Back to Africa

The past week has been a whirlwind of moving back to Uganda, figuring out a new house, renewing friendships, and meeting an influx of new folks. It’s been surprisingly good to return, far better than I had expected, by God’s grace for a variety of reasons. Probably the main reason is the simple fact that I am more familiar with life here and can skip culture shock, allowing me to instead focus on deepening relationships I’ve already built.

Passion 2013!

Another reason might be the fantastic start to the new year that I received: free tickets to the first evening of Passion 2013, an event for 18-25 year olds hosted by Louie Giglio and Chris Tomlin (among others!). 

The Refuge at Passion - a God-incidence. 

Jennifer and I were so blessed by the Passion’s staff’s willingness to give us access to an amazingly refreshing evening of worship and encouragement. Louie Giglio’s teaching on the dry bones of Ezekiel 37 and a father’s small seed of faith in Mark 9 were words that boosted my hope for a less painful second half of my Ugandan experience...and God has thus far abundantly answered and increased that hope!

Anna--SO excited to worship with her the day before leaving!

Now that I'm back in Africa, we're currently in the midst of Envisioning, an annual five-day, all-staff event at New Hope Uganda. NHU’s leaders teach several sessions each day on a variety of spiritual topics, all focused on a particular theme for the year. This year’s theme is “In Christ Alone”; our guest speaker, Bishop Edward Muhima, opened Envisioning with two excellent chats about salvation, transformation, and life in Christ. I wish so badly that my church peeps and camp pals could be here to learn with me--if any of you ever have the chance to come to Envisioning at New Hope, take it without hesitation!

Jennifer: the girl who can take credit for me being in Uganda....and with whom I always have exciting adventures...

The only rough part so far is that sitting to listen for 7 hours daily while battling jet lag and a head cold has been difficult, to say the least. My roommate and I keep falling asleep during the mid-morning sessions. I would classify this week as one of those times where maybe I might need “Jesus plus”--”plus” taking the form of coffee! 

"Gourmet" coffee: a new norm

for Bekah

A picture of my kitchen!

It's kinda messy...but that is the normal state. 

My housemate is a gourmet cook, having taken classes on food prep and service. So the messy kitchen generally correlates with awesome food in my tummy.  

Hiking and an excuse

A couple weekends ago, a group from my church went hiking in Shenandoah National Park.

We found an awesome rock for jumping into a very chilly pool of water.

And this is my favorite picture of the day:

Shenandoah and the Blue Ridge Mountains are ranked pretty high on my list of 'Most Beautiful Places in the World.'

Also, a note and an excuse: I have a backlog of emails and a very messy room...and this has been the static state for almost 2 weeks now. So please excuse the limited blogging this week. Curly Chronicles will be here on Friday...but there won't be much chatter this week, just a couple videos!

A Poem in a Modern Style

Whenever I write the word "tubing"

I think it should be pronounced "tub-bing."

And Tubbing makes me think of The Borrowers.

Yes, the Borrowers, those little folk

Who float down a river

Because it storms.

(Am I remembering this rightly?

B/c my memory doesn't hold things tightly...)

So when a close friend borrowed my weekend,

We thought tubing (not tubbing!) would

Be a Fun Activity. And we proceeded to invite

Folks from all stages of life:

College, Work, Siblings.

They came.

We tubed.

We were not the Borrowers.

Because it was not flooding.

In fact, it was almost the opposite

Of flooding.

But we were afloat.

And enjoyment was had by all.

A Wild Car Story (part 2)

We returned to the convention center, vying for sidewalk space with an increasing number of Riverfest attendees. We found the bathroom (where the sink handle proceeded to break off in my hand), and we sank into a couple chairs outside the vendor hall just in time for the call.

The conversation started poorly. “The tow company can’t get you until midnight,” claimed Roadside Service. “There’s some festival in downtown Wichita that has brought in 10,000 extra people and is closing all the roads there.”

I jumped up to grab a map from the conference hosts. “Tell them I can get them here! These roads aren’t closed!” I gestured frantically at the map while Brit-Brit attempted to listen both to me and the Roadside Service agent. She calmly relayed my insistence to the agent.

“I’m very sorry, but we simply cannot retrieve the car until midnight. And we cannot release a new car to you until the current one has been towed. Let me check if we can deliver a car to you by 7am.”

