Day Four: not all a bed of roses...

Tuesday was the hardest day of the trip for me. It didn't start well... Something happened with my mosquito net during the night and I think there were more mosquitoes in my net than outside of it. They are loud, and rather annoying. I didn't get a lot of bites, I just didn't sleep almost at all. (I can't function very well without enough sleep)

We got up at 6:40. The schedule of the conference was such that we had morning prayer all together at 7 am. It was a lovely time of praise, a nice meditation and then some quiet time. At 8 am we had our first all team breakfast. We tried to work on the schedule and get some practicals sorted as we learned to work together.
At 9 we started our sessions with a scripture talk by Mark. Then we got into our small groups to get to know each other better. I was leading a small group with David, which was a fun group of people. At the tea break I purposely sought out Fr. Herold, an American Franciscan who had come with a group from the South of Sudan. You don't run into random Americans in Africa ALL that often, so I wanted his story and to get to know him a bit. We had a good chat.

This tea we had the little mini bananas which are PACKED with flavor. Other than the fresh pineapple... they were my favorite snack. The second session of the morning began at 11:30. Alfred, a Ugandan man who works with a group called Cornerstone, gave a series on the 7 habits of highly effective people. He basically took the 7 habits and infused Christ into them and presented an effective way to live your life as a motivated and driven person, for God! It was a wonderful series, and a great testimony of Unity as Alfred is part of the pentecostal movement in Uganda.



Alfred and the Euro/American team

We had lunched and I helped with the dishes, which is always a joy. At 2:15 we were back for another talk from Alfred. Thankfully he is a very engaging speaker, so we stayed awake despite our lunch filled stomachs. The talk ended at 4 and I went directly to meet with Mark to review some of the material for my talk. I wanted a nap more than words at this point. I was exhausted. The meeting with Mark went fine, and we decided to get a guy on board to help me give the talk. I met with one of our Ugandan team mates then to work on the talks... and gave up all hope of a nap...

I tired my best to explain the material and come up with a way for us to give the talk together. It was challenging to communicate it. Finally we left after a little less than an hour, saying we'd have to work more on it the next day. I went to mass exhausted and rather drained. At dinner, I spoke with Martin briefly and he expressed concern about the set up for the series. We said we'd meet after dinner. Another long team meeting followed dinner, and then Mark, Martin and I put our heads together. At this point I was exhausted beyond words, had worked hard all day and was emotionally and physically drained. The meeting went alright, but everything was changed for the series.

We decided that Martin and I would give the first talk together, and we would ask a married couple from the community to join us in giving it. We also decided that we would do split mens and womens sessions. That was fine... I was just done. So after wash up I asked Mark if I could skip out on the prayer meeting that night... as I was pretty much useless at that point. He said of course, and ordered me to rest.

I went to my room and collapsed on my bed... Leah came in and we talked for a bit. Then she ordered me into bed and left for the prayer meeting. I stayed in bed for a bit, but the music from the church was too loud to actually sleep. I showered and prayed.

It was helpful to sit down at that point and take a minute to consider where I was at. When I sat and thought about it, I realized that I was actually not physically feeling very well. I'd just been ignoring it. I was also exhausted and under spiritual attack. It really helped to realize that all of these factors were at play and that it wasn't just that I am a weakling.

So that night we had team time and I heard that the prayer meeting was fantastic, that Dallas had done a great job leading it. I also had come back round and was able to share my challenges but that I'd really experienced peace during my prayer time while everyone was at the prayer meeting. During that team time I managed to dump pretty much my entire bottle of water onto my self. I found this hilarious...

That night, in our room, Leah and I had a good long chat and most of it was laughter. It was great to be able to rehash the funniest bits of the day and just laugh at them.

I survived my rough day, and was grateful to the team for the prayers which helped me rest 100 times better that night.