Tanzania 07 (big cut - activities only)

LEAVING FOR TANZANIA - 6/11/07 – 2:16 am
I spent most of Saturday night packing and waiting to get to the airport at three the next morning. And when three came around, I was surprised to learn that my flight was actually three in the afternoon and not in the morning, which made me feel kinda stupid, but let me go to another church service at the least.

Our flight to Atlanta was postponed about two hours, which means that we couldn’t be there in time to catch our New York flight, which would connect to Dubai next morning, then Dar es Salaam, then Mwanza. So we are spending the night in some Atlanta hotel tonight before flying out to New York next morning, where we will again spend the night before flying out to Dubai.

There are eight of us on the trip: Coach Adams, Ms. Baumann, Jake Nonwiler, Jordanne Morrow, Audrey Helmerich, Conley Craven, and Torie Bender. And, as a group, there is a bit of difficulty, because we do not hang out as a group. We don’t know what to talk about or even vital characteristics of everybody else. We don’t have a sense of team dynamics. And so we stand around quietly, nervously, and talk on our cell phones to others back home.

6/12/07 - ? pm
After the night in Atlanta, we took about two hours to get to New York, where we would have to spend the night again before our flight to Dubai that is happening now. Since we had the evening free to spend in NYC, we ended up riding the subway to Times Square to eat and go shopping. We ate at the Hard Rock Café and took tons of pictures because everything here seems to make Tulsa unreasonable boring. We had this crazy idea to go on the Today Show and to make signs and stay up all night to counter the jetlag because we should be sleeping a lot right now. We got about five or so hours of sleep and rushed off to the airport and we’re in the air now.

The plane is a Boeing 777 and it is amazing. It’s called Emirates Airlines or something, and the meals are really fancy. At each seat, there’s a monitor with a controller that looks a little like a Wii controller. Through these interfaces, you can play about forty different games (Pong, Chess), and you can play head to head against your friends or strangers on their different monitors. In a similar fashion, you can call your friend (or again, a stranger) and talk to them, as well as IM or e-mail. And that’s not it. The interfaces are loaded with tons of free music (much of it class rock or Japanese though) as well as a ton of movies. I was watching Happy Feet earlier (fell asleep though) and just got finished watching Accepted and now I’m listening to Coldplay. Now, with all of the main lights turned off, the overhead lights are dimmed blue and the ceiling is lit up with sparkles resembling stars. I though I could sleep the whole flight, but this is just really cool that it is keeping me awake.

We’re about over Greenland right now. You can look down and actually see all of these mountains, it’s pretty breathtaking. Group dynamics have sorta developed, but I still don’t really know the role I’m going to play.

6/13/07 – Between Dubai and Dar es Salaam - ? pm
We are just about to leave Dubai, our airplane is driving around. I caught close to no sleep on the twelve hour flight from NY to Dubai, and we will be arriving in Tanzania at about eight at night. This is a five hour flight, then maybe an hour flight to Mwanza. Since we get there in the afternoon and right now is about lunchtime, sleeping right now would throw us completely off their time, so it really is like an all nighter. Must resist…

[I eventually ended up sleeping most of this flight and then was completely out from Dar es Salaam to Mwanza…but it wasn’t actually that hard adjusting to the time change.]

TANZANIA - 6/14/07 – After lunch – 2 pm?
We flew about 28 hours or something – 12 from NYC to Dubai, 5 to Dar es Salaam, and an hour or two to Mwanza…that was yesterday. And to a certain extent, it was miserable. Time changes and cramped legs an inability to get some rest or relax or be apart of something exciting. But when we finally landed in Tanzania and the sun was setting and we drove back in Chris Gates’ Land Rover completely packed, everything was different. As a group, everything was different. Because we had finally made it, and it wasn’t that anything had exactly changed, not physically or literally. But things had.

So we are staying at the Gates’ house in Tanzania, where there is the orphanage just a couple of meters away, and we overlook Lake Victoria and mountains. We drove about 45 minutes out of Mwanza in the dark eating pizza, and I looked out and saw a sky full of stars. I thought I had seen stars in Tulsa when I could see like five in the distance, but here, they are completely all over the place at night. You feel like they are close, and they really do make you stand in wonder and awe and consider that you might not be such a big deal after all.

