I've managed to find a few minutes of internet in the middle of Zanzibar, however, the keys stick terribly, there is no spellcheck, and I've got fifteen minutes left, so I'm going to make this incredibly brief.

Outreach is going really well so far, we've been here for a little over a week and we've got a week left on the island before we head off to mainland Tanzania, a place called (and I know I'm not spelling this right) Dar Es Saalam. It's really hard here, pretty much the whole island is Muslim and so there's an incredible resistance to what we're here for, but today really felt like a breakthrough, at least for me. We broke off into small teams, and I was with one of my friends from Uganda so that they could translate English/Swahili for me, and we stood on the corner of a road and just talked to whoever would listen. It was hard at first, I feel so intrusive trying to sit people down and tell them what I believe and why they should believe it also, but it got easier as I gave it to God, and in the end of the two hours, I had gotten to preach to thirteen-some Muslims, and one of them even ended up getting saved! It was an incredible experience, and exactly the encouragement I needed at the moment.

Being here, here as in Zanzibar, but also just in the outreach environment, is really challenging everything I've ever known or experienced, but it's also taken me on a whole new level of trusting in God and of loving Jesus. Because I've left everyone in my life that I care deeply about to be here, I've had to completely turn to Jesus for everything, to be there for me and to love me through it all, and it's been amazing. I want to go so much more in-depth into all of this, but my time is incredibly limited.

As for what we're actually doing here, it's twelve of us, leaders included, staying in a few rooms from the house of a Muzungu who occasionally comes to the island to work with a church, which is located right next door. Er, well, currently in a circus tent type deal, but when they get a real building they will be right next door. We're doing a lot of ministering with the church, preaching on Sunday services as well as Friday and Wednesday ones, and we're working together with the leaders of the church for our ministery around the island. We've been mainly focusing on door-to-door, as that seems the most effective way to reach individuals here, but next week we should be heading into the market places to do some open-air type things. We're incredibly limited in what we can do here, because the island is almost all Muslim and they tend to burn churches that get too out of hand, but with God all things are possible, so there is no doubt in my mind that great things will come from us being here.

I'll post more about the island, the ministry, and everything else when I can, and expect a lot of pictures as soon as I get back to Uganda and my laptop.

Love and blessings.

Just for the record, beginning a blog post is an incredibly awkward thing. It's not like an e-mail, where you can begin with something funny or personal, or even just hey, because a blog isn't really directed at anyone, it just kind of exists on the internet. So, awkwardly talking about the awkwardness of blog posts seemed like a good way to start this one, since I initially went to start with “well,” but then realized that was how I started pretty much every blog post since I got here. Wonderful.

Anyways, everything in Uganda is going incredibly well right now. Our DTS is in intense preparation mode, since we leave for outreach next Monday. I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone by, I remember the first month or so that I was here, when it seemed like it would be an eternity until mid-November, but here we are. Tomorrow is our last day of lectures, and in whatever free time we have, we’re practicing skits, dances, and songs to present while on outreach. It’s exhausting, because we’re still getting up at 4:40 in the morning for prayer, and this morning I was completely unenthusiastic about pretty much everything about today, but during prayer time I was really convicted about my attitude, and I realized that if we want to make any kind of difference in Zanzibar, I need to go into it with a completely positive attitude, no matter how exhausted I am. I just used about ten commas in that sentence, whoops. I’d blame it on exhaustion, but really, I think I have a bit of a comma problem, please excuse. Another grammatical shortcoming, er, maybe just an English language shortcoming, I’ve found myself talking more and more like an African lately, hence the previous “please excuse.” I do it a lot less when typing, because I have more time to think out what I type, but in regular conversations I’ve started to leave out everything but the words absolutely necessary to convey the point I’m trying to make. I didn’t realize it until the other day, when I said to Ansie “No, you keep,” and Will was like, “Lindley, she’s white. You don’t have to talk like that.” It’s just a natural way of speaking at this point; but I really hope that I can resume speaking in complete sentences by the time I come home.

