I am back

We got back on Friday and have hit the ground running....I have had ve. ry little free time since we got back. This is my first chance to blog and I don't have much time even now. It is late and the cafe closes soon.

The trip was a precious time with the Lord and with our community! I have never experienced anything quite like it before. The Bible talks about taking a Sabbath and prioritizing times of rest....I have never been very good at this or understood it fully looking at it with my Western mindset about what really is restful. Last week, I had a small taste of what it is to rest in the Lord and I am addicted! The first full day at the park the rest of the team went on a hike and I stayed back by myself at camp. I prayed, read the Word and journalled. I sat before the Lord amidst the vast and varied creation and marveled at who He is and just soaked Him in and let go of so much worry and junk that I have been holding onto. The many different kinds of birds, the butterflies of every size and color, the monkeys, the lizards, the rushing river and the enormous trees all around me were pulsing with His glory and His power. All of it, held together in His hand and yet He is in my heart speaking to it and refreshing it...bringing new life to dry places. The Lord has been teaching me over the past months about what it means know Him not only as my Beloved and my Companion but as my King. I have been asking Him to teach me holy fear of who He is and the honor He deserves. I think I often loose sight of this because I focus so much on the relational aspect of His character. I feel like He started answering my prayer on this trip. I had a deep revelation that first night sitting under a full African moon watching dark and powerful clouds filling the bottom half of the sky with thunder and lightening of how 'other' He is. He is unlike anything I could imagine and anything I have thought before. I just sat out there under the light of the moon and the occasional lightening and marveled at how big He is....Africa is a good place to learn this lesson. Everything seems brighter and bigger here. The week was full of His sweet presence. I had a really challenging talk with Faye during our time there and it has given me a lot to think about in terms of what is to come next in my life. We had some quite contemplation time and a lot of time to be alone with our thoughts and the Lord and to process through a lot of the things we have seen and experienced so far. We were gone a long time and so I can't possibly dig into all that I learned in our time away. I have shared a little and I am sure more will come out in the future. :)

There are too many highlights and not enough time to do them all justice. I will share with you a little of what I hope never to forget about our time there: the sweet revealations and rest in the Lord that I discovered, the beautiful Blue Plantain Eaters (you should look them up online....they are AMAZING), the myriad of butterflies everywhere, the evening of running and screaming from the attacking ants (they are vicious little suckers and show NO mercy), the monkeys that hung out around our camp, our evening hike through the bush to find elephants (which we didn't find...we found elephant poop that was a day old but no elephants. It was still cool to see where they had been and trees that hey had knocked over. And it was pretty darn cool to walk into the bush with vines grabbing at your feet and a man in front of you hacking a path with a machete!), our trip to see the hippos (they are big animals to be sharing the water with!), the black scorpion that walked between my legs when I was sitting on the edge of the road and the drive into and out of the park through village after village. Kids running out and screaming 'abpoto, abpoto' and waving, the drying peppers on the ground and all the little baby goats romping and playing. I cannot tell you enough how much I love these people. They are just amazing and beautiful. The village kids that came to visit us in our camp were priceless! If my camera had not been ruined, I would be posting pics of them right now. Which I guess that is one not so good thing....my digital camera got wet, so no more BubbleShare. I am bummed but it is just a thing and I have my other camera with me. So, I have to go now but that is a little bit of how great our trip was and how thankful I am that I went.