border trip

Wow.. today was so … african!  I had to go to the border and get my visa stamped, something I have to do once a month (long story). The day started with rain.  I was really excited because it hasn’t rained in a long time, maybe a month, and usually it means I get to wear jeans because it’s not hot.  It was humid and rainy all at once though, so I wasn’t in jeans… I decided to wear my white shorts since most of the day would spent in the car.  In my head that meant a skirt would be uncomfortable and they’d probably stay stark white all day.  Well we left right at 9am, me and Gildo (the driver) and all seemed fine… that is, all seemed fine in the first 100 feet of driving.  When we left the center I quickly realized what a journey it would be to get to the border in the rain.  It was a torrential down pour.  The car’s A/C wasn’t working very well (but it’s the only car with A/C)and there was no heat to speak of, making the windows wet inside and out, so I couldn’t see what was in front of me.  I prayed Gildo could. Here’s a little history about Mozambique: freedom from Portugal: 1975, end of civil war: 1995; country-wide floods: 2000.  So every time it rains, it’s really flooding.  Thus, the toll was closed which meant we had to go the long way; the long way on top of the slow driving due to rain!  And, Gildo was taking our truck off the road and driving through huge puddles most Americans avoid, in order to get in front of the traffic!  Basically, he was doing exactly the opposite of what Americans are taught to do –scary!  Oh my gosh, it took 3 hours to get to the border, which is how long it should take round trip!

Well everything at the border went well, which is an amazing blessing, and kept my spirits high for a most of the rest of the day.  Right when we left the border Gildo slows down and says, what I understood as: I’m tired.  But no, oh no, he was saying “oh no, the tire.”  So we pull over and he jumps out to check out the tire.  In true Mozambican culture, we end up with five guys helping us.  So I just stayed in the car, even though I wanted to help (because I love cars) I thought staying dry was a better option :o)  I ended up just furthering the stereotype of white people being lazy and girls knowing nothing of cars…but again, I thought being dry was a much better choice.  So they put the spare tire on, and for whatever reason, the decision is made that this spare isn’t good and we need to fix our original tire before trying to make it home.  From later observation, I’m pretty certain there was next-to-no tread on this spare tire.  So we drive two minutes with the guys who helped us hitching a ride in the back of the truck and land at a little place that apparently fixes cars.  I’m in a small heaven here :o)  First of all, the guy who’s working there looks my age and he’s really cute.  But more importantly, I get to hang out at a car shop and watch this guy fix the tire in Africa!  It was awesome.  This, like the border stop, kept my spirits high.  I took the liberty to walk around and check everything out, it was really fun!  So after ten minutes and 100 mets ($3) we’re off again on our original tire. 


This is when it really got fun, about ten minutes –no, five minutes, into the drive this tire starts making a weird noise.  I point it out to Gildo and he says “It’s fine--”  But before he can finish his sentence the tire totally blows out and we’re on the side of the road for round two.  This time is different in so many ways though… first, we get no help.  Second, I realize Gildo doesn’t really know how to change the tire (probably never having owned a car).  He lifts the truck before loosening the blots, classic beginner mistake.  Well it’s (#3) starting to rain, again, and to add on to the rain the road and every where around the truck is covered with ants (#4).  To try and paint a picture for y’all: the ground is moving there are so many ants.  This is when my attitude to laugh about the day turns immediately into frustration and disgust.  I have ants and rain all over me!  Eww.  Difference #5.  So I try to show Gildo how to loosen the bolts (the only way me and my mom could ever do it was to stand on the wrench and bounce a little) and he gets them loose in no time.  *white shorts, not so white anymore*  Then he tells me to get in the car, which I do immediately because I’m really tired of constantly stomping my feet to keep the ants off (which doesn't work any way).  I literally couldn’t make contact with my feet to the ground with out having ants on me.  Moving on, I’m back in the truck again because I didn’t need Gildo to tell me twice.  He ends up finishing about ten minutes later and jumps into the car –dripping wet.  I felt so bad for him, he was wet pants and shirt all the same.