Everybody is very friendly, in the village and even on the roads headed towards Mwanza, nearly everybody seems to stop what they are doing to wave at us (I guess it helps that we are white). Chris also the one English word nearly everybody knows is “bye,” so the children will run to us as we drive by, waving and screaming “bye bye bye bye bye,” until we pass. Culturally, the women are not supposed to show any of their legs above their knees, so the whole idea of beauty is changed drastically and it is not much an attention on their bodies, I think, but the way they conduct themselves. And they don’t really have electricity or running water in nearly all the houses. Most people walk or ride bikes. And it’s a mistake to think that they are unfortunate or at any kind of disadvantage from us, because the truth is that they don’t need all of the things that we have. They are an incredibly passionate people, deserving of nothing less than our affection because it is like all they want is to be our friends and to hold our hands to see we are not so different after all.

They have cows and pigs and dogs up here, and Chris was looking at some roosters today. There isn’t exactly a neighborhood Wal-Mart and score one that I haven’t seen a McDonald’s. They had two water buffalo from last year, Buckwheat and Eeyore, but Eeyore was cut one day by a drunkard and bled to death overnight (which prompted a village wide feast as water buffalo are enormous). The pigs are named Selma, Bacon, Egg, and Porkchop, and the dogs are named Mosey, Rambo, and Machete. The cows are all named after characters from The Office. They are constantly upgrading and advancing their facilities so that they might become self-sufficient or self-sustaining in the future – right now, they are building a new house beside the orphanage and trying to get electricity for the house (they even have wi-fi). They have us digging up the borders of a foundation for a new cow barn (a foot and a half deep, a foot across, and the rectangle is 20 feet by 72). We managed to do both of the twenty foot sides today and be thoroughly exhausted, but it is great because we are actually working.

And for food – I’m not sure how normal it is, but this morning, Chris made cinnamon rolls and we had curry and rice along with pineapple and mango for lunch (I wish Ruth could se this). And Chris sleeps on a queen sized waterbed, so we are by no means living horribly tough or dirty lives here, though I have to wonder if my spiritual life isn’t. Because even though it is great and I do enjoy it, I don’t want to waste it, you know. I’m talking about relevance.

6/15/07 – A little before lunch – 6 pm?
We did both twenty foot sides of the foundation of the cow barn yesterday, only to find out today that our second side had actually been above a grace and if we had dug deeper, we would have ended up with a body. We just finished shoveling about half of one of the 72 foot sides (now 67), and so blisters are forming on my hands and it is frustratingly hard to write or draw straight lines.

Also, in the house where we are staying, they are putting up ceilings, so Jake and I got a chance to help out Paul Goodman build and help place and nail beams for the ceiling into the roof frame (because all we had in the house were the walls and no ceilings for the rooms, so you could technically jump from one room to another by climbing the walls). Paul Goodman is a missionary from Kirk of the Hills; he is actually leaving tomorrow, and he led a Bible study yesterday about Nehemiah and will do one tonight about Joseph. His daughter, Abby, is also here, and she goes to OSU.

In the morning, Chris and all of the girls excluding Ms. Baumann went to the market to get oil (to provide us with running water, hurrah for showers and washing hands), as well as a goat and three live chickens. There are many preparations needing to happen for tomorrow because we are celebrating all the girls’ birthdays (because their birthdays are unknown). So while Chris and the others were gone, Ms. Baumann, Jake, Kathryn, and I planted cucumbers, about twenty mounds of twelve seeds each. The girls also came down and watched us work and then we ended up playing for a while with a beachball.

There was a mango tree right where we were, and one of the girls was throwing rocks at some mangos. In the end, Jake had knocked down seven for each of the girls and they ate them.

Before lunch, we also got another chance to play with the girls. It was great fun, they have this game that’s kind of like Red Rover, because both teams have one member to represent them and those two members play a game of tug-of-war and whoever wins gains the other onto his/her team.

We also played Bata Bata Kuku (or the equivalent pronunciation of cuckoo in English), which is Duck Duck Chicken, because they don’t have geese over there. I’ve actually learned some Swahili. Hujambo or jambo is ‘hello,’ hubariacho is ‘how are you?’ Ndiyo is yes, habana is no, nzoori is good, sana is very (so nzoori sana is very good), asante is thank you, paka is cat, umgua is dog, and samba is lion and rafiki is friend. Peepee is candy.