Brit-Brit and I resumed our seats, she calmly explaining the dilemma, I fuming at inefficiency and poor service. Our opposing approaches to the situation resulted in quite the brilliant (and logical) brainstorm: if the rental car company couldn’t get a car to our hotel by 7am, we would simply have to cancel our contract and find another rental company.

****************

"Did you push the start button?"

"Yes, we've tried everything and the car won't start."

"Does the key have a square end or a rounded end?"

Silence.

"Ma’am?"

"Um, it has a kind of rounded square end?"

Brit-Brit and our new Roadside Service agent, Charlie, repeated this conversation for about 10 minutes, finally determining that indeed it was not operator error and the car was truly broken. Meanwhile, I evaded overambitious homeschool security guards and finally found my convention contact to ask if we could catch a lift to our hotel.

When we reunited at the car, Charlie had managed to cut through a great deal of red tape on our behalf, to the point where he practically promised the delivery of a new car to our hotel within the hour. We manually locked the car, leaving the key under the backseat, and hiked all our stuff back to the convention center, where kindly board members of the convention delivered us to our hotel.

****************

The saga closed without much more drama: we finally ate dinner (huzzah for Pizza Hut delivery!) and the car arrived about 10:15pm. The whole episode only took three hours, though it felt much longer. And that leaves one more life lesson learned the hard way: always listen to your rental car’s feelings.

A Wild Car Story (part 1)

So here's a life lesson for you: cars are smarter than you think they are and getting smarter by the year. When your rental car tells you that the keyless entry system needs to be serviced, you better call the rental company ASAP...otherwise, you might end up stranded in a parking lot talking to Emergency Roadside Service for a few hours.

****************

The day started so inauspiciously: Brit-Brit spilled milk on her skirt. "This will be a strange day," she warned me. "I never spill things in the morning."

The omen seemed unfulfilled as the day passed. The rental car notified us that the keyless system needed servicing, but the notification disappeared within minutes. The convention went well, despite standing on the concrete floors for 11 hours, and we felt that all-in-all, it had been quite the successful day. Now, to find dinner and rest our weary legs at the hotel that evening.

We marveled at the throngs of people arriving for the Riverfest—this was a population vastly different than the families we had interacted with all day. On the brief walk to the car, we noted how the weather was quite nice: a bit warm, yet not nearly as humid as Virginia. We discussed where to find dinner: downtown Wichita? Or takeout?

Our thoughts of an easy evening were interrupted when the car wouldn’t unlock via the keyless remote. A bit perturbed, we finagled the physical key out of the remote and opened the car.

It refused to power on. In fact, the car was so locked down that the radio wouldn't even play as we sat there, attempting to find a keyhole where we could manually start the car. For goodness' sake, who would invent a keyless car with a 'push to start' button without a manual backup? "That person isn't making my 'smart list' right now," Brit-Brit quipped.

We called the rental company: "Yes, hello, our car won't start."

"Ok, we'll send a tow truck. It will take 30-60 minutes."

­­­­­­****************

The car was rather warm, and we were fairly hungry, so we manually locked it and wandered toward downtown Wichita, waiting for the 'rescue call.' Finding Wichita a rather deserted city, growing hungrier by the minute, and wishing we'd stopped at the ladies' room before leaving the convention center, we finally spotted a Quizno's on the next corner. Subs? Sure, it's better than nothing.

Except, Quizno's refused us entrance. "We can't let any more people in," they claimed. "Not even to use the bathroom?" we queried. "No, we're sorry."

Puzzled, since there were several empty tables, we wandered back to the convention center, laughing at the irony of our quandary: what else could happen tonight??

"homesauces"

These are the girls I live with:
We are pretty much the awesomest crew of girls that has ever lived together (well, we'd be even more amazing if the Korean was still here, but hey, we're close).

Sadly, two of these girls are leaving for new life opportunities. The Swede and German #3 are leaving Das Haus, one to the other side of the country and one to a nearby state. We will miss them sorely.
But until they're gone, we'll still have fun. Especially with that new TV the Brit got...

(photos courtesy of JenniMarie)

South and Pacific, but not South Pacific

Just a few more pictures from my trip to California.

Reunited!

Last year, we were on an Atlantic beach and there were 3.5 of us.

This year, we were in the SoCal desert and there were all four of us!

This kid is too cute!

Me with the Pacific Ocean in the background.

This is after I got my suitcase back. SO NICE to change clothes!

San Diego!

Someday, I'll go back and tour there.

Can't wait to return to California later this summer!