We’re on the road again, and this time it looks like we’ll make it home.  This is where it’s important to remember that little detail about the spare tire not having tread left.  I was literally praying the first 30 minutes into the drive home because I was so scared.  Gildo didn’t seem to get that you have to nice and gentle with spare tires, he was taking the turns at 180kph.  I don’t even want to know what that is mph. :o)  And this is the tire on my side, too!  We stop at the first gas station we see to get more fuel and I go in to buy chocolate.  Because at this point, I need comfort food, and it’s 2pm so I need food in general hah.  I bought two cokes, two sandwiches and a big chocolate bar.  It was great that this place had sandwiches, uncommon for gas stations :o)  I got home around 3pm, three hours later than I had expected.  All in all, I got what I need done and I was home safe: good day. Nothing went according to plan: African day.

Pool Time!

this was last week: 20-Jan

I took all the boys to the pool this week!  It was such a great week because of it too. :o)  I had the opportunity to take the boys this week because I had enough funding from home, so: THANK YOU!!!  Your support has been such a great blessing to the boys, each one of them had a great time!  I took the youngest room the first day, on Tuesday.  I counted out ten pairs of water wings and spent a lot of breath inflating them only to find out the boys didn’t want or need them at all!  These were the littlest boys, average age of 5, but they wanted nothing to do with them.  Only one boy wanted to wear them, and cute little Shelton still never left the stairs the whole time.  Haha, but he had a great time nonetheless!  I loved playing with Shelton, trying to persuade him to come off the stairs.  I felt like my mom because he just clung to me the whole time (even though he could touch the bottom).  He was hilarious :o)

Wednesday I took our oldest room, about 8 years old.  They were crazy!  Typical boys.  Jumping and flipping off the edge.  At one point, Salamao’s head was about two inches from slamming into the edge of the pool… oh so horrifying.  It’s so hard for me to play with boys sometimes because they are so rough!  I have so many memories of watching Scott rough house with Connor and Brayden and having to walk away and talk to Katie because it was just too scary!  But anyway, none of the boys were harmed :o)  In their typical boyish luck.

Room 1 was possibly the most fun because I worked it out so I could really spend the afternoon at the pool. This is the middle-age room with boys about 6 and 7 years old.  The other two rooms had only had about an hour at the pool, but these guys got a solid two hours and the visitor who helped me even bought cokes for them at the gas station on the walk home!  I also got really tan that day :o) Or.. to clarify, I got pretty burned but I woke up Saturday very tan and burn-free!

Sadly, I don’t have any pictures because I only just got my camera back from having forgotten it over Christmas at my family’s house.

bad decisions

I’m learning to hear God’s voice, learning to discern His desires from my own. Something always comes into my heart that isn’t from the Lord. Every minute I’m battling a new sinful desire. So many times this ‘something’ is much more desirable to me than what I think God can offer. But it’s short. It is so short. And leaves me so much more empty than before the indulgence. I’ve had so many moments this past week where I promptly acted having knowing exactly what God told me to do. I was so proud of myself at these moments, hoping they would turn into lifelong behaviors and attitudes. But this weekend I deliberately did what I told Him I didn’t want to do. *sounds like Romans 7…* I made a commitment to the Lord that I’ve upheld on other days. But I went to sleep last night saying, “no, I don’t want to do it tomorrow….” And I woke up this morning still fighting that commitment. I didn’t want to do it. ..and I’m stubborn. …and stupid. So I didn’t do it. And now I’ve spent the entire day thinking about everything I haven’t done. Ever. In my entire life. Yeah, Satan stepped in, took advantage of my brokenness. He took the opportunity to turn my bad decision and deserved disappointment into a day filled with self pity and an overall disgruntled attitude. I’m still fighting what he’s throwing at my heart right now. But I’m trying to think about what God has given me, the many blessings I can count in my bed room right at this moment. I can see ten things, within arms reach, that have been true blessings from the Lord. I am choosing Christ. I am focusing on how to make my “right now” and my tomorrow: better. What decisions and choices will I face tomorrow where I can say “Okay Lord, I will follow through with what I promised You.” I don’t want to mess up again. I don’t want my determinedness to become stubbornness. My word will be true. If I say “okay, I’ll do this” then I am going to do it. Because today sucked. And I don’t need it to repeat itself due to my bad decision.

dinner time

this isn’t super fancy or exciting, but i made a movie of the boys at dinner time :o)  it starts off with them just playing around and waving (which they love to do) then you see them serving each other their plates and spoons.  it ends with them saying the Lord’s prayer in portuguese :o) hope you like it!

