26!...It rounds to 30.

The hotel where I do my internet has been down since the 2nd of July. This means no updates for June, no happy birthday emails, no reports, no personal emails that have been trapped in my outbox of Mac Mail have been able to be sent out.

That also means no video skyping for my birthday week. Pity party for myself. :)

But I did have one awesome birthday on Monday. We went out to the lake for the day called Chintechi Inn. WOW! I felt like I was in the bahamas! White white sand...blue green water...little thatch roof huts sprinkled along the beach, and no one around. It was glorious!

We saw baboons on our way there, drove through the rubber plantation, and ended the night with birthday cake, chili for dinner, and a little Jane Austen, Emma. A super birthday.

Maybe when I get my internet back I can put up pictures.

So thanks everyone for all of the birthday wishes. I needed to hear from people back home so badly. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And a special Happy Birthday to Paul Hart, Megan Griffith, and Bethany Crescenzi who all have birthdays with me. Wish I could be with you guys! Love you!!

Also, thanks mom for the birthday package that I got a day after my birthday. I cried like a baby as I read all the cards. There's something about seeing your family's handwriting that is very precious, and I've never cherished it until now. I love you!!

Dear Maggie,

 It was exactly a year ago yesterday that I was excitingly opening a letter saying that I had been officially accepted to be a journeyman in Mzuzu, Malawi.

So, I believe I can say that I have been praying for you for a year now. I started immediately praying for a friend in Mzuzu, whether another white person or a Malawian.

I have to admit, I thought that God had given me a "no" for an answer many time over the past 6 months. I had cried, wailed, pleaded, begged, and finally accepted that these two years was going to be a lonely season in my life.

Then, when I wasn't looking for it, you showed up. You sought me out...and not because you wanted a white person be your friend, but because you heard I was doing children's ministry and you have a huge heart for it.

I did think at first that this was another failed attempted at a friendship when we didn't talk for 2 weeks after meeting each other. But then, when I came to the orphange this week, and they had forgotten to plan for my visit, I was sure I had driven out there and just wasted gas. I think its pretty cool that right as I sat down on a random sidewalk, you walked out of your house. Providential? I think so.

Sharing with you in your house and hearing your heart for children was so humbling. You took great care to pull out the few children's evangelistic materials you have saved over the past few years. You were so excited to show them to me! I admit I felt so spoiled...most of them were the "toss-off" materials of old sunday school guides. You told me how you were saving up your money so you could photocopy a children's bible story book you borrow from a friend. You were so amazed at how they put the Bible stories with pictures and into kid's language and you knew it would be such an asset to your sunday school class. I was so humbled.

When I learned that you were the only Christian in your family, my admiration for you just grew. Your mother and sister didn't understand why you thought you needed "Jesus" and why their old Catholism ways and their works weren't good enough to go to heaven. I could tell that you were so burdened for them.

Sharing that afternoon with you listening to our favorite worship songs, talking about our lives, you teaching me how to make chips, and just sharing our hearts was so wonderful.

So, thanks Maggie.
Thanks for being willing to follow Jesus.
Thanks for being willing to be friends with a Mzungu (white person) because I know its not always easy.

You are an answer to a lot of prayers.

Love,
Lauren

Dear Maggie,

Pleasantly Surprised.

A while ago, I wrote a blog about struggling when to give money and who to give money to. That blog came out of the frustration and heaviness I felt of the responsibility of being the "rich" person around these people I came to minister too.

My night guard, who is in his 60's and a very sweet man, came to me the afternoon I wrote that blog. His wife had been in the hospital with some very serious problems and now they were sending her home. Except, his bill was 10,000 kwatcha and they would not let her leave until  he paid at least half of that.

Let me put this situation in perspective for you...My night guard makes 14 cents an hour. Yes. $1.68 a day. So his monthly salary is $44. This is the standard across the country.

The hospital bill was $70. That is almost double his monthly salary. So you can see why he came to me in a panic.

When he showed me the amount, I didn't know what to do. I struggled and wrestled with what I should give him. I have been told countless times that you can't give to everyone, and that you should never give out large sums of money. At first, i was just going to give him the 5,000 Kwatcha so she could at least leave the hospital. You see, I was down to my last $100 myself. 

I finally talked myself into giving him 8,000. Surely they could eventually come up with 2,000 Kwatcha later. After I gave him the 8,000, I was immediately convicted. "Lauren, why have I blessed you with money? To hoard it? Who's money is it anyway? Give him all of the money."

Uggg. I ran and stopped him at the gate and I gave him the rest of the 10,000. He smiled at me and just kept saying, "yewo, yewo mama." (Thank you, ma'am)

At that point, I wasn't sure if the money was even going to a hospital bill. Sometimes you just don't know. People coming up with heartbreaking stories to pull on the purse strings of white people is so common here. But, I knew in my heart I had done what God told me to do.



So, that was back in April.

Fast forward to tonight. This is the first time I have been around to pay my nightguard his salary. I went out to give him his 6,600 he receives each month. He just looks at me and says,

"Mama, you gave me the money to get my wife out of the hospital. Take back 1,000. Keep 1,000 each month until I pay you back for what you did. You are such a good madam."

I just stood there speechless as tears came to my eyes. Do you realize the sacrifice he just made? He gave up many days worth of food so that he could pay me back. I never asked him to repay the money and never expected him to.

Wow. Just wow.

When there's no electricity...

When Michelle was here for 10 days, we had a crazy week of power outages. Normally, we have the electricity pretty good here in Mzuzu. One of the head guys for the power company lives here, so we actually have more consistent power than the rest of the country.

However, the week she was here was very different.

