the ground so I popped right back up but it was still funny.  It was the second slip that I was almost taken out by the demon plant and then I made sure not to slip again. 

 

By the time we made it all the way down and back to the car we were all filthy dirty and muddy.  My very Olympic looking Nike’s were now black with mud but it was well worth it.  We headed over to the lodge and had lunch before we headed back to the city.  Pastor Rick asked me how I enjoyed it and I said it was unbelievable.  He told me that we are a group of only 100,000 people out of the 6 billion in the world that has even seen the gorillas.  That is just astounding!  It was such an amazing day and one I will never forget.  I am so blessed to have been able to experience this.

 

Pick Up Your Cross

As an outsider looking in on the refugees the biggest problems they face is not only poverty, but also a lack of motivation to leave the camp.  There are three generations living there and yet they have become so dependant on the aid that they receive there that they have no reason to leave.  They are safe there.  Do we not do this in our own lives?  We get comfortable and feel safe somewhere and therefore we do not want leave?  Sometimes its leaving home and getting out on our own, or sometimes is a relationship that we stay in for security when we know its not what we really want.  We stay in a job that is not fulfilling to us because we have become dependant upon the financial or job security.  We ignore that voice inside of us that tells us to get out.  To move on and take on the new adventure that God has in store for us.  He speaks to us and moves something within our hearts and yet we ignore it.  We push it aside and pretend that it is not there or we think that we are doing something wrong by even thinking about listening to the voice of God, most likely because we do not recognize that he is speaking to us.  We think it is our subconscious going crazy or that we are being tempted away from our daily routine.  But that is exactly what it is, routine.  We get ourselves stuck in these situations and do not allow ourselves or our hearts to break free.  We just sit and fester only to become unhappy and depressed.  Is this the life God called us to lead?  Is this what is making Him happy?  Are we honoring Him by living an unfulfilled life that is not in obedience to him? 

 

Sometimes we Christians think that by going to church and reading our Bibles that we are honoring God.  Sometimes, we as people truly believe that by leading a “good” life and being nice to people we will gain entrance into heaven.  If I am good enough then God will let me in because God would never condemn a good person.  And sometimes we think that because we grew up in church, we know about God and therefore we can lead whatever kind of life we want to, and when we die God will still let us in because we “know” who he is.  Sorry, but that’s just not the case.   God doesn’t want robots who go to church every Sunday and read their Bible every once and a while and do nothing else.   He never said that just being a “good person” will get you a golden ticket into his kingdom, and he certainly does not condone a lifestyle of man-pleasing and self-pleasing just because you “know” who he is.  Just because you went to church and know what Jesus did does not mean that you “know” God.  In fact if you are living in any of these ways then you truly do not know God. 

 

A person that knows God listens to his voice when he speaks, obeys His commands when given, and does not conform to the ways of this world.  The Christ follower is not afraid to go out into the world and make new believers.  They are not afraid to leave the current situation of comfort or security to do what God has called them or is leading them to do.  The true Christian gets up and follows.  He picks up his cross and follows the Lord just as he instructed. 

 

Rwandans are not the only people that have joy.  I’ve said before that many of us just have happiness and not joy, because joy comes from within and many of us are empty inside.  However, there are many of you that truly do have joy despite your suffering.  The people are Rwanda have suffered so much, but so have many of us.  We all have hurts and pains and have lost hope.  But the lesson that I have learned from the people here is not to be selfish with our hurts.  When bad or horrendous things happen to us we are allowed to hurt, but we cannot shut God out.  We have to lean on him.  Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall”.  Do you push God away or blame him for your hurts?  Do you think that a just and loving God would never allow this pain to come into your life?  If so, you are wrong.  God allows pain and suffering to come into our lives because he is a just and loving God.  He knows what we can take and he allows us to hurt to see if we are going to depend upon him.  To test us to see if we will cast our cares on him.  Just because we hurt does not mean that he does not hurt with us.  Our pain is his pain and he will help us and he will heal us as long as we rejoice in him through it all.  Having joy comes from God, no matter what.  So pick up your cross and follow him!

 

Do not conform to the world or your society because it makes you look good to others around you.  Do not be so consumed with money and status.  That gets us nowhere!  The only thing we can take with us when we die is our salvation.  That’s it!  All the riches in the world will go to waste after you are gone.  I heard a disturbing thing in a magazine once, which is probably why I avoid them now.  But I heard that Oprah who is worth $50 billion or something ridiculous like that is giving half of her money to her two dogs!  What is a dog that she will probably outlive do with $25 billion?  Money is really nothing.  We need it to live but many of use need it to live way beyond our means in an effort to man-please.  God never said live your life to the fullest.  Go party, make money, and make a name for yourself!  No!  He said “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:29).  He told us to honor him and obey him.  He tells us to listen to him when he calls to us.  To open the door when he knocks.  If you feel that God has left you or abandoned you, you are wrong.  He is right where YOU left him.  All you have to do is turn around and find him.  He says, “You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).  So don’t be afraid, listen to that voice, and rejoice in the Lord Always!