I’m not really sure when the last time I updated my blog was, we currently have no internet (I’m typing this in Word so that when we do get internet I can post it quickly before it turns off again), so I can’t check, but I think it’s been a while. A lot has happened in the past few weeks, but I can’t remember anything incredibly noteworthy. I preached in an African church for the first time last Sunday, on Halloween. It was an absolutely incredible experience, and God really blew me away with what He did through me. Going into it, I was over-prepared, with four or five pages of meticulously taken notes on what it meant to have a relationship with God, and carefully drawn out charts illustrating the connectivity of the various relationship aspects; however, as soon as I got up there, God took charge of the message. I don’t remember looking at my notes even once – the general idea of the message kept with my original plan, but God completely used me to say what He wanted to say. It was truly amazing, and when it was over, I realized that I seriously need to trust God more, even in little things like that. That doesn’t mean not to prepare, that would be stupid, but at the same time, I need to not over-prepare. I need to give Him more room to work, leave more space open to trust that He will work through me, because if it’s not through Him, it’s entirely worthless anyway. It tied in so well with what He’s been teaching me the entire time I’ve been here – the importance of complete submission to Him, in every part of my life. All in all, it was an absolutely amazing experience, and I can’t wait to do it again both during and after outreach. In addition to being completely floored by God’s desire to use me to speak His words, I was, as always, struck by the beautiful hearts of the people in the church. I don’t think that I ever fully understood the joy of praising the Lord and just being in His presence until I came to Africa, and it still amazes me every time. Being at this church on Sunday, it was one of the most authentic worship services I’ve ever attended. It was small, only about thirty people, forty being generous, and most of them were under the age of fifteen, but the love and joy in that room, not only for God but for everyone else there, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. After the message and the worship, I discovered that it was “giving day,” and so I stood there, the only white person within miles, and received gifts, money, salt, fruits, and other things, from these amazing people who had next to nothing, but not, as is so easy to come across in Africa, because I was white. Instead, it was simply because I was there, because I was loved. It was convicting to the extreme, but not in a bad way – I think it was probably the first time in my life that I’d been convicted with absolute joy. I realized that, here were people who didn’t have enough money to buy pants for their children, giving away everything that they had to bless other people, and in doing so, bless the Lord. It sent me into a spiral of thought about money and love and giving and blessing, and I honestly have yet to completely sort it all out, but it made me realize, on a very basic level, that love is something that can be given to anyone, without knowing them or anything about them. It seems so simple, but it changed my outlook on pretty much everything in my life, and will hopefully change the way I live my life as a result.

In other, far less life-changing news, the internet is back on. So I’m going to end this post, and go reply to e-mails and all of that lovely shenanigans. I’ve only got internet for one more week, we’re not allowed to bring laptops to Zanzibar, so this will probably be one of my last posts on here for a while, but I will resume posting as soon as I get back to Uganda in January. Although, probably not right after we get back, since my mom will be coming to visit then (!) and I will be spending every waking moment with her.

One last thing, please keep our outreach teams in your prayers, especially these next few weeks as we make the transition from learning to applying. We’ve already had a few problems as a team, the family members of three people in our team are currently in the hospital, one is undergoing an operation, another has malaria, and the third, the child of a lady named Diana, is sick but we’re not sure with exactly what. So pray against sickness, but also against distraction, and also, as always, for protection, for God to be with us and to guide us in everything that we do, as we have no idea what we’re about to go into in Zanzibar. Mukama yebba zibwe.

A few pictures from last Sunday at church. As always, they're about a week and a half late. Sorry.

With several children from the church after the service.

My African son.

The pastor's roof, which is in need of some serious repairs. 

Well, we finally have both power and internet on the base, and although I should be using this time to write my sermon for Sunday, I wanted to give a quick update on life here at Hopeland. We're in the final stages of the lecture phase - our last week of actual class is next week, and after that, a week of team building and preparation, and then we're off to Zanzibar. It's been really rocky these past few weeks, both in the DTS as a whole and in my personal walk, but things seem to have smoothed out pretty well by now, and I really feel like we're ready for whatever awaits us on the outreach. Every free moment these days is spent working on skits and Swahili songs to present in churches, and today we started waking up at five in the morning for group prayer. I'm really hoping that five in the morning becomes a little easier to deal with as the time goes on, since we'll apparently be up praying every morning during outreach as well, but today was pretty rough. Even though we turned the lights off at nine last night, getting up this morning was nearly impossible. If it hadn't been for my and Lucy's brand new Masai blankets, which are amazingly warm for such thin pieces of fabric, I don't think we would have survived at all. The freezing African mornings are hard enough when the sun's up, but before sunrise it's even worse. So, after prayer and before lectures, Lucy and I had to absolutely beg Msaki for some coffee so that we could stay awake for class. He gave us some, and it was actually wonderful - I've never been much of a coffee drinker, but African coffee has so much sugar in it that it's absolutely delicious. Of course, we were shaking for the rest of the day, but at least we were wide awake! I'm going to have to buy some when we go into town tomorrow, otherwise there is absolutely no hope of making it through these next few months.