Last night, Jordanne threw up after dinner. She wasn’t feeling so well, but she’s back again today. On the first night, she was sleeping and apparently said “Where am I? I’m scared,” before falling off the top bunch and landing on the ground. Those bunks are pretty high though, very notably. She doesn’t remember any of it or how it happened, but it’s somewhat of a big deal that she wasn’t hurt. At the boys orphanage in town, TCRC, a boy last year fell off the top bunk and died. My point exactly.

6/16/07 – 9:35 pm
I remember starting the application for this Tanzania trip the day before it was due and waking y mom up the next morning to ask her to sign it. From that point on to the first couple days into the trip, I still didn’t know what I was doing going on this trip and whether or not I had lost my mind.

But today was worth it. Not only was it National Children of Africa Day, but Chris had chosen this day to celebrate the girls’ birthdays. In the morning, we were working on the other half of the now lessened 72 foot side. We got a late start to it though, because it was raining hard. We thought it might be easier to dig the trenches, but it actually wasn’t on the surface. We worked hard though and got into a groove.

For the party, Chris and Mrs. Gates baked cakes and they killed a goat. We had bags for each of the girls and we filled them with birthday cards, books, little plastic rings, stickers, candy, and toothbrushes. Sarah and Ms. Baumann had also bought dresses for all of the girls, including Agnes, Rachel, and Mama Tisla. All of the workers were invited to the party around lunch time, and a new orphan arrived just before we were going to start – Yamalwa. We ate and various songs were sung, then the girls were presented a kite, two baseballs and bats, and all of their bags. They were pretty excited.

We went down after that and played with all of the things we had gotten them. We threw balls around and the girls were pretty good at batting and it wasn’t long before we were playing Down by the Banks, Bata Bata Kuku, and that Red Rover/Tug of War game. We eventually got out the soccer balls (it’s actually football over here) and we didn’t have enough space, so we walked a bit to a football field, but everyone came and so it was something special. Mama Tisla was our goalie and Agnes was pretty good, and they say we lost four to five, but I have my doubts. Even a bunch of random village boys joined to play with us, some of them pretty good. It was a lot of fun, even if we did lose.

I lost my hat to like three different girls, so I’m kind of unnecessarily proud. Because I have a little better idea of what I am doing here. I am playing soccer with a bunch of orphan girls and having a ridiculously fun time and giving them all high fives for scoring goals and giving them things that they can remember for the rest of their lives, be it a birthday present or a cow barn or a Krispy Kreme hat.

After showers, we ate dinner and sat around talking. There are three or so mice in the house, and Coach Adams, among others, is absolutely terrified of them, so we named one of the mice after her and tried to catch it. Efforts were futile, but it was pretty funny, and our room was pretty much dismantled in our pursuits (our mattresses and luggage).

We learned a couple more phrases in Swahili:
Sijambo – your default response to Hujambo. “I am good.”
Si jui – “I don’t know”
Gina soko ni nani? – “What is your name?”
Gina longu ni ____ - “My name is ____”
Una fayaje? – “What are you doing?” or “What’s up?”

We are going to church tomorrow, and Chris said they don’t work on Sundays, so it will be a relaxing day. Over here, it is easier to see the significance of a day of rest, because there is always something to do or to work on, since a house is being built, crops need to be maintained, and we are digging trenches for a cow barn. And it is pretty tiring. Things would be pretty crazy if we never took a break. And it always seems like a challenge trying to stay up past nine in the evening.

6/17/07 – 4:36 pm
Today was a church and rest day. Church was held in the school, a little bit past the football field. Time there is very relaxed and people just gather whenever they want and the services start whenever it is unanimously agreed. I have to admit I didn’t get that much out of the service as it was mostly in Swahili, but the choir sang and danced and it was pretty cool, and we went up and sang as well. It was another one of those moments, figuring out what it is I’m doing here – because we were singing “I could sing of Your love forever” to about forty or fifty people, and though they couldn’t understand us, just our being there and doing something like that was significant.

