Our Adventure: Tanzania 2012

Day 6                 6/14/12

This morning we woke up around 5:30 so we could sit outside & watch the sun come up over the pains... and it was SO beautiful!

Last night we heard lions roaring in the distance through the walls of our tent, and in the morning we woke to the sounds of beautiful bird calls.  We had a devotion time in the morning and some breakfast at the lodge before heading out on our last game drive.
We were able to find the lioness and her three cubs again and we got to watch them nursing!

It was such a sweet moment!  We also got a really close encounter with a herd of elephants that had a couple of babies that were less than a year old.

We got to see a baby elephant nursing too!  How awesome it was to witness that as a nursing momma myself :)

We finally got to see some giraffes up close at the end of the drive, and that was really neat too.

  

We saw mostly the same animals we'd been seeing all week with the exception of some water bucks up-close.. laying in a dry river bed (ironic?)

And we came across some painted wild African dogs - which is actually a very, very rare event!  They are hardly ever seen on a drive - our driver (who's been driving for 18 years) said he's only seen them three times! 

 

We were out for about four hours but it went by really fast.  We headed back to the lodge and got to spend an hour there before heading back to Moshi.  It was nice to take that time to enjoy the lodge, have a snack and relax a little bit.
On the way back to Moshi we stopped at the Arusha Coffee Lodge for dinner.  It was AMAZING.  It was European/American style food for the most part, and it was way better than a lot of food I've had in the States! (probably because the beef is always free range and fresh!) It was a really pretty property too -

 

Owen enjoyed the little playground that was tucked around the corner of the shoppe and I enjoyed the mocha. :) YUM.

 

We got back to Moshi just after 8pm after hitting rush-hour traffic in Arusha (a pretty big city in Tanzania).  We are all unpacked and are preparing for some ministry time in the coming week.  Owen did such a great job on safari.  I really am proud of him.  There were a couple of times I lost my temper a little with him in the evenings when he was getting out of control and fussy, but Bill & the team have done such a great job at showing us grace.  I feel like this coming week is going to reveal some things to us.  I'm still waiting to hear from God about some specific things for our family & I'm interested to see what He has in store for us.  I'm a bit nervous heading into this week of minisrty with Owen, but I know God's got it.  He wouldn't have called us to this place as a family just to leave us hangin' now. :)