...for they will be filled

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten…You will have plenty to eat, until you are full and you will praise the name of the Lord.” Joel 2:25-26

Another exciting day in Pemba. Was on the back of a truck heading into town and we got rear ended, so just another day in the life. ;) No one was hurt though. I feel like its pretty normal practice here.
The other day I got to ride on a motorcycle, (ok moped) reminded me so much of being in Uganda on the boda boda’s that I was deliriously happy. Totally safe mom :)

(me with Medina after she came back to visit...feeling much better:)

I have good news, for once, which is probably a welcome change from all the woe is me. My little girl came back to the center today looking for me. She gave me her first smile ever, which just melted my heart. She looked completely well so that is a miracle. Social workers are going to look into whether or not her family situation is abusive and if Iris can take her so please pray for her (Medina) that God would protect her and get her into a safe situation soon. I’m really praying for her because I so long to see her safe and loved.

Today we washed the feet of the IRIS pastors. It was a really beautiful ceremony of serving them. Many of them were so shy sticking their feet into the water—but its such a beautiful picture of white people washing all these black pastors feet---and really serving them and repenting for the years of colonialism and oppression.
IRIS runs a 4 year training program for local people that want to be pastors. Within the first year they must establish a church. They get tons of discipleship and training…its awesome. But they give up so much to serve God. They have to leave their families for 3 months at a time, and often their farms suffer or their wives leave them. They do it all in faith because they are called, but many walk miles just to learn…its pretty amazing. We all chipped in money to buy them backpacks and flip flops and water bottles so that they could feel a part of us when we go out together into the villages.

I haven’t gotten to go on outreach yet, which is where we get to go out to remote villages and pray for the sick to be healed, etc, but I think I am going this weekend and am so looking forward to it! So many have come back with stories of the lame walking and the blind seeing. SO PRAY FOR THAT!

We’ve been praying for Heidi’s husband, Rolland who has been ill and he is making a pretty miraculous recovery, so its really good news. He’ll be joining her here next week.
Also we’ve been praying for a group of 41 children at another base who got kicked out by the government and God is providing them other homes through IRIS. Every day there is some kind of crisis and its only by God’s grace that Heidi survives it. I know that when I get back to Uganda my own life will be something like that, but I feel I’m learning here how to handle all that. (without having a meltdown) It’s such incredible training for running Zion Project that I feel so blessed to be here!

I’ve met several people here who are going to Uganda after this, and I’ve been telling them all about Zion Project and Favor of God so I’m really excited to make those connections. I’m on the intercession team here so we’ve been praying over Uganda, Sudan, and Mozambique. God is doing a lot of amazing work in all 3 countries! Everything God is doing in Africa is so interconnected. We are having a solemn assembly here to have the pastors repent for the sins of the nation and to really make changes. What has been so cool is that I didn’t even know what a solemn assembly was (not up with all the Christian lingo :) but when I was praying God gave me Hosea 4 as a list of the sins of this nation and a call to repentance, and Joel 2 as a promise of all He is going to do here…in Joel 2 it speaks of having a solemn assembly. Also those same verses were given to the leadership before I ever got here...so I was feeling pretty prophetic that day :) What is even more exciting is that they are hosting one in UGANDA as well and I got invited to go!

Something I’m praying about and believe God is saying yes to is that Shara (this amazing woman here who teaches a lot of the classes) invited me to go with her on July 28th to Uganda where they are hosting “The Call” in Kampala. It will be a time of prayer, healing, revival, and moves of the Holy Spirit. Stacey Campbell is planning it with Shara, so it will be pretty incredible. I would need to get a ticket though which will cost around $600. Normally I wouldn’t think of going because of the cost, but I really feel God is asking me to go especially because of the fact that I was praying we could do a solemn assembly in Uganda and here is my opportunity. I just find the connections from here to Uganda to be too much of a coincidence to not be God opening the way for me to go. The fact that I even made friends with Shara, is such a blessing in the first place, much less for her to invite me, a student, on the trip. Since she is organizing it, I would be in on the planning stages for it, which would truly be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Things have been really expensive here in Pemba and we’ve had to pay for more than we originally thought, so if you would like to give towards my plane ticket and towards blessings the pastors here in Mozambique please make your checks payable to Zion Project and put “Sarita’s trip” in the memo and send to P.O. Box 321 Quinque, Va 22965.

