The Last Month, Part 3: Unknown Village, Unknown Everything

By the time we arrived in Max's village, it was pretty late.  Abby & I still had to set up our tents and settle into the guest hut as well as speak with Max about how exactly things would work the next day when we headed to what I will call "Tea Village."  And...obviously...as always...we still had to eat!

Max told us that we'd wake up the next morning, eat breakfast, and then drive in the truck to Tea Village.  We'd stop at the boutiki on our way and buy lots and lots of tea and lots and lots of sugar to give to the people...this is a common thing to do when visiting somebody.  He said he didn't really know how things would go, how long we could work, how many Stories we could test, etc.  Lots of unknowns.

That night we slept inside a little room that they had cleared out especially for us.  Usually someone else slept in there...with some chickens.  We'd find new eggs in the corner every so often.  :)  We still slept inside our tents because that's what we use for mosquito netting.  I remember laying there, looking through my mesh tent at the grass roof and having absolutely zero idea what the next day would hold.  Would they really want to listen to our Stories once they knew more about them?  Did they realize how much time we were asking of them?  Would they be hostile once they realized the Stories were about Jesus?

I can remember laying there, not knowing how Abby felt...maybe she was even already asleep.  "Abby?"
"Yeah?"
"I can't believe we're here."
"Me neither."
"This is not where we thought we'd be sleeping tonight when we woke up this morning."
"Definitely not."
"I'm a little scared of what's going to happen tomorrow."
"Me too, but we just gotta do it and God will take care of it."

Here's an excerpt from Abby's blog describing this same night:
As I laid in the hut that first night I started to worry about how the whole process was going to work. Michelle and I knew that we needed to work all day, everyday. We also knew that we had no relationship with these women who were going to hear these stories. In Africa relationships are key. Here you earn your voice through a relationship that has been nurtured over time. We knew that for the women to let us speak and for them to listen to the stories some kind relationship would need to be forged. I couldn’t sleep at all, so I just prayed that G0d’s Word would go out among these women and their lives would never be the same because of it.