New Years Eve!

We celebrated New Years last night with a party and fireworks!  I spent the whole of the day doing hospitality things, mainly organizing the visitors and helping set up all the activities for the festa (party).  It was a really long day, of course, but I loved it.  I was incredibly busy from 9am until 1230am but it was still great :o) The festa started at 7pm with a movie: Merry Madagascar (which, btw, is completely hilarious. a must own for every parent) and then we began the stations.  I had set up 8 different stations with crafts or games: making a prayer card, a crown, necklaces out of beads, etc and my favorite: chubby bunny.  This game is awesome, Ithe counselors used to do it at the YMCA camp.  You put a marshmallow in your mouth and say “Chubby bunny” and then slowly add one and repeat without ever eating the marshmallow.  It was completely hilarious, I think the boys about 12-15 were the best at it because they understood the competition in the game and they had no inhibitions about having chunks fly out of their mouths.  It’s a completely disgusting game but so hilarious!  Sadly, I left my camera at my family’s house so I didn’t get any good pictures or videos. The stations were run by visitors and missionaries and they were going really well, until we tried to switch stations.  My American head just assumed we’d have a loud speaker or something and someone would say “Switch!” and bam, it’d be done.  But no, of course not, what was I thinking?  I looked around for the loud speaker and it hit me: I live in Mozambique.  So the switching was hectic, to say the least :o) We only switched stations 3 times (instead of 8 haha!) but it still took almost 2 hours.  So in the end, it worked out just fine and the kids were happy :o)  Then we watched another movie, gave them a second (and fancy) dinner with soda and sausage sandwiches, and finally headed down to the soccer pitch for fireworks!  This was my favorite part of the whole evening.  Here in Africa they’re allowed to set off fireworks on their own wherever they’d like, but they’ve only got 30 minutes.  Very scary for any American-raised girl…this whole “anyone can set them off” business.  I’ve never been so close to fireworks in my life.  The hilarious part was that the fireworks scared some of the children, there’s a beautiful display in the sky and their crying from the sounds…typical, but still a little funny. When the fireworks were all going off around the community it was stunning.  It was so beautiful.  All across the horizon all you could see were sparkles and fireworks.  The trees and houses covered up some of them, and that’s when all you’d see were sparkles.. but they looked like fairies to me :-) At one point someone right next door to us set off a truly professional firework that kept bursting and bursting for like 2 minutes.  It was so cool.  Last night was my favorite day here, by far :o)

now go backwards

Date: December 28th, 2009

My uncle took me out driving Sunday morning.  Yep… wow… I don’t know where to begin except to say I didn’t realize just how intuitive I am until I had to try and fight to ignore every instinct in me.  Driving on the right side, staying to the left, thinking the left side is the slow side… all weird.  But by far the hardest part was remembering that I didn’t know the length of the car, which meant I had to pay close attention to everything outside to the left of the car.  My uncle got pretty scared a few times, I must admit, having been sitting on the left side with a clear view of just how close I was cutting it. He was a good sport :o)  But it’s hard to think, “You’re close to the right, so you probably won’t hit anything on your right.  It’s the left side that you can’t see Rebecca.. the left side! watch out you almost took the mirror out!”  Haha, no no, I don’t think I got that close.

Other things I had to remember, which I don’t have to think about at home: potholes.  massive ones, the kind that can take your car OUT. There aren’t very many 4-stops even though there are hundreds of intersections… yeah, that was fun.  Drivers here like to pass a LOT.  and that means you can be in your lane then all the sudden have a car 10 feet in front of you, coming your way in your lane. Yep, your lane.  that’s fun, too.