I really appreciate all your love and support. It truly uplifts me to know you are out there praying for me, supporting me, and sharing in the joys of ushering in God’s kingdom on earth. I can receive and send texts here so be sure to text me! I LOVE getting them :)
011 258 828786447

I would also love for you to keep my family in your prayers…as I’ve been interceding here and pressing into God, they’ve come under a lot of backlash and attack and I know that it’s a result of all we are accomplishing here and the enemy is trying to keep me distracted, so really press in for them as well. It’s hard to be so far away and not able to help in any way, except for praying. Thank you! Am missing you all, but cannot think of a place I’d rather be right now. Being so close to God—the intimacy-- is worth all the sacrifice of crappy food and being caked in red dust all the time!

Hugs from pemba,
Sarita

“Blessed are those who hunger….”

It’s a hot, sticky afternoon in Pemba and I’m at the internet café tired after 3 hours of sleep and wondering where to begin….

After miraculously recovering from some sort of unknown illness (pretty typical here) I was beginning to really enter into the presence of God again. My prayer the last few days has truly been, Lord make me hungry, hungry for your presence, and for love for these Mozambican people, hungry for the secrets of your Kingdom here on earth. I want to be so hungry that God sees and must come and fill me. Ever heard that saying be careful what you pray for?

I want to tell a story. I want you to understand what I mean when I say it hurts to be hungry. But there is no other way.

Last night after our evening teaching session, I was leaving the meeting a little disenfranchised, longing for more touch from God, hungry still. As I left the meeting a little village girl dressed in rags followed me out into what had become a cold night. She followed me up to the gate of my student housing compound and I knew she was not allowed to enter so I hugged her and tried to explain in broken Portuguese that she could not come with me. She just looked at me. No smile, just a face of stone, a face beyond her years, a face too old and too hardened for such a slight frame. I realized she didn’t understand me. I was just hugging her against my legs trying to keep her warm and praying in my spirit for the wisdom to know what to do.

IRIS is an amazing ministry and the things I have seen here, I have never witnessed before. Heidi is a true model of what it means to be Jesus lived out. But there are rules, rules that are hard, but necessary I understand. And the village children are supposed to be gone by 6pm so I knew, at 9pm at night, this little girl was not supposed to be there, and in my spirit I knew something was wrong.

Just then, Travis, a missionary here comes up to me and asks what’s going on (thank God for Travis.) In broken Makua we figure out that she lives in a village called Nateti or something like that, which we know is too far for her to walk to this late at night. Travis (bless him) is about to leave the next morn at 5am for an arduous journey to Tete province to do 3 weeks of intensive work setting up a village feeding program for about 3,000 children. Heidi literally described this place, built on volcanic ash, as a “hell-hole” (all the bad language around here has had me feeling right at home :) Normally, we would have to take the children to the guard and have them kick them out, but something in my spirit, just resonates with Heidi’s words, “Stop for the one.” “This is your one.”

Since I’ve been here, I really haven’t had as much of a bleeding heart as is normal for me. In fact I’ve been feeling rather numb, and rather lacking in love for the Mozi’s (lets call them) and longing for my Ugandan children. So this is rather uncharacteristic of my experience here thus far. But this little girl with her stoic face, her beautiful, light brown eyes lacking in any emotion, just undoes my heart. I give Travis this look and he is like, “Oh no.” After talking to the guards who speak to her in Makua, we piece together that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for her to walk home because of all the banditos and its too far so I’m secretly praying that the people in charge will let us drive her home. (All this is kind of a big deal because we’re not supposed to go out at night) But my prayer is answered and we hop in the Landrover and I put her on my lap to keep her warm, but notice she has a slight fever so I keep hugging her and praying over her while we try to figure out where she lives.

Long story short, she won’t tell us and where we take her that we think is “Nateti” she just shakes her head no. At this point Travis, who deals with stuff like this all the time, is thinking we should just drop her off near where we think and make a run for it. Before you go shaking your head…its hard for missionaries here….they see so many village kids that they can’t help, who are not part of the center, and get told so many lies about situations, that its hard to keep an uncalloused heart. But again, in my spirit, I just don’t feel comfortable with it, so he bared with me and we go to the police station to see if they can help us figure out where her home is. It’s fairly dangerous to be out this time at night (so they say…I don’t really buy into it J so two guys that are supposed to be police but smell like alcohol, escort us to where they think this little girl lives. But once we get there, I just feel such fear in her (her name is Medina) and they try to pull her from me to put her out of the vehicle because she won’t go, but she literally wraps her legs around mine, so I tell them to stop and we ask more questions. Apparently she is an orphan who lives with an auntie who beats her…but all of this information she doesn’t offer willingly. There is a huge difference in her than most of the other village children here who are quick to offer sob stories. I know I can’t believe everything every child says, but I feel in her, this fear, and trepidation, and just imagine that it must be true…or worse. I also feel how hot she is getting and am getting worried that she is really sick. The police want us to leave her there in the village or at the police station perhaps.

