African Adventure: Visitors

I am sitting in a white cement walled office, the fan whirring over my head, one dim tungsten light making funny shadows on the walls, African material hanging in the windows blocking out “the real Africa,” the heat still close to unbearable even though it’s already pitch black outside. Caitlin’s on facebook, Matt is in the corner probably looking up world news online, and my mom is sitting in a chair next to me journaling. I’m attempting to send photos of cute PHC kids to Barb and Brenda in America via email, which means a lot of sitting and waiting because I think our internet was designed to force you to learn patience. Multitasking and writing a blog while I wait for emails to send seems like a good use of my time but for some reason I’m not feeling super inspired sitting here sweating in a hot office.

Do you ever feel like you have so much to say that you don’t even know where to start so you just don’t even try? Sometimes I have trouble deciding what to blog about because there’s not a whole lot going on but recently there’s been so much happening I don’t even know where to begin.

me and my mom at Boali Falls

Hey wait… did I mention my mom is sitting in the same room as me? …in Africa!!! Yep my mom is pretty cool and came all the way to the middle of Africa by herself just to see me! If that doesn’t make someone feel special I don’t know what would.

Actually, this past week has been very full of visitors. A team of awesome church leaders from Lititz, PA and Delaware, OH came to visit their Hand-in-Hand orphan schools. The way the Hand-in-Hand program works is that one church in the States partners with a rural church in the Central Africa Republic making it financially possible for the church here to host a school for the orphans of their community. The school provides orphans with a basic education, food, and also helps meet the kids’ spiritual needs and give them hope for a future.

Billie with a teacher

Africa seems like a long ways to come for one week just to visit a school but it’s worth it because of the huge impact it has on both the people coming and the churches here. Having the supporting church send people to come and encourage their partner church in the Central African Republic makes churches and orphans here feel so honored and gives them a sense of value and worth. It’s one thing to simply send money, it’s a whole different thing to be committed to praying and encouraging and truly partnering with people in Africa to the point where you will travel half way across the world just to meet these people and spend time with them. All the people the team visited here were so encouraged to know that the partnering churches in America truly care enough about them to come all the way to Africa just to see them and the work God is doing among them. There’s a huge difference between words and actions and when it comes to giving people hope and a sense of worth it takes more than simply sending a check. Just like it means a lot to me that my mom would come all this way to see me and encourage me in my work and just like it speaks volumes of how much she loves me, so it is with the Hand-in-Hand partnership.