Him In Me: Thanksgiving and Bush Sketti

When I look back on the time I spent in Africa, I can safely say that one of my fondest memories occurred on the 28th of November. Some of you may recognize that lovely day as the one and only Thanksgiving! Let me give you a little back story before I tell you why it was such a marvelous day.

It has occurred to me that most of you might not know what a typical day at the Harvest School of Missions would look like, and that is very sad indeed. So let me enlighten you a bit! We had class from 8-1 Monday-Thursday every week, and practical mission every Friday. Monday's were known as village day because we would get out of class at about 11, meet up with our Mozambican pastors, and go out into the village to pray for people. Wednesday's were known as cross-cultural class days because the Mozambican pastors would join us in the mornings and we would learn and worship together. So needless to say, they kept us pretty busy throughout the week.

I got to be a part of the Friday practical mission in which a small group of us would go and build houses for widows. I became especially good friends with Mama Julia, a 30 year old woman with 4 kids and no husband. It was such a joy to sit around and laugh with her (mostly she laughed at me because Americans seem very silly and weak to African women). She taught me how to grind up certain kinds of roots for cooking and also how to carry a bucket of water on my head from the well (mind you, it was extremely painful!). I wish so badly that my camera was not stolen because I had so many wonderful pictures of me and Mama Julia together, but you will just have to imagine with me.

The staff of the school gave us every afternoon off to go and visit the villagers and get to know the kids and people of Pemba. Then every weekend, different outreach groups would go out into various villages throughout Mozambique where we would live out of tents and minister to the people.

Towards the end of school, there were optional outreach teams that we could sign up for and I jumped at the opportunity. So on Thanksgiving day, I was all packed and ready to leave with my team immediately after class let out at 1. We got into the back of the camion truck and headed out to the village! I am happy to say that this particular outreach team was full of some really amazing people.

I have trouble smiling for pictures...or even knowing when they're being taken!
Here is a lot of our outreach team.

Some of my absolute favorite people I met in Mozambique. Miss them!

Once we got to the village we set up camp and immediately headed out to do our ministry time. Here is a picture of my friend Jess and I after arriving at the village.

After a very moving time of prayer and witnessing to the Mozambicans, we headed back to our camp and had a late dinner of bush-sketti (African bush-bush spaghetti). If you've never had bush-sketti then you can't really understand how wonderfully delicious it is! After 2 months of nothing but rice and beans, it was a very welcome change. It consisted of spaghetti with bits of tuna and tangy mayonnaise (and the mayonnaise really was tangy). So that has definitely gone down in the memory books as my favorite Thanksgiving of all time. I spent it in the "billion-star hotel" eating bush-sketti surrounded by sweet Mozambican kids and some of my best friends from all over the world. It really doesn't get any better than that.

Here are some more pictures from the rest of the weekend. Thankfully my friends have put these on Facebook and I have very gratefully borrowed them!