At this point it’s late, everyone is in bed, and we don’t really have anyone’s phone numbers…we are stuck making this decision on our own and even though we know its totally against the rules to take her back to IRIS, there is something in my spirit that will not let me leave that tiny girl in that place with all those men who are drunk. I’m sorry, but the mother in me is like “hell no!”

Travis looks at me and asks me what I want to do. And I’m just like, “I can’t leave here here.” He agrees, so we take her back to the base and were walking her up to the girl’s sleeping quarters when she just starts breathing heavy and coughing up all kinds of mucus and I touch her forehead again and realize her fever has really escalated. I’m really worried at this point because she is at the point of collapsing so I pick her up and we sit her down and pray for her and I try to sing to her to calm her down because she is so agitated. I think of how the mothers must feel here when their children are sick and dying in their arms and they cannot do anything---such a helpless feeling.

I end up taking her back to a room where I can sleep with her and make sure she’s ok, after we call the student nurse on call and get some malaria medication and Tylenol for her. It’s 1am and its too late to call the doctors so we just suffer through trying to make the best decisions we can. I couldn’t sleep much because I was so afraid she was going to die on me, it was literally that bad. At this point I was just thanking Jesus for putting that tug on my spirit not to leave her because she ended up being so sick. So I totally broke a bunch of rules and am all worried how they are going to take it in the morning. I dutifully march her to the clinic after speaking with some staff, and get reprimanded by the doctors, but at this point I don’t really care because I knew I did what the Holy Spirit was telling me to. I understand how it is for them---they can’t help them all and they don’t want to start a pattern of letting village kids stay on the base. And yet, I know there have to be extenuating circumstances where those rules don’t apply. I think this was one of them. Because every day, all day long, we are taught here….love the poor, stop for the one, let your heart break for them, sacrifice your life for them, and be led by the Spirit. And even while the doctors (poor them) were giving me a talking to, they said that Mama Heidi would probably be proud of me. Such a conundrum.

But here is the pain---the hurt of being hungry---that when God actually lets you see, when he gives you that love for them, it breaks your heart. To be hungry, to feel, it breaks your heart here. Here we struggle to let our heart break for the poor, and they do, and then we struggle because we want it to stop—because to see is so hard. But my prayer, my prayer, is Lord keep me tender. Because I don’t want to get calloused. As much as it hurts to see, hurts to be broken for this little girl who got taken back by her aunt and who I may not see again, hurts to have her pulled from my arms and to know I don’t know what to do or how to ease her pain. And I ask God why…and this morning in Heidi’s preaching I get this answer in the Beatitudes…”blessed are those who hunger.” And I realize that unfortunately for me….God answered my prayer. I hunger. I hunger for righteousness in this land, for justice, for enough so that this little girl doesn’t have to go home to an abusive home. I hunger to hold her and not have her hurt. I hunger to protect her. I know God is proud of me…I heard him say that, even though I did break the rules :) Because it’s what Jesus would have done. Stop for the one. To actually think, maybe this time, I can do something.

There is a chance, if her story is true, that she might be able to be taken in by Iris…but pray because they are at full capacity right now. So much need. Such few resources for ones like her.

I do not feel full right now. Now, I feel empty. But I know that too is a blessing because it means I’m still hungry…hungry for God to fill me, and it means my heart is still beating, its still bleeding even though life with its cruelty would have it stop. We are such self-protectors. We don’t want to get involved. Don’t want to feel pain. Don’t want to be hungry. We do only that which might repay us in some way or offer some kind of return…even the feeling that we are good for a little while. Here…we are learning to let that go. Here, I’m still just a bleeding heart. And here I am still desperate. And I think it’s ok.

