Today was New Years Eve and we were scheduled to hang out with Katie Davis and her Amazima Ministry. We were all pretty excited about it - she is doing some incredible work there and clearly gives HUGE shout outs to God daily. Amazima is about a half mile walk from where we were staying so we got to get out and say hi to some of the neighbors as we made our way up there...
And when we got there - there was no mistaking where we were! Katie had put together a huge festival for the local villagers and it seemed like they ALL showed up. We had a great time hanging out with kids and watching some of the Amazima kids show off some of their incredible talents...
Like these guys right here who could hang with anybody in the states for sure (and the crowd LOVED them)...
This kid here was hilarious - he loved our cameras and was trying desperately to convince us to give them to him.
My take-away from this visit was a little boy who had plopped down right in front of me.
He was all alone. His shorts were about 4x too big. His "shirt" (and I use the term loosely) was barely on and was really just a few strings of cloth. He had a big rusty nail and he sat - in the midst of all the laughter and chaos - and was just pounding that nail into the ground with a rock.
I felt God saying "Acknowledge him Tymm. Just show him you see him..."
I fought it at first - I don't know why. But finally we made eye contact and I smiled and waved him over. His stoic little face broke in to a HUGE grin and he scampered over and sat as close as possible to me. He spoke no english. We shared no conversation. I have no photograph of him outside of my mind. But we acknowledged each other. And we hugged...
And I will never ever forget him.
That evening we got to have a little team time. You give so much of yourselves both physically and spiritually on these trips that it's good to be able to re-energize and hang with your team some. We decided to have a dinner out at King Fisher lodge. While planning it - I was asking Pastor Isaac how late we could stay out and should we be back before dark. His answer:
"Oh no - you stay as late as needed in that direction. It's the other direction we don't travel in after dark. The forest is that way and the terrorists hide in there and kill people..."Matter-of-fact statement... just like that. That's their day to day reality.
While at King Fisher we got to take a quick boat ride on the Nile River - and we stopped at a small island that is at the source of the Nile.
The guide there told us some great back story on the Nile and it's history. They also clearly have enough flowing liquids there (it's the source of the Nile after all) that they felt the need to post this pic:
After returning it was time for our dinner. I had ordered "W. Fish" which I thought was obviously "white fish" or something. I was wrong. It was "whole fish."
And by "whole fish" I mean the WHOLE FREAKING FISH. Tail. head. Beady little eyes. Let's just say the next three days I got to fully understand why Cipro is the drug of choice when traveling. It worked.
That night at midnight only about half the team managed to stay up to ring in the new year. Being the daring crew we are - we ventured out into the nearby streets to celebrate with some of the locals. Things quickly got a little bit rowdy what with motorocycles being pointed straight at us, tires burning and a LOT of people. At one point - Nate - our resident African expert (dude has been there like a billion times) said "Okay - we need to get back inside our gate." I knew if Nate was saying that we were well past "dangerous."
But we all survived and had a great experience to share - and to quote Hayden who had the comment of the night:
"That was really scarey!"
Nothing like celebrating the New Year in Africa! Now to rest - because tomorrow involved CHURCH IN AFRICA!
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