God-Ordained-Ness... even in wildlife attacks.

Feb 15

This has been quite a day of God-ordained-ness.

Obviously, God wanted to bless Morgan and me through African wildlife today, so he caused us to be almost attacked by monkeys AND zebras!!!!

We were running on our little path, as per our ROUTINE, and all of the sudden, up comes trotting a ZEBRA. And then another. And ANOTHER!!! Soon, there were FIVE  zebra, briskly TROTTING towards us! The road was narrow! There was nowhere to go! We stay still, as zebra are peaceful animals. All of a sudden, one, obviously the dominant macho one, starts staring us down, and snorting! BAH! We turn around and hide around the bend. They’ll leave soon. We wait about a minute, and begin creeping back around the corner.

And come almost face to face with the snorting , stare-down zebra that is now aggressively pawing the ground, about to CHARGE.

I have never run so fast in my life!!! Just as Mike Pryor always told me, if a friend and I am being chased by a wild animal, I don’t need to be faster than the animal. I just need to be faster than my friend.

THIS is what popped into my mind!!!! SORRY MORGAN!!! But honestly… she can outrun me any day, so it wasn’t like I was really imposing danger on my wonderful friend J Don’t I get brownie points for NOT trying to sacrifice her to save myself?! J

Anyway, we turned around and ran the other way, which was PAVED and ALL UPHILL. (Both ways, in the snow, covered in charging zebras and malicious, man-eating monkeys) Ok, I must ask, WHAT is the point of running in NATURE if there isn’t any NATURE because you killed the NATURE with cement?!!? Ugh. Yeah, running was not so positive today. Stupid zebras. We’ll bring more people next time and we’ll see who’s staring down who. BOOM.

Service sites! We visited Walk in the Light and Riv Life.

Walk in the light is awesome. I LOVE the program! So great. It’s all about manual labor and being in the community, building things for people while growing great relationships and ministering. Awesome, right? Too bad I know NOTHING about building. Literally. I would be such a detriment to the construction process. If it was not about actual building, I would totally go here. And I am SO excited to see what is accomplished through the team that goes there!

Riv Life. A bit more complex. Ok, I loved the setup. So fantastic! You play with kids and visit people in the community and interact with extreme poverty. Sounds life-changing, yes? Too bad the man in charge was super depressing. He spent the entire time he was supposed to be selling his site to us telling how the community is so broken and can’t be fixed and how his goals aren’t being accomplished and how Riv Life hadn’t reached it’s full potential, and couldn’t for a VERY long time… And then he kept asking OVER and OVER why we looked so “tired.” Um… how about because you just sucked all of the hope and joy out of me?

I don’t think I could handle being with that kind of a leader. There is no way we could be set up for success if the person in charge has already accepted failure. I think I would constantly feel discouraged and useless. So, wonderful program. But… I don’t think I could deal with Mr. Sad Face every day.

That brings me to decide that my top two choices for service sites are Ithemba and Ethembeni. But I am still praying that God would point my heart the way He wants me to go! Feel free to join me!!

One of the best parts of my day: I ended up talking to Tyler randomly and it turned into this total, undeniable God moment. Talk about magnificent. I officially adopted him as my unofficial Big Brother J Tyler, you’re pretty phenominal. Just in case you were wondering. I plan to force him to teach me how to become photography-literate, and a guitar ninja. Kay? Cool. J

After lunch, I totally had the intention of cramming for my Zulu midterm tomorrow. But… I ended up hanging out with Allie and Colton…

I know this is crazy. But not much about me is normal, so I feel like I’m right on track. I think God is teaching me how to live a more balanced life. Pre-South Africa, I was all work-until-it-was-done-and-then-maybe-I’ll-fit-in-some-time-to-play. Here, I am trying to place God first in everything. This has shifted relationships to second, and school to third. And I honestly think Jesus is blessing me in that. We’ll see tomorrow, after my HUGE midterm. But this is my theory of what has occurred thus far!

Tonight, I heard some life stories in my D-Group. I am SO excited to get to know everyone as well as possible! A great group. The life stories I heard tonight really put my life into perspective. And some reminded me of how AMAZING God is. Truly. And how YOU choose how you come out of a situation. You can CHOOSE to hate your life and be depressed and sulk, or you can CHOOSE to find God and rely on Him and GROW and choose to see the positive. Thanks for the lesson, guys J.

God talk with Lindsay. Shocker. Not J

I am praying that I remain attentive to God’s voice. I don’t want to miss ANYTHING.

AH. Just another freakishly blessed day in my totally blessed life. Thanks for reading J