One Thousand Words of Mozambique: Week 1

Day 1: 1/11/17

This was our official launch day! My squad (R-Squad), along with 3 other squads, left for the airport in the morning. We ended up spending most of the day in the airport, leaving Atlanta late that night. I wrote thank you notes, called my family, and cried a lot before boarding- I am so sure of the call the Lord has placed on my life, but the community and love I have found at home are not lost on me. I got butterflies in my stomach as the plane took off for Istanbul; three years after hearing about the World Race and it was finally happening! I let the Lord’s goodness and peace hold me as we headed overseas! 

Day 2: 1/12/17
We landed in Istanbul and it was already 5:00pm thanks to the time change. Half of us slept well on the plane, half of us did not. Those who tried to fight the jet lag are pictured passed out on the airport floor haha. It’s a good thing we were advised to carry our sleeping pads in our backpacks! Our flight didn’t leave for Johannesburg until shortly after 3:00am that day, so we had good bit of time to kill in Turkey before leaving for South Africa. I killed my time by calling home, playing cards, and eating Turkish ice cream.  

Day 3: 1/13/17
We landed in South Africa just after 1:00pm and then had another 12 hours of travel, arriving at our ministry host for the evening, Ms. Angie’s, just after 1:00am. We were fed beans and rice (welcome to Africa!), spoiled with chocolate cake, and set up our tents inside for the evening. Jet lagged and absolutely exhausted, we settled in and literally sweat on top of each other for the next 6 hours haha. 

Day 4: 1/14/17Though the entire squad stayed at Ms. Angie’s for the evening, only 2 teams were staying there for the entirety of the month. The rest of us were split up among three different ministry hosts. My team, “Deep Wells”, and another team, “God’s Magnolias”, were paired together to work with a ministry called Africa on Fire. After traveling just under an hour, we arrived at our ministry host’s house to stay for a couple of days in Maputo (“Mah-poo-too”), the capital of Mozambique. Here’s our tents outside! (Mine is the orange and gray one on the far left.)

Day 5: 1/15/17
 
It was sprinkling on and off for the first couple of days in Mozambique. Well, it WAS sprinkling until 1:00am on the 15th. At 1:00am on the 15th, it poured down rain for hours. Being absolutely naive and having never tented in the rain before, I giggled at the water pooling underneath me, turning my tent bottom into a water bed before I fell asleep. 30 minutes after falling asleep, I woke up to my tent door wide open and my friend, Katie, and squad leader, Tabitha, leaning inside urging me to get out because the backyard was flooding. Groggy and super confused (with my sleep mask plastered to my forehead), I gathered all I could in my arms and ran to the front porch while Katie and Tab moved my tent to higher ground and chased down my chacos that were floating away. It was chaos haha. Running back and forth, I was soaking wet within 30 seconds- it was raining that hard. I haphazardly staked my tent into the ground (only to have it blow over later) and went to check on everyone else in the backyard. Thankfully, everyone else was on higher ground while the three of us got locked out of the house and had no choice but to laugh about the fact that we set up our tents in the drainage ditch on the side of the house and were currently in water half way up our shins. Once we got inside, we watched Grey’s Anatomy until the sun came up and ate peanut butter out of a half-gallon tub. The netting of my tent door ripped and half of my stuff was soaking wet, urging me to fight for my joy, seek the Lord’s sense of humor, and praise Him despite my things breaking me being bummed. “The Flood of Maputo” will always be at the top of my “Ridiculous WR Stories” list, haha. 

Day 6: 1/16/17
Going off of no sleep because of being waterlogged the night before, our two teams headed 6 hours northwest for Chibuto (“Shi-boo-too”), the town in which we would spend the majority of the rest of our time in Mozambique. After traveling for 5 days, we were all relieved to arrive at our new “home” for January. This is my friend and teammate, Baileigh. Baileigh (who hates any and all fruit) carved a scary face in this little guy and we laughed about it for longer than we should have. We spent the rest of the day getting settled in, setting up our tents inside the house pictured above because it was still raining pretty heavily on and off. It was evident: we were definitely in the Bush of Africa. Adventure! 

Day 7: 1/17/17
Sabbath. We quickly learned that everything in Chibuto, Moz pretty much shuts down when it rains. Our Sabbath was spent huddled inside, coloring, drawing, journaling, playing “2 Truths and a Lie”, and listening to music together. Yay- community! 

There you have it! Week 1 of my World Race! It was a draining week, mostly due to all of the travel. Thankfully, the Lord would bless us with plenty of time to rest and reset, and to grow closer together  as a community.