A Time to Celebrate

Today is Easter my friends. I woke up sore and exhausted, having gotten back from safari last night around 1:30am, but knew that I needed to go to church. Not for the fact of saying I went to church, but because I new my heart needed to be in a place where I could worship my Lord and Savior freely in community with others. And let me tell you, church this morning did not disappoint.  The worship was on point and you could feel the Holy Spirit moving in the room.

“The ground began to shake. The stone was rolled away. His perfect love could not be overcome. Now death where is your sting? Our resurrected King has rendered you defeated. Forever He is glorified. Forever He is lifted high. Forever He is risen. He is alive. He is alive! We sing hallelujah. We sing hallelujah. We sing hallelujah. The lamb has overcome.” –Kari Jobe, “Forever”

There was one point while we were singing that I was so emotionally overcome that my voice was breaking. Lord knows that I needed to be in that place of surrender to Him.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. This past week in particular was rather stressful. One of our staff members went into labor and then ended up needing an emergency C-section. Thank God, Mama and baby are doing well now. One of our children has both malaria and pneumonia. Then another child got severely ill and had to be rushed to the emergency room late in the evening to be put on oxygen. One of our staff members had a death in the family. There was just a whole lot negative things going on this week and that can be so emotionally draining. The devil is real and he works in any way he can to tear you down. With it being Easter weekend, we had a few days off so a few of the other interns and I went on safari to celebrate one of their birthdays.

Half way! 

Just standing in both hemispheres at the same time

We left for safari 5am Thursday morning. Having gone to bed late the night before, I only got about 4 hours of sleep. We then had to drive to Queen Elizabeth, which is supposed to be about an 8 hour drive. On the way, everyone else slept but I didn’t want to miss anything because we were going somewhere where I have never been before. The sun came up and then it started pouring. It rained on and off for a few hours and we hit terrible traffic by Kampala. We finally got through that and then we were able to drive and stop by the equator on the way. I don’t know what I was expecting, but something more than it was because I literally burst out laughing as we pulled up. We got out, got some pretty bad coffee, took our picture straddling the equator (how cool is it that I was in the Northern and Southern hemisphere at the same time?!) and got back in the van.

Myself, Morgan, Reed, Kara, and Meleia

We also got to take a road slightly out of the way to go find zebras. Lake Mburo National Park has thousands of zebras in it and you can often find them before you actually pay to enter the park. We kept driving and driving on this dirt road…but no zebras to be found! We got close to where the entrance of the park was and Wilson said we had to turn around. There was a small road that was off of the main road we were on so he turned down that in hopes of spotting a zebra. Shortly thereafter, we found two together! I’ve never seen a zebra in the wild before and they are beyond beautiful. It blows my mind how awesome our God is. Just like humans fingerprints are unique to each individual, so are zebras stripes.

Due to the traffic and time it took to find the zebras, it ended up taking closer to 11 hours to get to Queen Elizabeth. We had planned on doing a boat ride but we missed that because of how long it took to get there, despite skipping lunch to try to catch up on time, and ended up doing that the following day instead. Wilson was our driver/tour guide and he was awesome. He took us on a game drive instead. 

We saw lots of antelope, baboons, warthogs, beautiful birds, and elephants. A terrifying moment was when there were all of these elephants crossing the road and a truck went flying towards them, and instead of slowing down, it sped up. I was terrified he was going to hit one of the elephants. Lord willing, he didn’t hit any of them. We then had to wait a little while before we could continue driving because the elephants were mad, as they had every right to be.  We also got to see a beautiful salt lake just before it got dark. We didn’t get to the lodge we were staying at until after 8pm at night. At that point, we were all exhausted and so hungry! Dinner was a buffet and the food was really delicious.

We placed orders for our breakfast and lunch to go for the following day because we were starting off with an early game drive. We met at 6am, grabbed a quick cup of coffee, and headed back out into the park. We had a couple hours on the roads before we were going chimp trekking. If I had to pick one thing, chimp trekking was probably my favorite part of safari. We hiked down into this gorge and were hiking along the rainforest bed in search of chimpanzees. Adolph was our guide and Steven was our protection. We needed Steven because not only are there chimps are in this gorge, there are also hippos, leopards, and you know, just other wildlife that occurs naturally when you are in the wild. So we are hiking through all of this foliage, pretty much using the trails that the animals make. Through mud that has the consistency of wet cement with hippos footprints and the like. I’m not going to lie, it gave you an adrenaline rush knowing that you are walking the ground alongside all of these animals, knowing that you can’t see most of them but they can definitely see, hear, and smell you. At point, we got to a spot where we could see hippos in the river I’m not going to lie, it was slightly terrifying. I realized that if they wanted to, they could run and attack us and we would have no chance (they can run up to 30 miles an hour). However, Adolph said not to worry and that we were safe. I knew the Lord was with us so on we went.