In other news, I'm preaching this Sunday, and I'm both excited and nervous. I'm speaking on relationship with God, based entirely on what He's been teaching me these past few months, and I'm planning on sharing bits of my testimony and the things that brought me to God, which will be the first time I've ever done that in front of a group of people. So, please, keep me in your prayers, and hopefully the Lord will use me in a way that will absolutely blow me away.

I'm still in the process of figuring out exactly how long I'm going to be staying here in Africa. I've been getting more and more serious about the idea of doing a School of Biblical Studies in September, but if I were to do that, I would probably come home for the summer at least, just to spend time with my family before I'm gone for another year. I know, without the slightest doubt, that I'll be spending a large amount of time here in my life, I'm just not exactly sure where that time will fall. I am, as the Ugandans say, slowly by slowly learning the language, and it is my greatest hope to one day understand it so well that I'm able to teach English here to the people who don't have the resources to learn it in a school or with a private tutor, but again, I'm waiting on the Lord to discover exactly when all of this will happen. I still have a commitment to go home for at least a month to fundraise for the lovely orphans in Karpinsk, Russia, so whenever I think about trying to schedule and plan all of this, I get a little bit anxious, but I know that God has given me all of these desires and alerted me to all of these needs, so again, I am fully trusting Him to tell me where to be, and when to be there. I can't wait to see how He works it all out. One travel plan that is certain, however, is my upcoming trip to Egypt. I'm not exactly sure when that will happen, but we're planning on the end of January, a bit after DTS graduation. Lucy gets three weeks vacation time from her Year for God program, and I know I'll need a bit of a break to clear my mind after getting back from outreach, so we've decided to save up our Christmas money and take a week long trip to Egypt, to see the pyramids and just relax. We're going to try to work it out so that we can stay with a YWAM base in Egypt, and since we've (as a total answer to prayer) found round-trip flights to Cairo from Entebbe for $420, tax included, that would make the total trip unbelievable inexpensive. So, from Uganda to Zanzibar to Egypt. And then, who knows. It's so exciting, to see how God is working everything out right now. If you had told me a year ago that I would be traveling all over Africa, I don't even know how I would have responded. Yet, here I am. Just another testament in my life to how wonderful the Lord is.

Some pictures from our trip to the source of the Nile River this weekend.

In the car (!) on the way to the Nile.

The girls and Bosco, right before we got on our tour boat.

The Nile.

Just meditating under a memorial to Gandhi. You know.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our amazing ministry trip last weekend. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get them up, we've hardly had internet at the base at all this week.

The church we visited last Sunday.

The children in the congregation. 

Will preaching. This was actually during a pause in the preaching, I felt like it would be disrespectful to actually take a picture as he was speaking.

Will and me at the pastor's house for lunch after the service.

Well, we’ve officially entered into week eight of lecture phase. I honestly can’t believe it, today in small groups when Msaki told me that we were leaving for outreach in four weeks, my jaw dropped. I remember all too clearly the first few weeks of being here, when I was literally ticking off the days, counting and re-counting how much longer it would be until I got to go home. I guess that’s just another example of the incredible transformation that God has been working in me during this amazing time in Africa, and I praise Him greatly for it. The more I think about it, the more excited I become for what I know He is going to bring for me after this period of training – He’s already given me a small taste of what it feels like to live a life dedicated to serving Him, and it left me absolutely craving more and more. There’s still so much to work out, but I’m fully relying on God for all of that, He’s already brought more together for my life than I could have ever imagined was possible, and I know, because I know Him, that the best is yet to come. All I have to do is wait on Him, trust in Him, and be open to whatever path He has in store for me, and He will work everything else out according to His perfect plan.