So to not end with gloom and doom, I’ll tell you of my promise: This morning in class after all the drama and tear filled goodbye to my little clinging girl….I was just balling my eyes out and hurt, and angry, and just upset but trying to understand….after I really felt like I gave it back to God….I feel a hand on my leg and look up and one of the little girls I’ve been holding and eating lunch with, Pretoria, who doesn’t speak but just looks at me with luminescent eyes---she is there and she is smiling (and she rarely smiles) and I know she is happy to see me and I am so happy to see her. I pull her into my lap and just rock her and she is content to just sit there and let me love on her even though she is missing lunch…and I heard God say to me… “For every one you give back to me, I’ll give you another.” And I knew that God sent her there as a promise, to just give me a hug, and some hope---that to love and to hurt, as much as it might cost us, is still the only way. This disappointment cannot break me….it is just one more thing I am laying down for the promise---blessed are those who hunger….for they will be filled.

“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”

Heidi spoke this morning on this verse and I felt as though she was speaking directly to me, directly to my heart. The first five days I was here, it was all God, all joy, all fullness, all anointing, all presence. Just being filled up with so much goodness and joy and teaching. And now….emptiness. What do we do when God takes us through a season of emptying us, of not constantly speaking to us? God is breaking our hearts so that He can heal them, so that those old hurts, those old wounds can be addressed. Was it a word of rejection someone spoke? A lost relationship. Just loss. The constant that nothing is constant. What was it that wrote itself on our soul so that we learned to approach God in chains?

This cup of servitude, this cup of suffering is painful. I’ve spent much of my free time up in the prayer hut just crying out to God for his presence. The wind whips around, the sand storms rise and yet not my heart with it. The last two days full of questions. And yet….


Answers. On Sunday morning I didn’t feel like going to church, I didn’t feel I had anything left to give. So I cried and then eventually made it there and sat in the dirt with the children. A little girl, with arms like toothpicks crawled up into my arms and just held onto me. I held her for two hours just rocking her. She fell asleep on me and drooled all over my tank top but I held her and felt her love for me and my love for her. I felt how God must love us crawling up into His arms, I felt how he wanted me to love the little girl in me. I felt so many things. And I felt nothing all at the same time. Her name was Zina. I like to think its Xena (yes the warrior princess.) When I tried to wake her so that she wouldn’t miss the food handout (because by her torn dress I could tell she was a village child) she just squeezed me harder, so afraid that I would let her go. She was so exhausted. I thought of the miles she must have walked to get there. For some lunch. I thought of her desire, the hunger in her that she would walk those miles and just cling to me with all she had. And I know that even though sometimes in this journey with God I do not feel Him, I do not feel Him rocking me in His arms, I know that He allows it so that I know what it is to hunger again, to want, to desire His presence so much that I’ll walk for miles to get it. That it’s all I want. Nothing else. Nothing less. In this raw world, those true selves, those true desires, they come to the surface. This place is a purifying fire. There is nowhere to hide. It is all surrender. All or nothing.

This morning I had almost given up that God was ever going to speak to me again. I had almost given up that I could feel just the soothing presence that overcomes me in worship, that fills me up with love so that I can go hug that child on the street, so that I can let the children just take and take. Because they will take. They will disappoint us. And if we are not full of love, not full of something more than ourselves, we will want to run away when we see that our love was not returned, or our love was trampled on. Heidi has so many stories of being stolen from and her girls that she rescued failing her. But she takes them back, she never kicks them out. Never. Because the love of God is unending. And if we do not have it…we will run out.

So I am desperate here and not ashamed to be desperate. Desperate for the love of God because it is the only thing that changes, and for once, I am not trying to change the world, I am just trying to change me.

Before I left, a friend wrote me a letter that I feel was prophetic. They said, as Ghandi has said, “Before we can change the world, we must first change ourselves.”

This is the journey I am on. Hungry to be changed and turned upside down. Hungry to have the emptiness filled and yet content with the knowledge that my God makes me a promise: I will be comforted. And in that same comfort, I will comfort others.
My greatest pain is the area in which I will do the greatest ministry. I truly believe that. So I’m not afraid of it. Let it come.

Slowly, I press through. In worship this morning, I press through despite the fact that I feel numb. And I can feel God coming, and even though sometimes He is a long way off, I can sense Him coming, like you can sense a lover before they turn the corner. I wait for it.

And I tell you truly, though this has been hard, I can think of no other place I would rather be in this moment. I know that the healing and the worth I am storing up in this place will stretch forth healing into the darkest corners of this world, and the darkest places of the heart. My only hope is that someday you too could come here, could experience this place and even in a week, the years of knowledge it has given me. The kinds of lessons it takes a lifetime to learn.