During this entire time hiking, I can hardy look up for fear of falling on my face, oh my butt, because we’re climbing over trees and through bushes and all of this nature. And here Adolph and Steven are, hiking, making sure we are okay, and listening to sounds that only experience can allow you to hear. And then at one point Steven heard it and pointed to Adolph and Adolph took off sprinting. So now we’re sprinting after this little Ugandan man, who despite being 30 (he thought he was ridiculously older than us which was funny), was in much better shape than any of us will ever be in our lives.  At one point I had to slow down because I was so scared for Elizabeth’s camera (she let me borrow it so I could take pictures of this trip) as I was trying to sprint uphill through this ridiculous mud. Shortly after I caught up with Adolph and then we were right there with the chimps.

Three males had led us away from the females and their babies to protect them. So after making us chase them for a little, they went up a tree and let us take our pictures, knowing that their families were safe. After a little while, they got bored and went on their way and then we had to hike back out of the gorge. Covered in mud and bug bites (I have some rather painful tsetse fly bites on my fingers), we made it back out of the gorge. As you can see, I was drenched in sweat haha. Oh that was something too…I was so hot and the air was so cool that my glasses were fogged up almost the entire time so I had to wear them on top of my head in order to see…

Then after chimp trekking it was time for another game drive. We were driving and there were a bunch of antelope around. Wilson knew by the way they were acting that there was some sort of danger for them around. We slowed down and drove for a bit and then turned around and drove that stretch again. Then someone spotted something beneath the tree. And sure enough, there was some sort of creature there but it laying down and hard to see. With the camera, I figured out that it was a leopard. Then it got up and went into the bushes! I didn’t get to see a leopard last time I was on safari and it was so beautiful to see this creature in real life in the wild.

Shortly after that we spotted a lion lying out in an area where they had just burned. It was very easy to see him and we were able to get pretty close. It always amazes me how similar lions are to house cats. Many mannerisms are the same, they’re just much larger and kill things for their food!

After that is was time for our boat ride. It was hot and I ended up being on top of the boat the entire time in order to take better pictures. We saw lots of hippos, water buffalo, a few crocodiles, and so many beautiful birds. It was beautiful getting to be on this stretch of water for a little while. At one point, we came upon a village that is in the middle of the park. It was time for the men to go fishing so we watched as small boat after small boat paddled by us out into Lake Edward. 

Can you imagine living in the middle of a national park with all of these wild animals in your area? Can you imagine having to go fetch water to drink, cook with, and clean and having to be mindful of the hippos and crocodiles in the water that could easily kill you?

After the boat ride, we decided to go see the flamingos by the one lake close by. There are thousands of pink flamingos that come to the lake during the day. By the time we got there, the sun had just gone down and all but 5 flamingos had flown to another lake. It was rather disappointing. However, on the way back from there, we were driving on the road in the dark and all of a sudden there is a lion in the road. And then there is another lion. And then there is a huge lion with a big mane. And this fellow doesn’t mind us and just walked straight down the middle of the road and let us follow him. Occasionally, a car would come from the other direction and the lion would walk off the road into the grass on the side, and then as soon as the car passed would come right back out again. We probably followed him for about 15 minutes and then eventually we had to go around him because it was getting late and we had to get back to the lodge before they stopped serving dinner! So while the flamingos was disappointing, God definitely had us there for a reason because we never would have seen the lions if we had not gone there.

On the drive back, the moon emerged through the clouds. It was huge. Probably the biggest moon I’ve ever seen in my life. And it was orange. It was so gorgeous. We made it back just in time to grab dinner from the buffet. Then we ate, got ready for bed, and passed out until very early the following morning where we got up early once again to do one more game drive before heading back home. We got to see 2 lions that morning, along with maybe 30 other vehicles.

 

It was then time to head out of the park. On the way, there were a few elephants directly next to the road. It was as if they were saying goodbye to us.

We went a different way to get back to Kampala and then to Jinja, through Fort Portal. We stopped in Kampala to get dinner and then sadly we had to drop Morgan off who is currently on a plane back to the states. She was only here for 3 weeks but it was as if she had been with us much longer! People coming and going is a hard part of missionary life. It is awesome getting to know the people that come, but it’s hard because you know that you’ll only be with them a short time. I’m super grateful to the Lord for allowing me to be here for this time. I do not know what the future holds but I do know that I am supposed to be here right now. And no matter what happens, I will continue to rejoice in my God. Let us not ever forget that Christ died for us, conquered death, and rose again to set us free.

He is risen. He is risen indeed!

Happy Easter