Blog Entry — July 11, 2009
For the last 16 days, I’ve had no Internet access. With that, I had no cell phone use and did not drive a car.
I was in East Africa, serving at a church in Arusha, Tanzania before attempting to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the continent at 19,341 feet — 3,800 feet higher than anything in the continental U.S. In fact, the only electronic item I used during that time was a converter to charge the battery of my digital video camera.
That means no incessant refreshing of my Facebook news feed, no knee-jerk-reaction trips to my email homepage, no slipping my iPhone out of my pocket while using my knee to drive on I-495 only to discover that, still, no one cares about me enough to send a text.
For over two weeks, I was deprived of finding out which South Park character best represents that guy from econ class in my freshman year. And I never found out how well a girl I met once did on a quiz about someone I’ve never met at all.
“omg, 83 percent!!! lolzzzzz”
I’ve never been so blessed.
Things are about to get theological. So if hearing the name “Jesus” in public makes you feel awkward or uncomfortable, I recommend hitting the BACK button.
My separation from American culture went smoother than expected. After two days of travel — flights from Dulles to London to Nairobi to Kilimanjaro airport, plus a 10-hour layover in England — all 23 of us were stunned at our reception at Bible Baptist Church in Tanzania.
We stepped out of our overstuffed van to flood of smiling, hopping elementary school students, none of whom wanted anything more than to hold our hands. We were instantly ensconced.
In the seven days there and at a pair of Maasai villages, we learned that there is no correlation between wealth and joy. The children we served live on approximately four dollars per day.
But their elation upon our arrival could not be recreated with any dollar amount.
We called it the “Ministry of Presence.” Traveling to visit them and serve in that community brought out a degree of appreciation and humbling hospitality that none of us expected.
We quickly learned, though, that their joy, and that of the entire Olorien community, came from lifestyles wholly devoted to God.
One of the local pastors put it best.
“In America, you believe in God,” he said. “In Africa, we depend on God.”
There’s purity in the locals that cannot be explained. They show gratitude in the smallest of blessings, while having trust and patience when downtrodden.
I had an hour-long conversation with a pair of 25-year-old, soccer-playing budding pastors en route to our first Maasai village. Talking about everything from soccer to theology to courtship, I couldn’t believe how our immediate concerns and life goals were so identical.
We live on opposite corners of the globe and grew up under completely dissimilar circumstances. Still, Abraham and Sadock are my brothers and our lives are strikingly comparable.
The conversation taught me that there are truly two universal languages: Christ and sport.
I’m blessed enough to speak them both.
Those weeks were perspective-shattering and life-changing. Frustratingly, though, the experiences are impossible to present in any written or spoken word.
How does one convey the feeling engendered by receiving a handmade gift from a four-year-old girl after painting her family’s home in a town of mud-made houses? I can’t bottle up the literal thousands of stars sprinkled over the Eastern African desert, nearly all of which we had never seen before, as thousands of villagers breathed eternally for the first time.
Whether on a mission trip or simply for a humanitarian act of service, I urge you to step out of your comfort zone to aid those in the Third World. While in Arusha, I constantly contemplated where I would be had I not decided to come. Never once did I find life in D.C. preferable.
That’s not to say that the short list of things I did upon returning didn’t center around a trip through the McDonald’s drive-thru and camping out on the desktop in my room. But there are innumerable moments from my Tanzania trip that I will never forget, ever.
Oh, and we totally climbed that mountain, too. It’s overrated.
I’m renaming it “Kilimanjaro Hill.”
Even though I spit up blood for four days after reaching the summit and still can’t feel a few toes on my left foot.
Email: pmurphy@digitalsports.com
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