If you are thirsty for more, jump off the edge, let it all go, and come.



Ps—thank you to those of you who have been praying for my sleep. I have been sleeping..finally :) Pray for breakthrough for me. I really feel this is a time of receiving so that I will have something to give the broken of the world. So pray I won’t feel guilty about that.I feel I am in heart surgery. So pray for that as well :) MUCH LOVE!

I heart Pemba.

It’s amazing how much things can change in a few days. When I first got here, I admit I had a bit of an attitude about it all. The food, the heat, it not being Uganda, its my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to, blah blah blah. But the power of God to change a heart is pretty incredible. Last night I fell a little in love with Mozambique. Sitting up on the prayer hill with the Indian Ocean wind playing with my hair as I stared at the stars extending horizon to horizon. The sounds of the young orphans who now have a home getting ready for bed, a group of young girls softly singing to a guitar. The music floating gently above the night sounds of dogs barking. This compound, this little refuge amidst all the hunger and thievery, all the brokenness and poverty of body and spirit, it welcomes the weary traveler into its arms. Plazere enti conocere. Nice to meet you. A home for people who have no home. Yes, this is what I want…not here, not now, but someday… that promise of new beginnings, that promise of creating a family for those who are lost. It calls to me on the night wind and I want to dream again. To dream that its possible. 2 years. 2 years is a long time to wait and yet I’m waiting still, but this time I feel the waiting is married to an even greater expectation. I know it. I don’t know how I do, but I know it. Zion, the vision I have for it, today in our first missions school class I saw it so clear. I heard God say, “Lift up your eyes and see…” And I do. I see the circles of women with babies tucked tightly against their backs, laughing. I see them dancing. I see me dancing with them. And I see love between us all. That is what I’m learning most here…how to love.

For me the promise lives in a time and space that has not yet happened, but is so real. What is faith? What is a promise? It’s a tenacious belief holding strong against a tide of mockery.

But even sweeter than the dream, is this connection. This closeness to God, this understanding between us that yes, it is His, it is not mine and if He asked me to give it up He knows that I would. I hold the dream loosely in my open palms waiting for yet another whisper behind me of what He wants to take and give next.

Today in class, was so amazing. Only two days in and already I am learning so much. Learning that this path of servitude costs everything and yet only adds to me, multiplies on me until I feel so full of God that I would give gladly not out of requirement but out of love. I am learning so much about what it takes to do this for the rest of my life. What it takes to sustain in the middle of the world’s hardest places without losing peace, without losing joy. Even though I look like I was making mud pies for 3 hours. I think my feet will never return to their normal color, so I mine as well join a reservation now.

You know, everything is really spiritual here. Like how for 20 minutes last night our house discussed how we were going to get rid of the large log in our toilet that wouldn’t flush down—would it be by bamboo stick or hanger? Or how when I was outside talking on the phone I forgot that I had my skirt up above my knees (big TABOO here, you know, those sexy knees! J And the Mukono guard tripped and almost fell over, which made us both start laughing.

Ok quick funny thing for you to envision:
Sarita with a bucket on her head like an African woman.
I’m so serious.
Libby (my new found friend and also my bunk-mate) and I were up past prayer hill where there is a small garden that the village women cultivate. They were carrying huge buckets of water on their heads up and down the hill. So we start trying to converse with them, which looked partly like a pantomime act and decided we were going to try to help them by carrying water on our heads, the way African women do. Man oh man! They are small but those women must be strong as ox’s. One woman, Elena, helped fill our buckets with water and then wrapped her skirt (capulana) on my head like a turban, then she put the bucket on my head, precarious at best, and said “Vamos” (“we go”) I was like, yeah right. I thought my neck was going to buckle under the pressure. It was so incredibly hard. The only reason I made it to the top was because Libby was doing it and I figured if she could, I could! The women were falling over themselves laughing and clapping and cheering us on. They got a great big kick out of the whole thing and we caused quite a scene. My arms felt like jello carrying it for like 2 minutes and some women in Uganda can walk 5 miles for water. On my second trip I didn’t fill it all the way to the top. Totally cheating, but I couldn’t have them thinking I was a weak white girl.

But it was probably one of my favorite moments here so far connecting with the women, and even though they probably could have done it a lot faster without our “help” just trying to serve them was so fulfilling. It made me long for the women in the camps in Uganda who I made friendships with through shared laughter. I’m just praying this time here prepares me to love them in the ways they need to be loved.

