Trek Scratch

Yesterday was Pam’s and my birthday! The short story is that it was a great Birthday, and thank you!!! Let me just tell you about what it was like here. The night before I spent with Pastor Supresa and lots of the kids from Maputo. We sang Shangaan praise, told stories in Portuguese and prayed in many tongues. Friends texted and mCel actually sent the messages (sometimes texts arrive hours or days later. Ha!).
In the morning I grabbed a lump of bread and walked up to school hut for dance practice where more than twenty of my favorite girls greeted me, tackled me and the sang a rousing rendition of happy birthday in Portuguese.  After dance Rosa and a few of the girls stayed around to pray for me while the others went to clean up for church.

In the mean time Suzete planned a breakfast out at Russels so I grabbed a car and drove Nasimo, Suzete, Juma, Promise and two of my room mates out to breakfast.  Nathanael made cake with coffee chocolate frosting.   Mmmmmhhhhhh.

We got home just in time to catch the last few moments of church.  I got to pray for a child with a cleft-palette and bless a widow who had twins of perhaps 2 months.  I don’t have pictures but you can take my word that they are beautiful children, all of them. Onesia gave me a tiny hard wood toy guitar with dental floss strings wrapped in magenta tissue paper.

It just so happens that we are celebrating Mama Aida’s birthday today as well so we packed up LOADS of barbecued chicken and filled the camions with our kids, the village kids, the base staff, the students (about half of them have gone home) and drove to Marangania where we had a beach party all afternoon:

After swimming, sandcastles and sandy Africa acrobatics we left the whales (!) on the horizon and fired up the generator, got our the sound system and drums and had more dancing and worship.  They roasted and presented a pig.   The kids all had dance presentations for Mama Aida that went until the sun was gone and the brilliant Southern sky was filled with stars.  We had a prayer and worship time for Heidi and then for me which ended supine gazing at the stars through lazy eyes and plenty of laughter.

I rode home in a the back of a truck where some of my favorite people (besides you, my beloved reader) sang happy birthday in Portuguese, English, Cantonese, Russian, Spanish and quite possibly other languages.  Before heading off to rest Zelinia walked me to the girls dorms at the top of the hill where they had prepared a HUGE chocolate cake.  We sat and ate, hading out cake to the boys who had tagged along suspecting that the journey might end in sweet treats.  Finally, as if the day could hold nothing more, one of my friends performed a song she had written for me.

Of course I miss you all, I love you and I wish you could be here.  To be honest I could have done without all the food, fanatics and even the beach because the best part of yesterday was just to be with people who love me and to be with people I love.