recently a good friend of mine reminded me of a story i told of an experience i had in africa. i will share it now.

last year i went on a trip with some dear friends to Kenya with my church for a mission project. once there we met what would become a 2nd family. Three couples from my church had already been there to greet us two weeks earlier, and after an 18-hour plane ride it was good to see some familiar faces while stretching the legs. anyway, we had great fun on the trip doing the mission project, which we were there for, but as soon as they get the website up, i'll link it here and you can read about it all...this is a story that took place one one of our recreational activities.

so, when in africa, what do you do? besides calling people 'rafiki' and citing other references to the lion king, you go on SAFARI! so we load up onto our 10 passenger plane, i immediately feel like i'd be better off if i didn't have a stomach...or was in fact, dead...and proceed to our destination on the famous Masai Mara. we are met with Land Rovers and are carted off to our sweet tents.

well, we stuff ourselves with massive amounts of food and as most of our group headed to bed, "the kids" decided, "it's 9:30, it's dark, we're in the middle of african wildlife...let's go exploring...by ourselves." my parents are not dumb, but they may have passed on the not-so-brilliant genes to the next generation. well i grab my headlamp, kristin gets her comes-with-the-tent free flashlight and tom gets his bright-enough-to-SOS-mars flashlight cannon. we think we're safe, light apparently has become a force field in which, so long as we can see it...it can't hurt us. we spot these little dik-dik all over the grounds and decide to chase them, perhaps catch one and put a sweater on it that says "Rudolph". eventually we're met by a security guard whom we can't understand that well, but determined he was saying we couldn't go any further, we comply, because Christians on a mission trip :)

while we're walking back, the old and frail security guard askes if we know about the watering hole. dumbfounded that this wasn't advertised we say we haven't and he says he'll take us there. we find a somewhat hidden dirt path that goes behind a few tents, down a hill and opens into a man-made watering hole..AND ELEPHANTS were down there! we thought this was SO cool, we were prevented from getting to close as we were on a ridge and we were behind the fence around the property. the security guard mumbled something and then left, we stayed there for a little while longer until, unsupervised, we decide to make some more super-intelligent decisions...let's go find more of these "hidden" places. tom remembered vaguely a dirt path by our tents...oh happy day, let's wander!

now, the tent situation was like this, kristin, being a girl, slept in her own little princess tent and tom and i were in a tent next to her, at the end of the property, so there was our tent, a little bit of grass, then wilderness. super. we head back, find this forbidden path and walk into the depths of the darkness. we walk about 30 feet behind our tents and hear some rustling...oooo animals! then it stops. rustling. stops. rustling. stops. armed with our flashlights (protected by a force field, remember) we approach the fence, being drawn closer every time we hear a noise...whispering, like animals that can hear 10 miles away couldn't hear the clunky whispers of three foolish humans. after all we think we're hunting it...and assuming "it" is just a little dik-dik or if we're lucky a boar.

we get to be no more than arm's length to the fence and we hear the most horrible, deep, throaty snarl of some large cat a half-asian kid from the midwest has ever heard. we immediately crap our pants. a dust cloud like that from Tom & Jerry appears and within 2.3 seconds i have gone from zero to sixty and am already in the tent and under the covers. tom freezes, thinking it was a t-rex and if he didn't move he'd be alright, kristin finally decides to run, but trips over a stump. tom slowly realizes he's the last one, which also equates to being dinner. he runs, and trips over the tripped kristin. flashlights go flying, now they're flying blind and their force field is gone. being an athletic and chivalrous man, tom brings himself to his feet and leaves kristin behind (he may have even pushed kristin down more and sprinkled some lemon juice on her to make her look like a more appetizing meal). fear gives kristin olympic legs and she almost beats tom back to the tent. they finally reach it, enter and zip the tent closed, lion claws can't get through canvas or anything. by this time i have already packed my things, written my will, accepted Jesus about 37 times and snorted some cocaine so pending any encounters with lions, i would be frantic and not feel pain.

realizing we just escaped with our lives, our fear eventually turns to amazement and something like that scence in Tommy Boy happened and we just said "That...was...AWESOME!" we muster up enough courage to run outside to get the security guard. we run and finally find him and all three of us are frantically telling him what happened, at the same time. we immediately sounded like scared americans who had never been out of the comfort of our homes. you could pretty much tell he was rolling his eyes around to himself. he yells something to another security guard in Swahili and they come investigate the scene, but they are armed with little bats...oh yeah, i feel safe, the frail old man with a stick is going to protect us, let me go get my kicking shoes on in case he gets past you.

