London to Uganda.

This is the view from my room.

I am looking at the Nile - the longest flowing river in Africa. Sitting at my dining room table I can hear birds squawking, insects making the first noises of night, and I can see two huge - unidentifiable to us amatures that live here - birds, sitting in the balding tree in front of me. I am in East Africa, and I could not have conjured up the beauty of my surroundings if I had tried. Take the most beautiful river you have seen and imagine it better still - you haven't got the Nile yet. Add to your conjured up image the richness of ancient history that one feels living right on top of the Nile, and you have my heart tonight. Flying into Africa felt like shrinking. The vast expanse of it - the long stretches of cracked earth, mixed with the rolling hills and the Nile looking like the shiny trail of a snail gone random made my heart beat faster.

Before flying into Entebbe, I had a 12 hour lay-over at Heathrow. I took the Heathrow Express to terminal 2 from terminal 4, took a bus to Slough, and then caught another bus to Windsor. I took the audio tour and walked around like a nerd holding a British man's voice to my ear everywhere I walked. Afterward, I couldn't figure out which bus to take back to the airport. I made friends with two older women wearing snake skin high heels, pink lipstick and floppy hats - "We've just been down to the lovely pub for a lovely drink. Really, quite lovely, right on the river there." They insisted on walking me to the information shack up the street, telling me all the while about how they are not only sister in laws, but best friends. After receiving confusing information from the information desk and standing at the wrong bus stop for 20 minutes, I went back and asked for new directions, after which I caught a bus from across an old chapel - right down the street from the leaning house of Windsor. I'm sorry to say I didn't get a picture. There were two men posing for someone to take a picture of them leaning the opposite direction against the building, and it just didn't seem right to me to capture them forever with my beautiful canon.

Back at the airport, I spent an hour and a half trying to figure out how to call home - after taking a six dollar shower and getting booted out before I felt my time was through. I talked to Jason for about 30 seconds and then sobbed in a bathroom stall because I only had one pound on my phone, and spend $40 on a phone card, sim card and - none of it worked. Having only got two hours of sleep and had forgotten to eat in all the excitement of Heathrow, and hearing a familiar voice cut out - was just overwhelming. I don't think I could have been rational if I wanted to. The cleaning lady looked at me a little funny while I was washing my hands. I wanted to the floor to swallow me.

I struggled for a while, and decided to take Mark Driscoll's Radical Reformission advice and read the book of John, circling everywhere he used the word truth - about the time I reached John 6 I was repenting of my selfishness in being so entirely self centered that I couldn't even get excited about coming to serve orphans. Mrs. Witt had said something that rung so true with me last night - Jesus went to the woman at the well hungry and thirsty, but by the time the disciples returned he no longer needed to eat. His bread was the will of His father. He practiced others' physical needs before Himself - hungry, tired and thirsty, He ministered hugely to this woman. He completely changed her life. I read through the actions of Jesus, and they began to take on a whole new meaning as I thought of Him as someone tired and hungry like me heading out to do ministry. I hadn't thought so much before of His physical struggle - how human He actually was. But thinking about it created such a love for Him in me. I sat and repented at Costa Coffee between terminals 9 and 10. At my gate, the man beside me was a Christian heading out to do relief work in Sudan. Another woman in line is off to Kasikstan (sp?) to do research. I am humbled as I realize how little what I am doing is. The security guards tell me I am a brave girl - and a good girl - for doing what I am doing. I finally tell the man heading to Sudan that I don't feel brave at all. And in my heart I don't feel good either. I feel selfish and terrible. He is kind, and tells me that he is afraid every time he goes to Sudan. But, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid" (John 14:27-28).

At the end of my journey, it is so good to be here. Debby just walked in with a new baby from Kampala. Why would one struggle with coming?