In November of 2000 I was
given the opportunity to go to Africa on a mission trip with others from my
church. We call these Work & Witness trips and we pay our own expenses
although on this particular trip, as I was the president of the Mission Council,
someone anonymously paid all my expenses for the trip. The exception, of
course, was any personal costs like passport, extra clothing (we needed to wear
only long, modest dresses) and any souvenirs.
As I mentioned in a previous
blog, in January of 2000 I spent two weeks in the hospital following a
chemotherapy treatment that left me weak as well as bald. My doctor assured me
I’d have my hair back by March or April at the latest but although I’d regained
my strength by then, my hair wasn’t cooperating. By November I finally had
enough hair to allow me to leave my wigs at home. But it was so very short and
since I have such fine hair my hair stylist suggested dyeing it as it would
give it some body. I’m still dyeing it—for the body, of course—not to cover any
gray.
I joined seven others as we
flew out of DIA to Atlanta, Georgia. From there we flew to France where we
changed planes in a drizzling rain. We deplaned on the tarmac and bussed to our
next plane that then made a stop in Riyhadh, Saudi Arabia. I’ve never seen a
place so lit up—it even outdid the Las Vegas strip. From there we landed in
Djibouti City, Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, our destination. Four of the
group stayed there while another group of four, including me, took a plane the
next day to Hargeisa, Somaliland, a Muslim country and our assignment was to go
to an orphanage to make it more habitable for the children. The country was in
the process of recovering after a civil war. We found bullet holes in the roofs
and walls of the orphanage.
Three missionaries stationed
in the Horn of Africa accompanied our group. Our task consisted of making
repairs to the buildings while showing the people what Christians are really
like. We found out that Muslims there believe all Christians are like the
people they see in our movies. I don’t know about you but I don’t feel these type
people portray Christians at all.
There are so many stories I
could tell you about this trip but I think I’ll keep most of them till later.
We spent our time at the orphanage fixing it up, making repairs, putting
together a playground including a huge tire embedded in the sand for climbing
over, under and through, and teaching life skills to some of the older children.
My main job took place in the nursery rooms where I painted bright figures on
the walls.
We also presented them with
a new computer, sewing machines and the fellows in our group made beds for the
older children who still slept on the hard floor. The playground equipment and
the bed frames were all fashioned from materials the orphanage had lying
around. The guys were quite ingenious in all they did.
After our week and a half
there we flew—in a Russian airplane, with a Russian pilot, yet—back to Djibouti
to join the other group. Scheduled to leave on a Monday the missionary leader
stationed in Africa held a service on Sunday evening in the apartment where we
all stayed and included a healing service. I asked for prayer for healing of
the cancer as during the trip my pain reared its ugly head—again. It wasn’t
unendurable, yet, but I just wanted it gone forever.
For those who don’t know,
God answers prayer but not always when we ask or as soon as we’d like Him to. I
know, I know, sometimes we feel we needed the answer yesterday. My response to
that—get over it. God’s love resides in everything that comes our way.
Praise the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
Psalm
103:2
The Lord is compassionate
and gracious,
slow
to anger, abounding in love.
Psalm
103:8
No comments:
Post a Comment