Florida in the Bush

 

 

Just a few days into the month of June, we had a team of ten people join us from Florida. It was a team composed of mainly young adults, and their pastor, from a Baptist church that has been supporting Amber and Jako for many years. They came out here eager to put a roof on the school house and to organize and set up the library, in addition, to other ministry that we had planned for them. To our surprise on our way back into the bush, Amber hurt her foot chasing after Jakob in a friend’s yard. She thought it was just sore, so we took off for the two hour ride into the bush. When we got back to camp, it was very late and dark. For the first time in two hours we checked Amber’s foot and found out it was quite swollen (looked like she had a tennis ball under her skin). The next day we decided to call our health insurance and they confirmed that it was probably a fracture or break and that she needed to come to Livingstone for x-rays. By God’s grace, they got clearance for her to be airlifted out of the bush to the general hospital in Livingstone, where her brother Josh met her with the car hours later. It turned out she broke the bone on the outside of her  arch and had to get a cast put on. They were gone for the first two days of the trip and thankfully Amber and I prepared all the food plans for the week, so I was able to step in a help organizing the meals every day, in addition, to helping out with Jakob for the time she was gone. Once she got back, we encouraged her to take it easy, but we all know Amber and how she can’t sit still for long…

After things settled back down, the team jumped right in and started to work. The men got right to work making fourteen a-frames for the roof of the school house. It took them almost two whole days just to get the frames done. Once the frames were up and ready, the hard job of leveling came next. Surprisingly enough, the guys let me hop up on the roof and help level the frames so that when we put the roof sheets on, there won’t be any leaks. The leveling took an entire day and I think the locals were amazed to see a girl on the roof, working in a skirt! I have done many roofs on mission trips, but this was the first one I have done in Africa in a skirt :o) Interesting experience… We finished leveling everything late in the evening on the team’s last day in the bush. Jako realized that if we just left it with no roof sheets on, then the sun would warp everything and we would have to start over again; so Jako, Mark, Steve, and I stayed up until 2 am putting up the roof sheets on both sides of the roof…man it was a cold night!!

While the men were diligently working on the roof, the women were helping me in the library organizing the books and labeling them according to the dewy decimal system. We had piles and piles of books all over the floor and the shelves. When all the books were organized and on the shelves, we realized that there wasn’t enough shelf space, so we arranged to have more shelves put in. While they were here, Jako and I were able to put in one wall of shelving, which helped us get more books up and organized. The library isn’t completely finished yet, but after a few more days in there, it will be ready! The team even bought us a scanner and computer program to inventory all the books and we are praying that the next team that comes at the end of this month will be able to scan and enter in all the books. These women also took on the huge burden of preparing most of the meals, doing the clean up, helping with laundry, and organizing clothes and other donations.

God really used the young women on this team to encourage me and lift my spirits. It was so nice to sit in the library day after day, just chatting with the girls about anything and everything (i.e. God, moments of joy, moments  of sorrow, food, books, struggles, encouragements, scripture, marriage, singleness, embarrassing moments, and so much more.) God knew how much I needed that and he sent just the right women to come along side and befriend me. It was the most enjoyable part of the trip for me. I will miss them dearly, but I am excited to keep in touch with them through emails and hopefully see a lot of them back next year :o)

After their time in the bush, we headed to Livingstone for a couple days before they flew out. The first night we got there, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset cruise with a small meal. That same night there was a full moon, so we went to Victoria Falls and saw a lunar rainbow, one of the few places in the world you can see one, and to our surprise, it was the same night as the solar eclipse! We got to witness two rare and spectacular events in one night at the falls…what a beautiful experience/memory to share with this team.