When you are traveling with others - especially your husband

Interesting how different people prepare for a BIG trip. Interesting how people prepare for a mission trip. Some people (like me) plan way in advance, buy supplies, get immunizations and start blogging months before the trip. Others on the other hand, may think about the trip but really take no steps to travel until right before they take off.

Our guide has a list, a kind of count down starting five days out....that is a great idea, because if you don't do it this way,  you can get so overwhelmed with the packing process that you either forget the important items or take WAY too much.
There is such a vast unknown when traveling to a foreign country as well as when you are surrendered to God.  It can be nerve racking, but if it is, then one should examine their true surrender.  Do you actually trust God to take care of the details, BIG and small?  Then why is it nerve racking?
It is our responsibility to do the things we CAN do and then God will do the things we CAN'T.  So I guess the nerve racking part is making sure to do ALL the things I CAN do and then just trust. Trust God, that He knows my heart and that I intend to do it all and then He will then pick up the slack.  TRUST HIM.

Not much left to worry about...I think :)

I am beginning to think about what it will be like when I get back from Africa.  That is so weird.  I haven't even gone yet.  Mentally I am there in the tiny village of Zziba, I am thinking and praying about each child that we will meet and I am praying that I will not come on too strong, too American.  I just want to have a teachable spirit, able to be welcoming and loving.

The team has a children's program planned.  My first concern is that it won't be so structured and American that the kids will be intimidated and shy.  There is a really cute story that we read to the kids in the Back Yard Bash at Belleview about 6 years ago.  Hopefully it will be a story that these kids can relate to as well..

We plan to have some games and crafts and songs and prayer time.  I know that the team will be shocked when they experience the spiritual maturity of the village kids. We will need to flexible. Willing to open our minds to understanding the way that the Ugandan culture does things.  Americans are so rushed and inflexible.  Timing and structure are all important to us.  But for 5 days in January we are going to need to set aside the hustle bustle and let the Holy Spirit show us the way.  My prayer is that I will be hearing from Him and responding to His leading all of the time.  That - in and of itself,  will be life changing :)

3 weeks to go - lots to think about

We are really getting close...I know I said that before, but now it REALLY is close.  Starting to think about trying to get a little more "fit" so that I do not get so stiff on the long plane rides. Walking sounds best, but it is bitter cold out.  Hmmm I think I'll try the treadmill.

Since we are right in the middle of the holiday season it is very difficult to to divide my thoughts.  My desire is to focus on the trip but the world around me keeps hollaring  - it Christmas, spend your money, put up a tree, light the lights... I'm not a humbug but is this really what Christmas is about?  What about the birth of our Savior? I read an interesting little article

“Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus,” by C.S. Lewis

And beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark. It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from the other barbarians who occupy the north western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language. These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs.

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card. But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival; guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the marketplace is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.

They also send gifts to one another, suffering the same things about the gifts as about the cards, or even worse. For every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send to him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not. And they buy as gifts for one another such things as no man ever bought for himself. For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all kinds of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, they have been unable to sell throughout the year they now sell as an Exmas gift. And though the Niatirbians profess themselves to lack sufficient necessary things, such as metal, leather, wood and paper, yet an incredible quantity of these things is wasted every year, being made into the gifts.

But during these fifty days the oldest, poorest, and most miserable of the citizens put on false beards and red robes and walk about the market-place; being disguised (in my opinion) as Cronos. And the sellers of gifts no less than the purchaser’s become pale and weary, because of the crowds and the fog, so that any man who came into a Niatirbian city at this season would think some great public calamity had fallen on Niatirb. This fifty days of preparation is called in their barbarian speech the Exmas Rush.

But when the day of the festival comes, then most of the citizens, being exhausted with the Rush, lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and reckoning how much they have spent on gifts and on the wine. For wine is so dear among the Niatirbians that a man must swallow the worth of a talent before he is well intoxicated.

Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas, which is on the same day as Exmas. And those who keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is given in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.)

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, “It is not lawful, O stranger, for us to change the date of Chrissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.” And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, “It is, O Stranger, a racket”; using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis).

But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in. And now, enough about Niatirb.

Makes one think, huh?

Exactly 4 weeks to go

The packing has begun. The big part of packing is to pack light.  So quick dry clothes and reversible garments are handy.  We also have to get things like electricity converters and eye covers for the flight.  Most of the items have been purchased and have been placed in the staging area.
With the holidays upon us the trip has kind of taken a back seat.  Ever present but not the constant focus that it once was.
We have checked out the village with Google Earth though-what a cool perspective!  Isn't technology fabulous? If you want to find the village search for Nkokonjeru, Uganda.  The village of Zziba is too small to locate.
You can search the region and view pictures that others have posted on Google Earth.  It's pretty neat.
Have fun!