Africa Day 6

7-14-10

This morning we headed out to the Father's House with David to go swimming.  It's high tide in the evening, so morning is the best time to swimming, plus all the kids are in school so it's safer that way too.  Though Jeremiah says the kids are usually the ones watching after him because they're such good swimmers!  I guess that's what happens when you grow up on the ocean.

It was a fun and refreshing swim, but man was it a workout!  We swam out to a sandbar that was maybe 50 yards off the beach, and once we got there we were about hip-deep in water, but the undercurrent was so strong we could hardly stand up!  It was crazy, we only lasted out there for a little while before giving up and swimming back in.  I spent some time just sitting on the beach taking in the scenery - the waves, the sand, the blue sky.  It was some high quality God time.

The boys were down playing in the surf and looking for rocks & shells, so I joined them in their hunt for the perfect shell and rock to take back home.  Then we headed back up to TFH for a quick shower before heading home for lunch.

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After lunch we headed back toward Tegbi and went to check out a church that David has a possibility of moving to.  It was a beautiful church and I fell in love as soon as I rounded the corner and saw it.  It's surrounded by trees and a palm-frond fence and it's far enough off the road that it avoids the noise of traffic.  It's so serene and beautiful!

After entertaining myself by watching Jake & Jeremiah attempt to catch a lizard, I snapped this photo of the church - yes it's finished, remember it's really hot there all the time so many of their buildings are open-air.  I love it!

After checking out the church property we headed to a piece of land that David owns nearby, then to a hotel that we passed on the way in.  We just wanted to check out the property because we hadn't seen it before.  The hotel was beautiful and situated right on the beach, maybe 3-4 miles from the Father's House if you walked on the beach to get there.  The hotel had some great landscaping and awesome flowers!

On the way out of the hotel we walked up to the beach to see if we could spot the Father's House from where we were... we didn't end up being able to see TFH, but we did see a bunch of yavu's on the beach!  We wandered over to them to say hi and see what they were up to here in Africa.  Turns out the group of girls were here also working with children and chasing after God's heart.  It was great to meet a bunch of like-minded yavus!  We all prayed together before going our separate ways and it was neat getting to meet them.

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By now it was nearing 2:00 and the kids were getting out of school, so we headed back to The Father's House to play and have more fun out there.  I'm not sure how it happened but I ended up getting a soccer ball tossed at me, so I caught it and started tossing it back and fourth with a couple of the little girls around me, before I knew it there were six or seven children standing in a semi-circle around me and we were just tossing the ball back and forth.  Then one of the older boys 'set' the ball to me, like in volleyball.  So we started passing and setting the ball to each other.  I could tell the littler ones didn't know what was going on so I stopped to show them how to pass the ball, they got a kick out of it.

They were laughing and giggling so hard, especially if the ball went way up over their heads, or if it fell through the gap in their arms.  They had so much fun with it.  I don't even know how long we stood there and played but it was for a long time.  I couldn't believe that two of the girls that were playing were doing it with babies slung on their backs, and one of the babies was sleeping!  It was a lot of fun, but it sure did wear me out, probably because I was already tired from battling the ocean earlier in the morning.

After a little while we headed out to our boat for some worship, one or two of the kids I was playing 'volleyball' with tagged along and we just sat on the boat and did our thing.  

 

 It was absolutely beautiful.

 A few more kids came over and a handful of them actually sang with us when we sang our Ewe song, and a couple of them kept trying when we switched over to English songs.  It was so sweet to see them so eager to sing worship with us, even when it was in English and they weren't familiar with it.  One of the songs they caught onto real quick was "I am Free."  It was all I could do to not loose it when I heard them singing the songs with their African accent.  "I am free to dance, I am free to sing, I am free to live for YOU." What an appropriate song for the setting - right on the property of The Father's House, where they truly are FREE! 

None of us wanted to leave that night.  It may have been that we didn't want to succumb to the fact that tomorrow would be our last day at The Father's House.  It may have been that we didn't want to leave the children who were so eagerly trying to sing with us.  But it was probably because we didn't want to stop ushering in the presence of God.  So we didn't leave.  We stayed.  We followed the prompting of the Holy Spirit and we stayed.  We don't like driving home in the dark, because it's very stressfull and hard to see, but we all just knew that it would be okay.  So we stayed a little bit into the night and enjoyed the pounding waves, beautiful sunset, the harmony of the chords and our voices and the presence of the Creator.  And it. Was. Beautiful.