Walking back, it was cool because a little girl grabbed my hand and I got to walk with her. Her name was Monica and she took my hat and wore it and I thought it was cool because I held someone’s attention for a moment. When we got back home, one of the cows (Pam) had a swollen eye, so Chris and John went to check it out, and it was pretty intense. The cow kept on busting through the barbed wire fence and scraping itself up. They finally roped her and got her down, but I missed it because I was playing football with some boys (and by football, I mean soccer). Turns out it had a whole bunch of ticks.

We ate lunch and dinner with the girls – dinner was chicken fajitas and mango, but there were a whole lot of bugs in the house, so we all ate fast and then danced. We taught them the Macarena and the Chicken Dance.

6/19/07 – 7:55 am
You know how in cartoons someone will have a really bad day, like horrendously bad, and then will wake up the next morning to find that it’s the same day and that they can redeem themselves? Maybe that’s today for me.

10:26 pm
Well, it wasn’t exactly like re-living yesterday. Things seemed nearly as hard. We did our own laundry, which I was pretty self-conscious about. Then we switched jobs with three of Chris’s workers. Instead of us digging the trenches, it was three women, and we began lugging rocks over to our ditches to form the foundation.

After lunch, I just kind of laid around reading the Ted Dekker book Lydia gave me until I eventually got the energy to go hang out with everybody and bead friendship bracelets. I’m a bit of an introvert, and I think it is beginning to show quite a bit. I hear I don’t finish my sentences, and that I mumble a lot. It reminded me of a time I went to a Korean church retreat for a week and one of the chaperones thought I was depressed because I was so introverted.

6/20/07 – Before dinner – 5:30 pm?
Today we lugged more rocks to the ditches of the cow barn and filled nearly everything up, plastering it together with cement. Spend around two and a half hours at least working hard, and in the morning, we hiked the huge hill behind our house with the girls. That’s about it. Mrs. Gates (Chris’ mom) flew out this morning, but Mary Lindemuth (HH alum) arrived yesterday night, her third year here. I’m gonna go shower. God bless.

6/21/07 – 9:24 pm
Our third day lugging rocks around, mixing cement for the foundation of the cow barn. Didn’t get that much work done, but on a plus, my biceps are getting bigger. We went running in the morning with the girls, and I ran with Yama1wa, and it turns out that she’s a crazy good runner. I am pretty sure we ran around a 5k and she was pushing it in random places – but absolutely no training. She did it in a dress and sandals, good stride nonetheless. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. She’s got some serious speed and endurance. We’re going again tomorrow (kesho hasiburi).

Other than that, nothing big has really happened. We got couches in the house, nice brown leather ones I’m sitting on now, listening to newly purchased speakers blasting someone’s iPod. We have been working on trying to find songs to sing in church, because we don’t want to “embarrass” ourselves like last Sunday, since their choir was so well rehearsed with music and choreography. Think we’ll probably at least sing Seasons of Love form the musical Rent, and then we still need three more songs.

Seems like we kinda slummed around today, but we played with the girls a lot. On Saturday, we’re going to the Serengeti, which is apparently bigger than Connecticut. And Sunday is church/rest day, so I think we’ll need to work hard to see everything done with the cow barn, since we’re leaving Thursday morning.

6/22/07 – 8:01 pm
I slept in today and we finished loading the wide wall with rocks so we have another twenty footer and a bit of the other wide wall to fill. Today was my fourth day lugging rocks (seven or eight was my average, and I do think I’m getting stronger). And it was very exhausting – nobody ever seems to see me, so I took sprints up the hill to get rocks, and then I break danced for a while at the end of the day. After a while, people started noticing and I even got a crowd of boys, though I never really landed the move I was trying. I think we’ll have a dance party or rave before we leave, so I really want to get some moves down to show all of the girls.

6/23/07 – 7:37 pm
Running over here is great, pretty far from being boring. Mountains and sunsets, a lot of people puzzlingly staring while I wave and say “jambo.” Grace as well. Though I haven’t been training, I can still hit a strong 7 minute mile pace with the altitude and energy to spare. We’re going again tomorrow morning with the girls.

Today we hit a dog going to the Serengeti, world’s largest natural wildlife preserve. Spent a great deal of time there, including breakfast and lunch, and we saw a huge variety of animals – lions, elephants, monkeys, ostriches, gazelles, wildebeests, giraffes, and more (though no cheetahs…or meerkats). We supposedly spent about twelve hours in a car today, woke up at five this morning to get there. And waking up was surprisingly easy.

