greatest 45 min of my life

so this is a short post about a jog that i did. it was late at night and pretty much every one had gone to bed. i took my zune, cranked the David Crowder Band, and jogged between the dorms/room where we slept and the house of the people hosting us. there was no lighting in site, except the stars and the moonlight. it is about half a kilometer between the dorm and the house and it was very uphill towards the house. so i started out. the temperature was perfect, the moon was bright, the stars were beautiful, and i was surrounded by nature and Gods creation. as i kept jogging back and forth i was overcome with emotion and couldnt help but cry out to God. i was literally in tears as i kept on jogging. i was just in this state of worship that i wanted to never end. i kept jogging until i felt like my legs were going to collapse, but then i just kept walking. it was just amazing. these words do not do justice to the way i felt. but after about 40 minutes of this i was drenched in sweat and i lied down in the middle of a field where i tried to take it all in. then i went to the "bathing station" where i poured freezing cold water all over myself to bathe. it felt so cold and yet so good. that is no doubt the best 45 minutes of my life

Masaka

so recently i had the opportunity to travel to a place called masaka. i went with cara, fred, mike, and tiny (its a nickname because he is bigger than me). masaka is about an hour or 2 below the equator. we stayed in a village that was far away from the city. it was beautiful at night... you could see all the stars (where there werent clouds).
So a few days before we left, I heard that I was going to a village far away for a few days. I had no idea what we were going to do, but I went with a heart of service and ready to do anything that might be needed. We left at about 6am on Monday morning, and arrived there at about noon. The people at the place that we stayed at were very hospitable. I was honored and touched by their kindness and generosity. But after we had lunch, we didn't waist any time. We started to evangelize.
As we started to evangelize, I started to notice the differences between here, and evangelizing in America. The first thing is that no one slammed their doors shut, or refused to let us talk to them. They were all very welcoming, and some even gave us gifts, just for coming. Secondly I noticed that these people really enjoyed listening to us, even if they weren't born again. The ones who were born again just wanted us to preach to them for as long as we could. I had to adjust to this different way of doing things, because I am used to just getting to the point/getting down to business. It was an awesome experience to be able to share the good news of Christ with so many people.
Each day after we finished evangelizing we took a nap and talked to each other until we had dinner and had a short time of fellowship/worship/Bible study. I enjoyed the Bible study so much. There were about 10-15 people crowded into a tiny room and we read by candle light and shared with each other about the passage that we had read. It was just a huge blessing and a great opportunity to evangelize to all those people and fellowship with the people at the house.

Christmas

hey so i know that this is totally late, but here is the scoop on how christmas went down over here. well it started a few days before the 25th. many people came to the church, and we handed out soap, salt, sugar, and corn to the people who came. it is kinda interesting that the things we handed out were more of necessities rather than "luxuries". then everyone was very busy on christmas eve preparing for the christmas meal. i helped peel matoke (bananas) and irish (potatoes). but my favorite part of preparing was slaughtering the chickens. i killed 3 of them (and filmed it to put on my facebook) and i helped "de-feather" them. then on christmas we went to the service and afterwards, about 50 people came to the house (mainly kids from the school). it was very cool. there was plenty to eat, and everyone was stuffed. there was no tree, presents, decorations, but there were friends and family. it was a cool experience