they come by investigate and try to convince us it was just a buffalo. A BUFFALO?! or maybe an elephant...right...i decided right then and there, it was a bad day to stop sniffing glue. for added peace of mind they showed us that the fence we were "protected" by was electrified. the wires were about 1.5 feet apart and only went about 7 feet up. he struggled to bring the two wires together, and nothing happened, the second time, however, a tiny spark, alas SAFETY! he told us the fence was intended to stun, not kill. i thought good, let's get them even more angry...but i suppose it's better than a bunch of smoking animal carcasses all around. save that for the river.

the next day after sleeping with the flashlight on all night and our doors carabiner-ed shut, we asked our safari driver what sound a buffalo makes, he responded like we thought..."like a cow". then we told him a summary of the night and he mentioned that a group of lions were spotted earlier that day, in fact over by where your tents were at. great. so, that's my story, i went to africa and i was almost eaten by a lion. i don't care if you believe me, we'll ask Jesus about it, then you'll know i'm telling the truth.

i went to this baptist church this past sunday in iowa. and i have not been to church for a while because i couldn't always agree with the type of message being preached, i always feel like it's judging and telling people how they should live by preying on their weaknesses. as if God can only pull you from despair...

i was so relieved to hear this young pastor preach to his church the gospel, and he even called himself on it. he said things in very staight language, not the sterile and impersonal high-church talk that only happens in church. one of the most refreshing statements he made (for me) was "i'm just up here to preach the word, i'm no different that you or you, if God does anything with this in your life it has NOTHING to do with pity preaching. the Spirit is what's going to change you, wake up people." i, of course, am summarizing, because he had a much better and clear way of saying that, and i have the memory of a brain-damaged goldfish.

this is all to say that i have been wanting to go to church more on sunday mornings, i have not for a long time because i felt like everything was the same and nothing mattered..if i found God in other places than Sunday morning, then that's where i'll seek it. i still believe this whole-heartedly, it's just that i've been avoiding Sunday mornings thinking that God was not going to be there, but everywhere else. i realized i missed church in a sense, not the religious aspects, but the fact that you a being proclaimed, the word of God. i like that. now, i just need to find a place around here that does that besides Sojourn.

forgot the umbrella today...not a good start to the morning. i still feel wet and i am convinced that i smell like a wet dog...a wet, yet exceeding buff dog. my pants legs have those water lines on them from where my feet met the pavement, leaving me with legwarmer calves.

spent the weekend out of town and it was good, what a great weekend. it was sunny, yet not too hot, and i had my chance to play tennis, only i forgot any shorts or gym shoes, so i had to play huck finn style, rolled jeans and barefoot. after 5 games my feet felt tender and i started to get blisters, so i gave up and ate Dairy Queen (the ice cream, not a person).

i'm looking forward to this week, my nephew is in town from georgia, we'll get to play and he'll try to convince me he doesn't need sleep. i'll also try to convince myself of that same statement.

i've got a wedding to attend this weekend, my great friends whom i was friends with individually very well before them met are solidifying the weirdness of my separate universes and are going to be eternally bound and forever making my life a little weirder. the weekend after that starts up our new season of Sojourn...maybe you'll be there too.

until next time.

well, my reign on the 10th floor will sadly come to a close this friday. i will now be surrounded by fellow peons and will be forced to actually have social interaction throughout the day. this also means it will be harder to sneak in and out...oh what a sad day. this will be until the end of the year where i will be moved once again to our new office space being built out. until then, i'll have to "slum" it with the other corporate drones. i love cubes, they make everyone so equal. :)

this south-side kid (me) just moved to wrigleyville....for those of you who don't know what wrigleyville is like, it's pretty much a continuation of college. i literally live across the street from the field, which made for a fun time with Buffett in town this weekend.

it's your typical old chicago apartment, which is basically settling for less and calling "falling apart" and "outdated" "vintage" and "historic". so yeah, my floors squeak, and the El is loud, but the culture is so much different in the city than it is in the burbs. today, i'm happy, but tomorrow i will probably start missing simple things like birds in the morning, and crickets at night. I will miss how quiet things were in the suburbs, some nights it's hard to hear my guitar clearly with the fiesta outside, but i feel like God a part of this somehow and it will be good for me.

i need to find some more grounding, it would be good to find a place to go on Sunday mornings, to be challenged outside of the places i volunteer. i need something fresh, something new, but not something blue. all this stuff is starting to work out, but it's still got a chance to slip through my hands. i need to start relying again on things that i know are Constant. something or Someone who i know will never give up on me. it's about time i reconnect in a serious way, i feel like i've sort of been going through the motions lately and it's starting to show. i'll keep you updated on how the journey goes.