The Congo Refugees

Well we survived the night, with hardly any sleep.  When I opened the door to our room this morning to walk outside I was shocked!  It was absolutely breathtaking!  The view of the lake where our “hotel, motel, holiday inn” sits in incredible!  I felt like I was in Fiji or some exotic island.  I could not believe it!  The pictures hardly do it justice. 

 

We met Skip and his family for breakfast down by the water and then we all took off to the hotel golf to meet with Steve’s team and then we headed for the refugee camp.  The drive was beautiful once again and when we arrived the camp was huge!  There are three generations of refugees now living at the camp.  There were people everywhere.  We drove up by a little church named “Deliverance Church of Jesus Christ” and our vans were swarmed, the kids were everywhere.  We unloaded the vans and brought all the supplies into the church.  Once inside the church it quickly filled up, Pastor Joseph and the president of the camp spoke to us.  She was so emotional and filled with joy that we had come to the camp to visit and show that we care about the refugees she had a hard time speaking.  Just the little effort it took to bring supplies and aid from home and then to spend a couple hours with the people really touched them.  All that people really need is to know that someone cares about them.  That they are not alone and that they are loved by people around the world. 

 

We had some more worship time and some different choirs came up and sang and then the leaders of the church ministry and the camp were introduced.  Pastor Joseph explained to us that their church had started with just 7 people standing outside under a little tent.   The did not have a building and many of the other refugees would laugh at them and make fun of them.  So they prayed that their church would grow and today they have a building with full house every service including children’s ministries. 

 

Steve played a game with the kids called Twanga Twanga and then presented them with a soccer ball.  He also went through the supplies that their team had brought for the people there.  He explained that he was entrusting the supplies with Pastor Joseph and he would be the one to hand them out to the people in the church, since he knew which families really needed what.  He then delivered a message of hope and encouragement for the people there. 

 

I walked outside after we were all done inside and started talking to some of the kids.  Two of the boys there spoke English really well.  They asked me if we brought Bibles for them.  I explained to them that we tried to but there weren’t enough Bibles for us to get to bring to the church.  I asked them if they could read English as well as they speak it.  They told me they could and so I went and got my little Bible (thanks Molls!) from the car.  I wrote a message for them on the inside of the Bible and handed it to them, after making them promise me that they were going to share it and read it with anyone that wanted or needed to hear the word of God.  They agreed once more and I gave it to them along with a highlighter, which they were pretty excited about.  So please pray that those boys will grow strong in their walk with the Lord and not only that they would be a blessing, but that God would utilize them to mobilize and to teach other His word.

 

After the camp we left and headed back to the Bethanie where we checked out only to find that we paid more for dinner the night before at this guest house than we did the room!  Which made the three of us laugh.  We had lunch and then went over to the hospital for a tour.  This hospital in Kibuye is the where the PEACE Plan health initiative is being implemented.  Unfortunately though a member of Steve’s team was not feeling well and was taken there to be checked out so we didn’t tour the hospital because we had to leave early.  The nurse wanted to check him out and make sure he was alright (which he is) before she gave us the tour.  It seems to be a decent hospital for Rwanda, as it is only 1 of 4 in the country, 3 of which I was able to see. 

 

Arthur gave us a ride back to Kigali and where we have never been so thankful to be back in our guest house!

Trippin on Malerone In Kibuye

Today the girls and I headed out to Kibuye with Steve’s team.  It is by Lake Kivu which is huge!  It borders Congo and I believe Uganda as well.  We met Steve’s team at their hotel in the morning only to find out that they had no room for us in their vans due to all the supplies/aid they were bringing with them.  So thankfully I made arrangements with Skip the night before to ride up with them.  So I asked Isaiah to take us to Skip’s hotel to drop off our bag with Jean Marie, who is now his driver, and then we waited at Bourbon for a couple hours.  Skip and his family met us there for lunch and then we headed out for the 2 ½ hour drive to the lake. 

 

The drive was gorgeous!  The countryside of Rwanda is incredibly beautiful.  I can take pictures but you really cannot get the gist of it unless you see it for yourself.  Fortunately there is a newly paved road out there but unfortunately the road curves winds the mountain and then back down.  Which made a few of us nauseated.  We finally got there and Jean Marie took us to our guest house only to discover that it was under construction.  We took one look at it and Skip and Lara said you are absolutely not staying here.  So we piled back into the van and headed to the Bethanie where they were staying.  They only had a room for tonight and they were full for the next night.  So we check a couple other places including the Hotel Golf.  At the golf we found Steve and his team eating dinner.  Apparently they had trouble with their original guest house and after about 2 hours of dealing with them they checked into the Hotel Golf and missed their appointment at the refugee camp.  So we were grateful that we missed their chaos and arrived later with Skip and his family.  The golf was full until I explained to Steve what was going on and they somehow found 2 open rooms for us.  Imagine that!  We go upstairs to check out our rooms and that was an adventure in itself.  First of all you do not want to climb or descend these stairs if you are medicated, intoxicated, or even just plain tired.  If there is no light, just stay where you are till morning.  They are stairs of death!  Steep, small, and not the easiest to maneuver on.  We check out the rooms and discover that the bathrooms are shared.  Its hostel style.  You get your own roll of toilet paper and your towel and you wait your turn to use either facility down the hall from your room.  The rooms were funky smelling of mildew and dead bugs, and had drilled holes in the walls for who knows what purpose; peeping tom’s or your new best friends the cockroaches and mosquitoes.  So I said we are out of here.  I thanked Steve profusely for his efforts to find us two rooms that had magically come available and he said he completely understood and to go back to the Bethanie.  So that’s exactly what we did. 

