What A Week

This past week has been somewhat of a crazy one! Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I had the Casfeta Conference. I ended up spending the night there Thursday and Friday evening. The conference wasn’t necessarily the most fun but I met a lot people and got to know Nkone (The National Casfeta Director) a little better. Casfeta is the students’ ministries of the TAG. It includes primary, secondary and university ministries so it can be compared to Chi Alpha/Youth Alive/Campus Missionaries ministries back in the states. The conference was basically teachings and sermons by the National TAG Directors, tweaking of the constitution, and election of new leaders. After the conference I spent a day by myself at the house and then headed to Kisalanza to meet up with Roger and the team from North Texas. The bus ride was nice and it was definitely the nicest bus I’ve been on. We arrived just in time for supper and then spent a good amount of time staring into the night sky thick with stars. The place we were at is very from any cities and nights are pitch-black. The sky was incredible! Me and Chad woke up early and made it to a lake to watch a beautiful sunrise! The combo of the two was quite healing. We then headed to Iringa for some shopping before we headed off to the Ruaha, or so we thought. After the shopping we headed out and Roger and the other missionaries went ahead since the bus driver knew where the Ruaha was and the only place to make a wrong turn was the very first turn…. You probably guessed it, the bus driver made the only wrong turn possible and we drove 3 hours in the wrong direction before we finally had cell phone reception. We headed back to Iringa but knew it was too late to go to the Ruaha National Park. As you can imagine there are people upset and emotions are flying. Not to mention there was not a designated leader on the bus and there was tension between the interns and the leader of the North Texas team. After an argument and things getting out of hand (we had a talk later and things worked out well) we finally made it to the hotels and resolved everything. We got a little sleep before we headed off to the Ruaha, this time making the correct turns ;) We rested and ate when we arrived and then headed out for the safari. We saw Impala, Giraffe, Zebra, Guinea Fowl, Cape Buffalo, Kudu, Baboons, Elephant and 35 lions!! Not only did we see a bunch of lions, we saw them feasting. We heard them purring as they enjoyed a fresh buffalo. It was the most amazing sound I’ve heard, 7 grown lions purring. Not to mention they were only about 10 feet away (we were safe because they only see 2-D). It was the kind of thing that makes your heart stop and brings goosebumps to your skin. To be continued...