6/24/07 – 10:59 pm
Today was church and rest, so about five of us cashed in on twelve hours of sleep. I woke up and went running with Yamalwa since I had been telling her “kesho hasiburi” (tomorrow morning) for a couple of days. We got at least a mile and came back. After breakfast and events like milking a cow and feeding that milk to the newly born calf (still unnamed), we walked the half mile or so to church and I was pretty sure I would fall asleep. A trip to the house and back to pick up a video camera and return Rambo (who had followed us to church) made me even more tired and in need of water. Right before the sermon, Jordanne grew really dizzy and had to leave, but I think she’s good now. Church was nice, but most people were falling asleep and I honestly wasn’t paying attention to anything either.

When we came back, Chris gave me a haircut, and it actually looks pretty good, it’s just really random. We had lunch with the girls, washed the dishes, and casually hung out until dinner, which we had with two of Chris’ workers who just recently gave us a pregnant goat. Did those dishes then went over to the big house and sang and prayed with the girls. Great fun.

6/26/07 – 9:40 pm and 6/27/07 – 8:05 am
A bit of catching up:

On the 23rd, Saturday. Chris and one of his friends Kathy were the ones who showed us around the Serengeti. Kathy works as one of the English teachers at NTC – Nassa Theological College, one of the few straight up ministry training programs in Africa. It turns out that a huge percentage of pastors and leaders in the church in Africa have been without any kind of training, so this is good. After the Serengeti, we got to take a quick tour around the college.

On the 18th, we went to the market in Mwanza and then the Tanzania Children’s Rescue Center, or TCRC, a rather large all boy orphanage. At the market, we bought congas and souvenirs (things ranging from spoons to wooden animals to spears). At TCRC, we pretty much just hung out with all of the guys for an hour or two and heard them sing. Their English is the best I’ve heard here, by far, and they even greet us using “What’s up?” Nearly all of them have been given Biblical names, since probably a huge majority were abandoned as babies and later found. One of them, named James, an aspiring musician, sang 50 Cent for us.

Two days ago, on the 25th, we did about the same thing – going to the market (Internet café, art store) and then to TCRC for lunch since Chris had a lunch meeting somewhere in town. I splurged about $40 at the art store buying things for the youth group. At TCRC, we played soccer for about an hour and then I hung out with these guys I met – Elisha and David. It’s kind of sad because all of them were asking when we were coming back and we couldn’t tell them. Jordanne bent her toenail playing soccer and one of the kids said, “Tomorrow you wear shoes,” and when she said we weren’t coming back that day, he said, “Day after?” So it really is sad that we could have only been there for a couple of hours.

Elisha wants to go and get a job. He seems pretty down to earth – I think he said he was 16. David, 14 or so, said he didn’t know who his mother was and wanted to find out when he grew up. They asked me to pray for them because they were going to take a national schooling exam in nine months and want to do well. David can do kung fu – there is someone at TCRC teaching some boys; he and another kid could launch off of rocks in the ground and do backflips and kicks. So they really are being set up for futures. The first day we visited, one of the common questions was, “What do you want to do?” And people here want to be astronauts. Engineers. Soccer players. The importance of dreaming is inexpressible.

I wish I could stay and work with TCRC. I promised Elisha and David to send them the pictures we took together and that I would pray for them. But I wish I could do more. I wish I could truly be their friends and that they would see God in me and love and that I want to see them succeed as much as I want myself to, maybe more. God does that kind of work. He touches the broken and the fatherless and the ones nobody wants or pays attention to and lifts them up to rip to shreds a world of ego and self righteousness, to show He is mighty to save.

Yesterday we were working on the foundation, though for the morning, most of the group went to get concrete (sand + concrete + water = cement?) and so the rest of us packed or played with the girls. When they came back, we waited a bit and started working again, though not with as much momentum as we did earlier. Anyways, they needed big rocks, and there was a place where I frequently went to get big rocks, on top of an even larger rock that was sloped and slippery, though I had never really slipped on it. But I got a big rock and on the descent, I slipped and fell backwards onto my back, and the big rock I was carrying landed on me sorta between my hip and my groin, where there isn’t much to seriously hurt. I didn’t do anything for about an hour, then ate lunch, and we eventually went to the hospital (being checked + buying medication cost a little under $7). It didn’t hurt that much except the first hour, but now everything is pretty much entirely fine, and I can really only feel it when I sneeze or cough.