I’m not really sure where to start in explaining the things that God has been doing in my life in the past few weeks, but since I’ve been so terrible about responding to e-mails and all else lately, I feel like I should include everything in this post, so I apologize in advance if it’s terribly incoherent or not at all cohesive.

One of the biggest blessings in my life right now is the amazing ministry team, for lack of a better word, that God has raised up. I’m not sure if I’ve made mention of it in previous posts, but the past two Sundays I have had the great pleasure of traveling around to different churches in Uganda and getting to watch as my brother Will preaches and my brother Stephen translates. It’s been such an amazing experience for me, and it’s also brought the three of us together in a way that only God could have imagined – we now take every opportunity possible to lift each other up in prayer and encourage one another with the word of God, and it is absolutely causing a huge transformation in my life. For the moment, I’m simply along for the ride, I do what I can here and there but have yet to find any real significance in my involvement in this group, but I remain so positive that God will reveal something to me. For the meantime, though, I’ve found it a wonderful way to develop the servant’s heart that I so long for. This past Sunday, as Stephen and Will were sitting and talking to the pastor, I took the opportunity to help the pastor’s wife with the dishes from the lunch they had made. I think this is slightly culturally inappropriate, since they take such great pleasure in absolutely accommodating their guests here, and I practically had to force her to allow me to help, but it was an amazing experience, kneeling down on the dirt floor hand washing dishes with two women who have remarkable faith. I’ve realized through these few experiences just how far a little bit of love, a little bit of compassion, and a little bit of support can go. As the pastor and his family, as well as probably half of the children in the village, were walking us back to Lake Victoria, one of the women said something that struck me so very much – she said it was so rare to find an American woman who was so willing to converse with people like them. It absolutely floored me, the amount of respect that they place on us, even before we’ve done anything to deserve it. That’s something I had actually been struggling with ever since coming here, because so many people have the idea of the rich “muzungu” or white person, who will come in and bring financial support and save the day – but when she said that, it made me realize that respect is not entirely bad. There’s a way to use that to really, really get God’s word across, and then turn around and use our lives, our love, our passion for Christ to show these people that there’s so much more to seek than money, although, thus far, it is I who is being taught by them, and not the other way around. Experiences like these, though, they’re just so amazing and humbling and it’s incredible because this, this is really what life is about, and for the first time in my life, I’m really understanding what it means to live. I spent years and years pursuing everything I could think of that would make me happy, and as I was doing that, I was drawing further and further away from the only thing that could ever truly make me happy – the perfect love of my Creator. Now that I’ve realized that, nothing else really matters. I want to live to serve Him, in whichever way He has in store for me. At the moment, I feel like it’s simply doing more of what I am doing, and I have no doubt that, as I continue, God will continue to reveal to me the way that He has planned for me to share His love and His light, but for now, I still have some healing and discovering to do. Standing up in front of the church yesterday, I don’t know exactly what it was, but something about the drums and the Luganda praise songs, it just hit me, how far I’ve come, where God brought me to and what He took me from. Exactly a year ago, I was an absolute mess with seemingly no hope of ever getting out of any of it. I was on a constant stream of drugs and alcohol and so many other terrible things that I never knew which way was up, and all I wanted was to get out, of all of it. Now, here I am, in the most amazing place in the world, in constant fellowship with the One who created me,  and I get to spend as much time as I want praising His name and walking with Him, and it brings me pure and constant joy. To me, it’s seemed like such a gradual change that I never really paused to think about how remarkable it all was, but yesterday morning, in front of that church, I was so overcome by the absolute greatness of God that I fell to my knees, and could do nothing but weep and worship. I do not, in any way, deserve even a portion of what He’s already given to me, and yet, here it all is, and He only has more in store for me, as long as I continue to seek Him with all of my heart. It’s more amazing than I can even use words to describe; all I can say is that God is so, so good.

I have found in this place, in these people, in my God, the joy that I have longed for all of my life. I have found an absolute appreciation for life that I never had before. I have found a purpose, a way to truly be effective, something about which to be passionate. I’ve found everything I’ve ever wanted out of life, and I know that I haven’t even cracked the surface of the potential that my relationship with God holds.