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!

2nd part of 40/40...

Ahhh...BUSHCAMP!
We got on a bus and drove 6 hours east to a little town called Petauke. We pulled up and saw tents set up all around, and of course, it made me giddy!

This is us three girls tent. We had 3 mattresses in there with 3 blankets each because it would get so cold at night. We were also given a bucket to wash our clothes in, a bucket to fetch our shower water from the well, a lantern, a kettle to heat our water over fire for our shower, and a "choo" bucket (in case you need to go to the bathroom in the night, you have a bucket).

This is what our bathroom looked liked...

yep...

you squat...

and avoid the bees that are swarming...

(and at night the bats)

it really made me appreciate my toilet.

Did I mention the smell??

This was our shower. We get our water from the well, up the bucket, and there you go!

Showering at night under the stars is a pretty amazing thing...

At the well...

So, out in the small village we would go do the same DFA's that we did in the city...to get a different perspective. We would all pile into the back of a truck to travel into the town. I LOVED that part.

and we also had interesting things to eat while at bush camp...

This is a reallllly large locust i found on the ground. Don't worry, I really didn't eat it.

Okay, sitting around the campfire at night just talking...or laying down on the ground and looking at the Milky Way...or sitting down with 2 blind men in their 80's and just sharing stories...it was all just so great.

But then...

We got to go live with an African family for 3 days.

Meet my house.

very very awesome. fun fact: found 4 baby rats in my bed that didn't even have their eyes open. That night, the mama rat came and was running around the top of our mosquito net looking for her babies. Yeah...

Here's the yard. This is the dove house, the goat house, and the chicken house in the background.

We basically lived at a zoo. Goats, doves, chickens, roosters, goats, pigs, cows, and all had babies.

part of our job was washing the dishes everyday. 

So, one day we went out into the fields with them. It was 4 km walk away. We sat down in the fields and pulled off dried ground nuts and sorted them to be taken back to town.

This is Daisy, the wife of the house.  And those are all the peanuts we gathered and sorted.

And we also would help get all of our water from the well.

Plus, to have access into a village, you need to talk to the chief or the headman. We had a headwomen in our village, so we had to greet her when we arrived and make an official goodbye. She gave us sugar cane as goodbye gifts. They were sooo huge!

We also learned how to wrap our heads with the traditional fabric.

oh, and this is how we showered. We took a bucket, and a cup, and went behind this wall. There was no door and it opened up into a field. The cows and goats stampeded one night while I was standing there naked in the shower, and I thought for sure the wall was coming down!

Pretty funny story...Cara and Heather when to the use the squatty potty one night but were a little freaked out as I was walking up. Come to find out, there was a bat in the toilet that kept flying out at them. We were scared that when we peed on it, it would fly out and hit our butts, so we were trying to throw rocks down there to make it fly away. We ended up just running out of the bathroom screaming several times and just peeing in the grass. :)

So that was my time in the village. It was so great and I didn't want to leave. I was just totally in my element, you know?

After this, we got on a bus and headed to a resort 7 hours away to debrief for 3 days...

The first part of 40/40...

Where do I begin?

I guess let me first say that being with my friends from FPO was probably the best part of the past month. Having other people to share your struggles with and hearing them share those really made all the difference in the world.

Okay, so I'll set this up for you. My entire house church from FPO (3 couples, 1 family of 5, and us 3 jgirls) were all there, plus 2 j-guys, and 2 more couples, and another family. We all met at a seminary in Lusaka, Zambia where we stayed for about 10 days.

Each day we went out into the city with a specific agenda: How do you get to know an African, what are your medical needs?, What do you think a missionary is?, Do people still use witchdoctors?, etc. So, we would go out in pairs, grab a taxi bus, and just start meeting people.

High points: eating caterpillars, small fish (GROSS!), staying up late talking with the other journeymen, getting to share our faith with people in the city, and just being around other Americans. We also had 2 free days in the city and I got to see 3 movies! and eat out at 2 restaurants!!! It was amazing! :)

I will say that my favorite part of 40/40 was yet to come out at bushcamp. But here are a few pictures from the city life...

 Yep, ate those...

and these...

so good to be back with my old roommates from training!

the poor 2 journey guys that had to deal with us crazy girls.

African babies are just so cute!

Cara was my partner around the city. We had a blast getting ice cream everyday together. :)

This was a daily ritual. Your personal dishes were in a bad hung up on the window. So after you ate, you washed them in buckets, and then we would stand out in the grass waving them back and forth to dry them off. 

This was mine and Cara's helper in the city, Rose.

So, I that is about it. Aside for the 4 year-old Caleb and running with a pen and cutting his face open when he fell, it wasn't too much more eventful. 

Like I said...my favorite part was bushcamp. :)

I'm gonig to Nairobi and 40/40 is AMAZING!

I'll update from Nairobi! :)

Leaving Tomorrow!!

I fly out of Malawi at 10:30 am and then arrive in Zambia! I'm pretty pumped about seeing my friends and getting to just live in Africa without worrying about "life" stuff, ya know?

On my beautiful drive down to Lilongwe today, (which by the way, my right arm is entirely sunburned from hanging it out the window, so pastey left arm, red right arm), I got a phone call that I may not have been on the field long enough to get vacation time to go to Nairobi. So, even though I have a plane ticket, even though my supervisor approved it, even though we are less than 24 hours before I leave....I might not get to go.

Bummer of the century.

Its really hard to understand what that feels like if you haven't lived in a different culture surrounded by new things, new people, and you live by yourself. And you have this glimmer of seeing your best friends for 20 blissful glorious days....and then its taken from you....

BUT, I'm not complaining....I have a cheerful heart...God is in control...and I'm here to spread the Word not be with friends.

all much easier said than done.