Yesterday we also painted a wall of the girls’ room, because I think it was Audrey’s idea to paint all of the girls’ hands and names on the wall. So we laid down a base, which is actually pretty hard if you are painting on concrete, since it absorbs the paint (so a base paint is annoyingly difficult).

That night, we split up into two groups of four and one of three and went to some of the villagers’ houses as guests for dinner. My group (Team Awesome) was composed of Kathryn, Mary Lindemuth, Jordanne, and me. Chris dropped us off and we were seated in a really small shack with African hip hop radio playing in the background, barely large enough to hold six of us. We tried to make small talk (they didn’t speak any English) with limited success and eventually had mandazi (scones) and chai. The real meal was rice and beans with beef and fish, and it was actually pretty good. Afterwards, they busted out a tape player and we danced around casually for over an hour. Then they gave us a chicken. It was a good night.

Today we’re gonna try to finish up the paint job and probably just play with the girls. It doesn’t feel like our last day – anything but. I don’t want to have to leave, but it is still something I am looking forward to – getting to go back home and be with friends and eat out with my family, all of which I feel I have taken for granted. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to all of the news and media, all of the fashionably clothed people, how you can live and interact with people on the streets without ever really finding out who they are.

6/28/07 – Between Dar Es Salaam and Dubai
Leave it to a five hour layover followed by a five hour flight to ruin momentum, but there’s still no better time to write this. Yesterday was our last full day in Africa. We woke up and worked on the cow barn foundation for a little before stopping to play with the girls. We colored and joked around and after lunch, we took a bunch of pictures and videos of them singing and dancing. That night, Chris had figured we could go to some place where the fishermen hang out so that we could catch the sunset over Lake Victoria. It wasn’t a long drive, but it was a drive nevertheless, which turned out to be the problem because we ended up with half of the car stuck in a ditch of mud. 20 or 30 minutes later with 10 or 15 villagers and a swarm of kids, we had the car out. So we missed out on the sunset coming on the water, but we got to watch pregnant women dig a Land Rover out of mud. We even saw a rabid dog. Talk about something special…

We came back and played a game of Spoons with empty water bottles and then a “campfire game.” We then went to go be with the kids, and they gave us a short farewell presentation and Mama Tisla spoke for a little bit about God and His presence and work. The girls sang and we shared our experiences and Rachel sang and it was all pretty remarkable [get a copy of the video if you can, it was amazing]. And…I didn’t want to leave. I mean, I do, but…it’s ambivalence.

I wanted to keep being there for them. I wanted to see them grow up, I wanted to be able to hold their hands and play their games and rejoice their successes and mourn their losses and let them know that they were loved intensely and that I was there for them and nothing else and being with them was worth it.

LEAVING TANZANIA - 6/29/07 – Between Dubai and NYC – about 4 am?
Leave it to an eleven hour flight, a good movie, and the shopping in the Dubai international airport to make everything seem better, a lot better than after that five hour layover in Dar es Salaam. Anticipation peaks even more for the return home, though there is still around at least eleven hours before we reach Tulsa. It seems once we land in NYC, we’ll be home free, and the four or so hours to Cincinnati and Tulsa will be the last 400 of any distance race.

So…this is it. Trip’s over. Conclusions will follow, but really things are beginning just as they’re ending. Michigan and OU, signs of independence.

6/30/07 – Atlanta Airport – about 7 pm
We landed in NYC at about 9 after our 11 or 12 hour flight to Dubai, giving us an uncomfortable hour and a half to get through customs and retrieve and check in our luggage before our flight to Cincinnati to get us back home by 2:40. But the thing is – our 10:30 Cincinnati flight didn’t actually exist. The flight numbers we had didn’t even exist. We spent about an hour and a half working things out and we were finally set up for a 1:15 flight to Atlanta followed by a 6:30 to Tulsa to get us home by 7:30.

But Atlanta was postponed until 2:30. Turns out they didn’t know what kind of plane they had either. They didn’t even have enough seats for everyone – they overbooked. Only because we complained did we get to board at 2:30 (when we should have been leaving) and even then there were only about ten seats left, so we barely made it on, and then I think they just let whoever complained the most on after us until the plane was full. We were with people who had just come back from Iraq, someone who was supposed to sing at a wedding and would be late, someone who had been trying to get to Cincinnati for a day and still couldn’t get set up with a flight.

