Back to the grindstone

Any run of the mill guidance counselor when asked, “what should I do for a living?” would most likely give the sage advice of, “Find whatever you would love to do, even if for free, and then find a way to get paid for it…”.

As I’m coming out of my two month break from normal work as I adjusted to married life, I can’t help but yet again scream from the rooftops, “I LOVE MY JOB!!!!” Most people would rejoice at two months off from work… I was finding every possible way to go back early. I ached to be back with my students. I would see them and they would ask when I was coming back and to tell them May 1st seemed just way too far away. Needless to say I may or may not have gotten back a little before that date. The Bible study at Jinja SS and the youth group are just two of my favorite things. I’m so blessed to get to serve these students! You ask anyone who knows them, they would tell you they are AWESOME kids. And it’s true. I’ve seen God work in such cool ways as He grabs a hold of them and they follow Ecclesiastes 12:1, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth…” He has in many ways placed a protective bubble around them helping them to be “as innocent as doves” even in this ever worsening world.

This next week they go on school holiday for the next month. On the agenda this month will be some of what we did last holiday with having classes throughout the week for them to learn more about their Bibles in more intense ways to make them true disciples with the end result of what Jesus says in John 13:17, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them”. (emphasis mine).

We will also be taking a group of students to Entebbe for a large youth conference hosted by the Calvary Chapel there. The students are psyched out of their minds at the prospect of getting out of Jinja for a few days and meeting new friends… I am battling the heart palpitations of trying to make sure that they are well supervised and that they don’t bump into “bad company”. Needless to say that’s a prayer request.

We continue to pray that the students will grow in the grace and knowledge of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and that they would be different from the youth around them (even “Christian” youth). That they would be true doers of the Word. Please just pray for us over this next month as we try to pour into the students in an incredibly concentrated way.

The Amazing Race Honeymoon Edition: Part 2

Well… we made it to our hotel. It was a beautiful little resort where everything was pretty average except for the staff. We ended up having the exact amount of money needed to pay for everything. Again, thank you to all who gave to help our honeymoon be extra awesome!

The first full day there, it rained. But really after all that travel, it wasn’t so bad to get to just hang out. The hotel staff arranged for a tour of some coral caves for a decent price and so we took them up on it. It was so cool seeing what God does even deep under the ground. God’s beauty just absolutely amazes me on a almost a daily basis and this one brought a big WOW! I won’t lie though, I had some super fun and exciting bouts with claustrophobia the deeper we climbed into those caves. At one point, I looked back to where we came from the entrance and it was pitch black…gulp! But then I remembered that there is nowhere I can flee from His presence and that helped. That afternoon we were able to partake of the beach. The hotel didn’t have their own beach because of the tide at the actual hotel location, although it is oceanfront. But we were able to take a shuttle 5 minutes away to their private beach and that was really cool… except that I found out how awesome it is to get stung by a jellyfish. That wasn’t so fun. But it was great seeing Davis as he just took it all in and enjoyed the ocean waves. I’m not a big water person anyway, so I was very ok in the observation area ☺



Day two, we decided to go to Stone Town… it’s the old original capital town of Zanzibar. It has awesome history and was the highlight of our trip. We made it there early afternoon and walked around basically checking out the history and the art. We went to the old palace for the sultan and it was just so cool actually being in a palace… I’ll admit I’m pretty sure that was a first for me. And I won’t lie, all I could think about when I heard the word “sultan” was “ALADDIN!” We Finished off the day with watching the absolutely amazing sunset from the balcony of a restaurant at the top of a hotel. It was so cool!



Day three, we partook of the glories of the honeymoon package. Part of that package was that we were able to take a little boat to a private beach across the bay. The day was perfect and the trip took about two hours but it was amazing to take in the sights of people wading through the water to fish and also collect a certain type of grass to sell. We also were able to see some AMAZING starfish. I had never really seen starfish in the wild so that was way too cool… we also saw lots and lots of jellyfish. That was cool to see, but definitely took away any of my desire to ever really get in the water. The beach was not really swimmable so we just enjoyed a rather large twin bed hammock and then the best food we had on the trip.



Day four consisted of just some chill couple time. We went to the beach but it was way too hot so we went back had some lunch and just hung out. That evening we had the rest of our perks of being a honeymoon couple with me getting a massage (it was fabulous!) and then getting to use the Jacuzzi and that night we had a seafood dinner (although I must say it was not all it was cracked up to be, and I was a bit disappointed but still…)

Day five was the day we left. We had breakfast and boarded the daladala and headed into town to load up on the ferry. The bad part was the daladala gave us the wrong instructions on where we should be let off so we ended up having to walk a couple of miles with all of our stuff trying to get to the ferry port just as it was about to rain. We get to the port, and this time our ferry was probably older than we were so needless to say I promptly took the motion sickness medicine. We then got to Dar es Salaam and tried to find our guest house we booked since the bus wouldn’t leave until the morning. This was yet another part of our amazing race. On the website it looked close to the bus terminal… nope! It ended up costing over double what we had anticipated just to get to the guesthouse. To make things even more fun, I had put the money in my front pocket to pay for our night’s stay but when I went to pay, it was gone. I assume it fell out when I tried to take my phone out… and we didn’t have any more money on hand. But at least the guesthouse was totally accommodating and even brought us to the ATM in the wee hours of the morning to get the money for our stay and to take us to the bus park.

Our trip home, we decided to take the way through Kenya (it was just one 24 hour ride instead of a 24 hour ride, staying the night somewhere and then another 12 hour ride). The elections in Kenya had finished and everything seemed to be pretty peaceful. The trip home was gloriously uneventful and we got back home on Sunday afternoon.

It really was a trip of a lifetime where I got a crash course in submission recognizing that I really don’t know all the right answers and how I need to yield to my husband’s better judgment. It was a great trip and I praise God for His awesome provision for it and learning that my husband is even more amazing than I thought.