More on my adventures in Pemba soon.
Signing off with love,
Sarita

Ps—last night I slept for the first time so thank you for your prayers, please continue to pray for sleep and a fresh infilling of love, as well as health. J

A New Season--Pemba Mozambique

I made it safely to Mozambique, with bags intact, which is pretty much a miracle, so yay God J I’m not quite adjusted yet---wishing I had brought a big thing of olive oil for all the beans and rice—but glad I brought my Nyquil for sleeping as the body has not yet gotten used to the time difference. Our first day we were pretty much thrown into the chaos of Children’s day (dia de credenza sp?). I’m trying to learn Portuguese, which is sort of like Spanish, only not close enough so that I understand only here and there. We fed probably over 2,000 children, which was amazing. Lots of them were kids that live here at the base and get loved on and fed and go to school. But we had a ton of people from the village. Lots of young mama’s with baby’s so I spent some time saying how beautiful their babies were (que linda or bonita!) So some of the things in Spanish are the same which is nice!

The feeding of children sounds a lot more glamorous than it was in actuality, I was responsible for marking children with black X’s (which isn’t easy on black skin J) so they couldn’t get back in line for the food a second time, which was kind of a sad job to have in the first place, but it’s the biggest day of the year here in Mozambique for the kids---they had chicken for lunch and fanta, which is a huge treat! I wanted to be more excited about it, but it was hard looking at all their little faces, and seeing them shove each other in line---that’s the reality of missions work---its not all Hallelujah’s. The kid’s desperation is real. And poverty is still rampant here. This Makua tribe is one of the most un-reached in all of East Africa, and they’ve only seen churches and pastors spring up here in the last 5 years due to Iris Ministries’ work and all that God has done. There are over 600 churches here now, which is badly needed. It’s a culture that thrives off the banditos stealing from tourists and each other. And I heard a story today from a man who used to be one of them. He used to rape and kill, and now he is the worship leader of Iris’ church on the mission’s school base. It’s so amazing what the love of God can do in changing people’s hearts. I’m excited to see the change in the children here over time.

It’s also so amazing to me all God has done here in Pemba through Iris in 5 years! How I long to see that miraculous power of transformation happen in Uganda. I wait for the day.
While I was standing in line marking big X’s, praying my little “O Jesus let this marker miraculously multiply” as it was running out…. throwing my frustrated prayers up to God, I was wondering all of a sudden---what am I doing here? Because as much as this is Africa and as much as I love it, and am blessed to be right near the beautiful turquoise Indian Ocean, my heart aches for Uganda and all my friends there, my heart aches to say a greeting in Acholi and to see the faces I left behind. It’s hard trying to love another culture that is not home for me. But I felt God say “whatever you have done for the least of these….” And these are the least of these. They may not be MY least of these, but they are someone’s. And as much as sometimes being here feelings like dying to my own self, I know that I am supposed to be here for now to learn and grow, and I’ve accepted that it isn’t going to be easy. It is never easy to grow. But we must grow nonetheless. So I’m growing…. Sort of. I still wish I had a big old fan in my room and some coffee. We have it so easy in America..its hard to conceive that like 3 days ago I could have just walked to a store and gotten whatever I needed. But its good for me. Hey, I’m trying! I’m excited for the school to start. Heidi is amazing and just being around her I feel chills just thinking about how God took her life and multiplied it and now she has this beautiful, thriving amazing family here. I get excited thinking about the dreams that we lay down at God’s feet so that He can make them come true. Or even better. I hold onto that.

Communication will be mostly nonexistent. I’ve been here for 3 days and its hard to get to the internet café. My cell (if it works) is 011 (Mozambique country code) 828786447 But with classes not sure how much I’ll be able to talk J But the girls here are awesome…quickly making friends, as we’re in pretty small quarters with four women. I feel a little old as a lot of the girls are in college or fresh out and I’m quickly approaching my 27th year ;) But they are sweet. I am excited to build friendships.

Sending my love from Pemba,

Sarita

*Pray for sleep for me (its so friggin hot)

*Pray for stamina for my exhausted body

*Pray that God would show me my purpose in being here and change my heart to be more of a servant to these people
*Pray that I could use all I am learning here and apply it in Uganda

ps--some of the kids are really lovely...I had two little girls hanging all over me during worship today who just wanted to be loved on...so don't worry, I still love kids :)