Three hours later and several disturbingly long taxiing dilemmas, we were getting into the Atlanta airport at 6:20, and our flight was to leave at 6:30, and they usually close the boarding gates 15 minutes prior to take off. We found out the flight was delayed to 6:40, but that did little to ease our drives to get home (we couldn’t spend another night away from home – it’s been 39 hours of flight so far). I was fortunate to be the runner. I took off sprinting for the gate – C35. All the adrenaline aside, it was just really fun – dodging people as if a high speed chase, myself against time, maneuvering my way past pedestrians and baggage. About a quarter mile later – literally one side of the concourse level to the other, I got to C35 in time to learn our flight was actually at gate C24, though our tickets read C35. A devoted eighth or so of a mile later and an adrenaline mixed with fear a Delta worker couldn’t nave understood, we made our flight.

I didn’t think we would run into problems coming back – I thought everything would run smoothly and on time, just as planned. But it turns out that nearly all of our flights were delayed, and one didn’t even exist. Talk about adventure. I wrote three weeks ago, “But the days have lost their energy and shine and they roll off before I can take advantage of them.” Now, I can’t help from smiling and thinking this is answered prayer.

And another thing – don’t fly Delta.

Conclusion
A couple days ago I was dwelling on the idea that the world might be a better place if we treated everybody like orphans, like those who had been abandoned and mistreated and abused and deserved our love and attention. But now, I think it might be better if we saw ourselves as orphans instead, who count any kind of glory or opportunity or affection a blessing and a privilege, not a right or an obligation or a burden.

What I learned from working with those eight orphans is that they are the perfect example of how you can have nothing and still be loved. Because all of them came off the streets or were abused in their homes; all of them were overlooked, rejected, undervalued, and violated. And God was still there and these were the ones He died for – He is the life to their death.

And they are perhaps an even better example of how you can have nothing and still love. Love life and love people and love God. You couldn’t know just by reading this what these girls taught me by the way they live their lives. You wouldn’t be able to see the joy and enthusiasm they express in everything they do and have. You wouldn’t be able to see their smiles and how they would run to us with open arms and you wouldn’t be able to hear their songs and laughter and feel the love in their eyes and the hope emanating from their hearts.

And if you could know all these things, you would struggle to hold back tears, because you would know that this is the way we should be living our lives.

It was around the start of the second week when I went over to the house where the orphans were and left them my Rubik’s cube because they were playing with it. On our very last night, we went back and they had this whole presentation for us – Mama Tisla preached and the girls sang and we talked about our experiences and what we would remember and they sang more songs and we prayed. And I was starting to see that these girls were really something special, and though they had been hurt and clearly didn’t have what others had, they were getting loved on so much here and now.

Sitting there at the very end of our prayer time, I wondered if I could ask the girls to return my Rubik’s Cube; I soon realized it would have been pointless and I would have been making a mistake if I did. I had just learned that my pride and accomplishments would never abound for anything. Because I was hurt, just like these girls, and how fast I could solve a Rubik’s Cube wouldn’t make a difference. We were all hurt, just like these girls, but the difference is that we throw news and bragging rights and spiritual jargon and social economics into the picture and we bury ourselves deeper. That is how America can be just as poor and destitute as Tanzania, one of the poorest nations in the world. Because our problems are only hidden, structured into society. With money and religion and pride and this mentality that just as long as you have a big house and a lot of friends, you won’t have any problems.

And so, my dilemma was would I have liked to get really good at my Rubik’s Cube, or would I have given it away for someone else to enjoy, even if they never knew what it really was? And the girls didn’t exactly need either option. The one thing they didn’t need was for me to have pride and falsely make myself seem smarter because of something I did. The one thing they needed was a friend, someone who could identify with their problems and who would accept them for themselves. And since I am just as broken, what I don’t need is pride and a sense of self-righteousness. What I simply need is a friend. Someone who identifies with me, someone who truly accepts and truly forgives and truly loves. And I think this is who everyone needs – someone who loves them so much that they might die for them to live and yet someone who associates with them and would pick them above anyone else to spend an afternoon.

So I left them my Rubik’s Cube.