The best analogy I can think of to explain how weird it is to drive on the other side is trying to ride a bike backwards.  I felt like I moved to a completely different planet.  And here they ride all their bikes backwards, with little tiny mirrors to help you out.  It felt like someone said “welcome! we don’t ride our bikes the way you do.  You know how to ride, right? Okay, good.  Now go backwards.”

want some cake?

last night was the funniest night i’ve experienced in my entire life. no questions asked, i’ve never laughed that much. i went to bed thinking fiona, heather and i were crazy, just hyper silly girls.. i thought we had turned to laughter in effort to salvage the day where (quite literally) everything went awry. but no, truly funny things happened.

it all started with the cake, the laughing that is. we’re at my family’s house and we were making a birthday cake for erin. so we google a “very moist” recipe and go for it. we even took two trips to the store to get things we didn’t have (slash, forgot.). as the ingredients were coming together my faith in the cake was crashing… it was runny, very very runny. as i put it in the oven i said, “i don’t think this is going to work….” and sure enough, one hour later, we’ve boiled a cake. yup, boiled. haha. it’s turned into this goupy brownie batter mixture, but its delicious! the day before hev & fi made a cake that, similar to this one, didn’t rise but that one tasted of gross eggs.. so in a small way this was a step up because it tasted good :o) we put the “cake” into a pot and messed with it on the stove hoping it would do something, anything, maybe even solidify enough to use as ice cream topping. the laughing fits begin when fiona very seriously asks, “want some cake?” as she drips it from a spoon. haha. at the end of the night, we’ve got our cake in a plastic crystal light container in my fridge.

at this point in the day, just before we took the cake out of the oven, only one thing had gone wrong: we came to my family’s house in hope of escaping noise and children and ended up attending the embassy’s (family) Christmas party. but that was fine, we hadn’t been upset about that because it was only one small this, thus far that is. after the cake fiasco we are ready to leave for erin’s birthday dinner. we’re in the car, making a u-turn in the street and heather states, “there’s a problem with the power sttteeerrrring (as she’s trying to turn the car around).” we try and get the guards at my uncle’s to look at it but, being Mozambicans, they really don’t drive and have cars, thus no desperately needed car knowledge. so we’re stuck at home. waiting for a driver to come from the center. the driver tells us he’s close, so (mostly me) all of us get moody and emo and very bummed that not only do we have to miss erin’s dinner but we also have to leave now and go back home. we all completely forgot we were dealing Mozambicans here, they say five minutes and mean 30! so when we think the driver will be here in 45 minutes that turns into two hours. we keep putting off watching a movie and ordering dinner because we think the driver will be there any minute. right when i get the movie going the door bell rings. so we take our cake and head off to get dinner with the drivers (who double as very fun cool guys)

after getting pizza to-go, we’ve swapped cars with the drivers. they drive home our wonky car and we stuff into the front of a pick up truck. then begins the jamming of heather’s arm into either mine or fiona’s sides as she attempts to switch gears with a person sitting on the hump seat in the middle. laughing starts again. and also fiona’s very close encounters with her hand and my mouth as she tries to lock the door from the hump seat. more laughter. we’re driving home with laptops, settlers games, and pizza in our laps. as we’re trying to pass out pizza and our arms are discombobulated and intertwined, we’re also looking for the kfc where chico and his friend are waiting for a ride home. we pull up to one and call chico, then realize we’re at the wrong kfc. there are only 3 in the city..we laugh off our stupidity. so then we’re feeling a bit confused, and naturally ask for help (because we’re girls, not boys). well the kind woman in the car next to us (the one we yelled at for ages trying to get her attention through her closed window) tells us with a very confused expression that the road we’re looking for is in fact the road we’re on. haha, we die laughing at this point and from here on our we don’t stop laughing until we’re asleep. so we drive up to the correct kfc seconds later, since we were so close, we get chico and his friend in the bed of the truck and head home. we’re flying over all the bumps and holes in the road, in true heather fashion, and we’re making it home in lightning speed. chico calls from the back of the truck and begs her to drive slower. laughing again, but apologizing at the same time.

we finally make it home to the center and as we’re dropping off the notebook with the car details i look up to heather dying laughing, wanting to know very quickly what’s funny this time so that i can join in. in one second i see why hev’s laughing… fiona is on her hands and knees having just fallen into the sand. she tripped her way off the step and all of her things that were once in her hand are now next to her strewn about on the sand and she’s not moving. other than her laughter, fiona’s not moving, and certainly not getting up anytime soon. and so, we laugh more. the night was wonderful. for a day that came very close to being dreadful, it was amazing. the kid party, the cake, eating fiona’s hand, greasy pizza in the car with three girls squished into two seats, and finally fiona’s graceless fall, the day was amazing. we had a fit of laughter again in church this morning, where hev actually left she was laughing so hard, it was a great night :o)