Running Away From Buffalo & Other Random Things

Running Away From Buffalo & Other Random Things

February was an exciting and action-packed month. I said goodbye to dear friends and precious teammates as I left Bundibugyo at the end of January. I traveled to Jinja, Uganda to spend a week planning, dreaming, and praying with my new Sudan teammates. This was the annual planning retreat for the Sudan team, and I was excited and eager to join them, though the loss of life in Bundibugyo was fresh on my mind.

Often times I feel I am straddled between two worlds, as my life continues to transition, and as soon as I say goodbye to some people I am saying hello to others. I think from the moment we are born to our very death we are all in a continual state of transition, sometimes more obvious than others. This seems most obvious to me during the moments when I yearn for Heaven, but I am now bound to Earth, but not forever.

The retreat with the Sudan team was a wonderful time of bonding and collective vision. I am the final person to join the team, for now. My goals for the first six months are primarily related to language and culture study.

After the Sudan team retreat, I headed west to Kenya! I attended the biannual Christian Medical and Dental Association conference at Brakenhurst, just outside Nairobi. It was a wonderful two weeks of learning, connecting, and refreshing. It was delightful to meet so many other Christian medical professionals working all over the world! It reminded me how much I like learning, and yes, even enjoy the classroom setting.

I left the conference with my friend Jim, a physician working in Northeast Uganda. We stopped along the way to visit Jim’s Massai warrior friends in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya. It was an amazing time of friendship, culture juxtaposition, and excitement – highlighted by trekking giraffes and almost getting trampled on while coming face to face with a large angry herd of wild cape buffalo!

To be continued….