On Friday, the power went out at 10am. Normally, it will come back on after a couple of hours, but it never did.  We went out to eat at a hotel up the street that cooks food on a Braii (BBQ), hoping that we would have power to cook our dinner....

So, at 5:15, just as we were about to leave for the hotel to charge our computers so we could watch movies that night, the power came back on! For literally 5 minutes...talk about dissapointment!

By 5:45, the sun has gone down, and dark is upon us. We lit candles and started a fire, and I began to rack my brain for things we could cook for dinner.

I wrapped our tortillas and leftover taco meat for the previous dinner in some tin foil and put it near the fire to heat up...but we needed something more...

So, I put my thinking cap on, as my 3rd grade teacher called it. I went out to my storage shed and found some metal contraption to put over the burning logs in my fireplace. Then, I pulled out one of my oven racks and laid it on top of the metal. I pulled some hamburger meat out of the freezer, and luckily, I had enough hot water in my tank to fill a bowl. I defrosted the meat in the water.  (yes..this part was kinda gross...squeezing water out of meat...yuck.)

Then, I made patties, seasoned them, and threw those puppies on the oven rack! I chopped up some carrots, sprinkled them with brown sugar and butter, wrapped them in tin foil, and threw that over the fire as well.

Talk about good dinner!! It was probably one of the best ones we had! And all of it was prepared by candlelight and a headlamp! :)

Quote of the night... Michelle: "This is why you live in Africa and not me. I would have just eaten a piece of bread for my dinner."

Ahhh....living in Africa. I love it!

Program? What program?

I'm going to talk about some stuff a little out of order. No offense to Jeff and Blake, but I'm going to skip over my Nairobi trip for the time being to when I can put up pictures of my adventures there.

One of my best friends Michelle came to Malawi with me for 10 days...and it was super fantastic. She was with me during the hard transition of being surrounded by people 24/7 for 6 weeks to the very real emptiness of my house. It was so nice to have someone to cling to while I cried instead of my pillow or my puppy.

Not only was she a crying shoulder for me, but she really gave me the "slap in the face" I needed to get back to work here in Mzuzu. She gave me so much motivation and encouragement about my other ministries here in town.

One of the them was SOS orphanage. I had heard about this orphanage and planned on taking Michelle so we could go play with kids. I hadn't been there before and in fact, I didn't even know how to get out there. Well, we found it finally on Thursday and we ended up only having time to meet the administrator and setting up a time for me to come back and "play with the kids" as I put it.

SOS isn't a religious affiliated place...in fact, it was started by a guy in Austria and they welcome and encourage all religious views. So my thinking was...well...maybe I can come and play with kids and God will open up opportunities for me to maybe share with a few kids or the house mothers.

So, I go back today for my first visit. When I get the there, the administrator goes....
"I have assembled the 150 children, and the 15 house mothers for your 40 minute program."

Uhhhh....program?

I quickly started going through things I could do in my head...what would I say...what would we do?!
I kind of just mumbled something about...Uh..I'm just here to play with kids..we don't have to do a program...

The director went on to say that I should come every other week...share my "spiritual" things with the kids each time I come...that way that would help them in school and in life.

Uh, okay!

So, the day ended up with me getting up and introducing myself to all these kids...telling me them about me...then sharing my testimony...letting them ask me questions...then I got to personally meet with the house mothers and we laughed and chatted as I learned each of their names. I told them I would be coming back regularly just to be friends and tell them things that Jesus is teaching me in the Bible.

The lady that is over the youth thinks that I could work with the house mothers to and maybe share with them sometimes. And some weeks I can work with the older youth kids and other weeks the younger ones.

Wow.

Here I was going in trying to just "play" with kids and God totally opened up an opportunity.

Woot! Ministry in Mzuzu OTHER than teaching the Laffoon kids...CHECK!

A small detour

Instead of heading straight back to Malawi after our debriefing, a few of us from our training got on a bus and headed to Victoria Falls. It was about a 10 hour bus ride to get down there (it was only supposed to be 7, but a flat tire and frequent stops delayed us).

Needless to say, looking at some of the largest falls in the world was an amazing sight. I can't describe to the the beauty of it. There was so much water coming down the falls, it felt like there was a downpour. Even with our raincoats, we were soaked.







Us journeygirls and some of the Taylors went ziplining over a gorge. It really wasn't too scary..just fun. I was so excited that I got to do it with Kylie, my little 7 year old friend. (She was part of my quad family in training in Virginia). It was so great to share that moment with her.

After the ziplining across the gorge, I guess I thought I didn't have enough fun, so Doug (Kylie's dad) and I decided to jump off a bridge! I was sooo terrified. If any of you know me well, you know that heights and cockaroaches are 2 of my biggest fears in life. I may not have overcome my bug fear yet, but I guess I was ready to face the height one.

 I can't describe to you the feeling of just willingly stepping off a bridge so high up in the air trusting that a rope is going to catch you from going to your death. Wow! I started screaming during the freefall down, but then nothing came out. I literally could not get any sound to come out. But it was amazing.  It jerked pretty hard at the bottom (which I have a bruised rib I'm still in pain over) but I just screamed with excitement. It was a huge rush. I loved it! Would I do it again...I don't know...but glad I did it at least once. :)

After such a great day of adventure in Vic Falls, it totally had slipped my mind that it was my last day with my friends I had spent the past month with.  I held it together till I was pulling out of the driveway the next morning. Tears just wouldn't stop falling. The taxi driver said, "Oh, I am so moved right now! I am so sorry!" That was really hard...

The only thing that kept me going was knowing that I was getting on a plane to see some of my best friends in Nairobi! Woot!