Today was such a busy day! I actually wasn’t feeling so well this morning, so I skipped breakfast and went to lay down for a while. After a bit I had half a nature valley bar… eating something usually helps. Today we have a conference, which means I get to teach. Shock and surprise, I have no desire to do this and I really hope God gives me something to work with here. Worship was first, and it was great as usual. Mike taught (for about 3 hours) then me. I took a whole 15 minutes! Short, sweet, and simple. That’s the best way. Didn’t like that Brad was filming it, I don’t like this kind of stuff on camera. His video, not much I can do about it if he wants my face in there. For the record, I taught on making sure you are steady in your faith, even when no one is supposed to be watching you. I chose this because generally people are watching you, and you’re still accountable to be the “light of the world” when you think no one is paying attention to you. Case in point, I was outside praying today (by myself, no one watching) and I prayed out loud for the first time in a VERY long time. When I opened my eyes after my prayer, I had a group of 4 kids watching me pray and listening to what I was saying. Talk about God taking over my lesson….
Jan taught next (and did a splendid job) and then Mark (who also did quite well). There were some amazing lessons today, I hope I can absorb something from each one of them. I hope our audience liked the lessons- I don’t know about the rest of the team but I felt like a fool up there telling these people something they probably already knew. I just have to trust Jim’s advice on the matter. We ate lunch around 2 today. Had a lovely feast of ugali, avocado, sicamouwiki, and bananas. Later we just relaxed and prepared for the evening cruisade.
The cruisade was a blast! Sharon and I had this older lady teach us to dance “African Style”. Kenyan’s (or maybe just the Bikusu tribes?) dance primarily with their shoulders, and learning how to do that was so much fun! Sharon is really good at it, you can tell she’s done this before! Brad and I had a fun dancing adventure later when he and I got a circle of kids together to dance with. We jumped and twisted and hokey-pokeyed till we were exhausted tired! The best part about the dancing was that it started so randomly. I had a small group of kids around me and we were dancing in circles and having fun, but a bunch of the men started gathering around to watch us, and my lack of control over the situation started to unnerve me so I moved closer to Brad (the closest in reach) and he told me to stick close to him for a while till the teachings started. So, I did as I was told, and took it a step further and invited Brad to dance with us. He refused. I’m pretty sure I called him a chicken or something, because he eventually joined us. That was a mistake, he stole the show! That’s when the foot thing started (brad would put his foot in the middle of the dance circle and all of these little girls had to get their same foot ON TOP of his! So cute!) and that’s when we added a lot of flair to our little dance circle. Those kids had smiles a thousand miles wide, and were so high energy! We were all twisting and turning and jumping around like crazy! Eventually we attracted the rest of our team, who started taking pictures of Brad dancing with the kids. He seemed to really be having fun, for a guy he got quite twinkly when he was dancing! It was about time for me to disappear and move on to something else, but the kids just wouldn’t let go of my hands! So, our circle of kids grew bigger and bigger, and Brad and I danced with them for another half hour or so. Honestly, it made my day! Something that started out so small grew to be such an event! That wasn’t at all my goal, but I’m glad that it at least made my team happy and touched the lives of a few more kids.
Pastor Protus kicked off the crusade tonight by delivering a wonderful sermon about the bleeding woman who touched the robes of Jesus, among other stories. During the sermon, I sat down to the left of the stage and was surrounded by the kids that I had danced with! I had a girl in my lap, another girl hanging onto my free hand, another girl to the right of me just sitting there, and 5 more behind me playing with my hair. It was very fun but I’m pretty sure it was annoying Jan and Sharon. (As horrible as it sounds, I didn’t much care who was annoyed. I was having fun loving on the kids, and wasn’t willing to let anything unreasonable steal my joy. )
Oh, an interesting event happened today. The crusade was visited by [what we think is] the town witch doctor. While Protus was still talking onstage, a guy wearing this long orange tunic style thing walked around and talked to Brad, Sharon and I. He had a cross in one hand (which I saw) and a sword in the other (which I DIDN’T see). When he approached us, people in the crowd backed away and showed a few signs of fear. Honestly the man just looked silly to me and I was more afraid that he might be some kind of mental crazy person than anything else. He smiled and was polite. I couldn’t understand a word he said to me so I smiled and told him to listen to the teaching. The whole situation was just amusing to me. He talked to Brad twice, and Brad looked ready to take him out (I found out later he was…) I suppose this is another notch on the entertainment totem pole of life!
On a serious note, I can definitely see that the Lord had big plans for Kisi. You can see AND feel the “2 forces” at work here.
After the crusade was over, Brad and I danced more with the kids. After about 10 minutes our circle of kids growing, we realized we had entirely lost our waterbottles. After another 20 mintues of dancing, we stopped the kids (and the music, thank God or there would be NO stopping the kids!) and Brad was the hero who found our water bottles. Cheers!
He went wherever, and I immersed myself back in the group of smiling children and tickled all of them to bits and pieces! You thought tickle monster went well with your child or sibling? You’ve seen nothing until you’ve seen it affect 40 laughing children who keep begging you for more! It was so much fun! Some of them started getting brave and attempted to tickle me back, so a few kids got chased around. A while later I tried to put an end to my side of the tickle game, but the kids wouldn’t have any of it! If I started to leave, the kids started following me. I felt like the freaking pied piper or something. Again, Hero Brad saved the day and rescued me. (As a side note, I’m sure that if Brad knew I’ve started adressing him as “Hero Brad” in my head he would be soooooooo less than thrilled. I love it!) He reminded me how to say goodbye to the kids (kwaheri!) because he memorized it before I did. So… the two of us walked back to camp. (Relatives, there’s no need for a gun or a shovel, it wasn’t that kind of walk!)
Unfortunately for my hero friend, I was in a very silly mood… we passed a girl that was balancing a huge bag on her head, so I decided I better start practicing balancing things on MY head. I tried balancing my waterbottle. It lasted less than 20 seconds before falling to the ground.
Reached camp, and discovered that our friend Mike was back from his store run. We helped him clean the apples, which involves a “bleach rinse” and another rinse cycle via purified water and plastic bags. Within a few minutes, the rest of the team was back, so we set up Jim’s computer and started playing (and singing) some worship songs! The people who own the house we were staying at loved hearing our songs, and even attempted to sing along. I’m pretty sure it was the first time any of my teammates have heard me sing… luckily for my shy voice and I, the whole team was singing along so there shouldn’t have been anything that distinguished my voice as being different from the others. Yay!
We drove down to the church for dinner. (They’ve been feeding us well) where we had potatoes, passion fruit (which was slightly sour but quite good!) avocado, beans, and a cooked banana thing (which I actually liked. I thought my Panama trip might have ruined that for me.) As this is the second time avocados have been served to us here, I can’t help but think of my mom and how much she would love to taste what she would consider good avocados. (I don’t like avocado, so I find nothing “good” about it…)
We all came back to camp to rest and sleep, as opposed to going to the revival meeting and movie. All of us are TIRED! It’s been quite a day, my friends!
Side notes: discovered our second spider in our room today. And, wouldn’t you know it, 2 BIRDS decided to make the ceiling of our room their new nesting grounds. They were flying all over the place! It was incredibly unusual. Oh, and I should also mention that the owner has a cow and baby calf. It’s cool, especially the calf who is adorable. The mooing, on the other hand, is less than desireable when you’re trying to sleep. Nature’s alarm clock…
Oh, last note. I think that Pastor Webb is the funniest guy! I imagine he and Daniel (Villanueva) would get along very well.
That’s all for tonight!
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