We haven’t been up too much lately, which is why I haven’t blogged in a while. Today I was trying to think about something to blog about and thought about sharing my Africa story. A lot of people who read my blog won’t know it and it’s something that I’d like to rewrite and put it in a file because I’m sure someday I’ll forget it. So, here it is.
I was at a Youth Specialties convention somewhere in California and decided to sponsor a Compassion kid. I wanted to choose one in Central America because I had traveled there a lot and because I knew I would travel there in the future. I went up to the booth and noticed a girl from Tanzania. It was one of those really odd moments where there were probably 50 pictures of kids on the table and all I saw was her. I kept thinking, no, this isn’t right, I shouldn’t sponsor her, I want to visit the child I sponsor and I can’t see myself ever going to Africa. I’m a 'Mexico Mission Trip' kind of a girl. But, oddly, I didn’t really see any of the other kids on the table. It was all about the Tanzania girl. I walked away very frustrated. I decided not to pick the girl from Tanzania and just forget the whole experience. Maybe if she was still there the last day of the event, I could settle for her, but I wasn’t interested in choosing a child who I would never visit.
I really frustrated over this at the time because I had decided to sponsor a compassion kid so that I wouldn’t give the devil a foothold in my life. That’s just a fancy way of saying that I wanted children, wasn’t married, wasn’t dating anyone, had ZERO prospects, and didn’t want to get sucked in the “I want a family and can’t have it” type of attitude. So, my response to the depressing state that I was in, was to make lemonade out of lemons and sponsor a compassion child who I could correspond with and visit occasionally. (Of course this was 8 years before I met my wonderful husband.)
The Tanzania girl's packet was there the next day at the Compassion booth and she was still the only one that I noticed on the table. I still remember the picture of her. It’s so clear in my head. So, I threw what I wanted out the window and picked her packet up (not very willingly) and told the Compassion person, something like, 'I guess I’ll take this one.' I opened her packet and found out that her name was Judith and started writing letters to her and praying for her and Tanzania. They weren’t especially great prayers because I didn’t have a lot of time to pray for a child that I never thought that I would meet, so they were something like, "I pray for Judith and Tanzania". Amen.
You guessed it, I ended up in Tanzania a few years later. Some relatives of one of the families that I knew at my church were traveling to Tanzania and leaving 8 weeks from the day that I met them. They offered for me to tag along, and I said, no, not interested. 8 weeks is not enough time to prepare for missions/aid of that magnitude. I left them and didn’t expect to see them again. And of course, even without my willingness, everything worked out. 6 weeks before the leaving date, I thought maybe I wanted to go, but really didn’t see that it was possible. So, I thought I’d just check a few things out and see if the doors were closed or open. First, could I afford it? Yes, I had the $2,500 cash so I could send the check the next day. Second, did I have all my shots? Yes, I just had gotten back from Guatemala and it was mostly the same shots only needing to take a few other pills and they were covered by insurance. Third, did I have 3 weeks of vacation? I talked with my boss at the time and he decided I should go and that it wasn’t vacation, therefore they were still going to pay me my paycheck and I didn’t have to use any vacation time for it. So, the next day I sent in the check, got my malaria medication and blocked my work schedule out for those three weeks.
My time in Tanzania with Judith was really amazing (and another story). This time I thought I would just share the journey that got me there. Anyway, it was an interesting time in my life and I just wanted to write it down for memory sake.
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