 

We check in and which consisted of the lady just handing us a key.  They girls asked if we needed to fill anything out and she just said I guess and handed them a piece of scratch paper and they wrote down Jade, Caroline, and Brit Frickety.   We got to our room and it was humble accommodations but a world of difference compared to where we had just come from so we were content.  The hotel had a buffet dinner prepared for all the Saddleback people that were going to be there (the next day) but there was enough of us there that night to enjoy it all to ourselves.  We ate dinner with all the geckos and headed back to our room.  We all took a shower…let me clarify, separately, not together and went to bed.  Jade and I opened out mosquito nets only to discover that the mosquitoes had already eaten through them.  They were brown in come places and came fully equipped with band aids all over them, so we tied them back up and decided we’d be safer without them.  After laying on our beds for about 5 minutes and hearing the mosquitoes flying around Caroline says, I think we should put deet on.  The three of us in unison just about said oh ya and jumped out of bed.  So we put our bug repellent on ourselves and slept with the poison that we had just washed off ourselves instead. 

 

Well now it is about 2am, and I am laying there on my wood plank of a bed with a rock for a pillow thinking that it would have been more comfortable to camp it outside and wishing I had Shawn’s sleeping bag to zip up over my head after swatting away my new friend mosquey, my affectionately named, malaria-infected pet mosquito that insisted on checking out my face in the dark.  All of a sudden I start feeling really sick.  Maybe it was the anorexic chicken I ate or maybe it was the malerone that I had just taken to prevent mosquey from infecting me, but either way I was extremely nauseous.  So I am staring at the dark ceiling unable to sleep, praying that God would make me feel better and I get up to go into the bathroom, just in case, when my cell phone rings.  Its Shawn calling to  check up/in since his phone had been dead the last few hours cause I had the charger to our phones.  So I am trying to run to get my phone in the dark, and you know when you are trying to be quiet and you end up making a bunch of noise?  Well I brought a stampeded of elephants in with me and I just started laughing at how noisy I had just been in my effort to be silent.  I grabbed my phone and walked outside to talk to him.  He was still up working and was about to head home and go to bed.  After I got off the phone with him I tried to go back to sleep.  I finally fell asleep with the sheet over my head as my protective anti-mosquito eating my face off barrier. 

 

I fall asleep around 2:30am and have another tripped out dream.  You see ever since I have been in Africa, every night after I take my Malerone I have the craziest dreams about African people.  Apparently the nausea and the weird dreams are a wonderful reaction to avoiding malaria.  Although I have never shared with you my insane dreams, today I will give you a little summary of it.  Basically I was at the Bethanie when Pastor Rick and his crew arrived.  We were checking in and someone handed me Shawn’s computer and cell phone because he had apparently left it somewhere.  So after I got it I discovered that everyone had left me behind so I had to get a ride up the hill.  This man picked me up in what I thought was a taxi and I drove by Shawn’s car.  So I had him stop so I could put his stuff away and I saw little Mikey in the car wearing Mickey ears.  He told me that Shawn had taken him to toon town (in Disneyland) and they were going back as soon as Shawn got back to the car.  Anyways, I get back to the taxi and the driver had gone through my bag and had taken out my “clean blood kit”  which is really just gloves and clean needles (in case something happens here and I need clean needles), but in my dream it contained actual vials of different blood types.  Well this guy had set it up and was squirting the blood out of the needles everywhere.  Well I got really mad and starting yelling at him saying “What is wrong with you?  Are you crazy?”.  Well he looks at me and pulls out a machete and says “Crazy?  I’ll show you crazy!”  So I quickly shut up and let him continue to drive me to the group.  I get there find Shawn, tell him what happened and at some point I had to go back outside to throw something away.  Well the guy was out there waiting for me and starting running after me with the machete trying to chop me up!  I started running away yelling for Shawn to help me.  Well I ended up waking myself up because I was yelling “Help Me!” out loud in my sleep.  I woke up and I was crying so apparently it started while I was dreaming.  When I realized that I was yelling in my sleep I started laughing.  So I am now laughing and crying and then I hear Jade very softly say “Brittany are you ok?” and amidst my emotional and psychological confusion I finally realized what was going on.  So needless to say while there are other malaria medications that will make you hallucinate, the Malerone gives you some pretty intense dreams.