When Your Child is in a Third World Country on Another Continent

Be careful what you pray for!  When your children are small and you pray that they will grow to love, trust, obey, worship, and serve God more and more, that might take them places you never dreamed of!
Like Iraq.
Or Haiti. 
Or Uganda.

My 18-yr-old daughter, Amanda,  left Thursday for a 10-day mission trip to Uganda.  She has wanted to go to Africa for about 4 years now, but the right opportunity never presented itself until this year.  She is part of a small mission team of 6 people led by our friend Jennings Wright, who heads a ministry called Ten Eighteen.  They will be partnering with a ministry in Kampala called Father's House to put on a sports camp for 40 kids from the Namuwongo slum.  They will also be visiting the slums and delivering donated clothing and medical supplies.  In addition to ministry, they will be doing some fun things too, like going  to the National Theater and Friday markets, attending the Ndere Dance Troupe dinner theater, and going on a one-night safari to Lake Mburo, during which they will actually cross the equator!

They are actually staying at a beautiful house in Kampala that is the home to an ex-pat  American family  who have lived there in Uganda for the past 5 or 6 years. I am very comfortable with that.  I know they are with people who are wise and knowledgeable about the culture and the political situation, who know where to go and where not to go.   I know she will see and experience things on this trip unlike anything she has ever seen before, and it will change her forever.  Going to a third world country is life changing.  Amanda already has a heart of compassion, and I'm sure this trip will expand that aspect of her life. 

It is hard not being able to communicate at will.  We are so spoiled now, with nearly everyone having cell phones. I am used to being able to get hold of my kids pretty much whenever I want to.  But with Alex in Iraq and now Amanda in Uganda, I have to practice patience and trust, waiting for occasional communications via email or Facebook.  It really does cause me to be in prayer more, entrusting my children to the care of their heavenly Father.  I can't get to them if they are sick or hurt, I don't know what they are doing or where they are all the time.  It makes me marvel at the strength and faith of our ancestors, who watched their children get on a ship to travel to the New World, or load up a covered wagon and head west, or board a train or ship and head off to war, not to be heard from for months, until a letter could make its way back to their hands.  What a different world this is!

Amanda gets back on Aug. 15, and about 10 days later my daughter Sarah will leaving for Haiti.   Looks like God is giving me plenty of opportunity to work on my prayer life! 

Mammoth Caves National Park - part 2

I had quickly looked through the different tours on the national park website before we left home, and printed off the descriptions of the ones that sounded most interesting.  There were a couple of "extreme" cave tours that I immediately crossed off the list - no crawling on my belly or handclimbing up walls or squeezing through tiny spaces for me. I figured the "extremely strenuous" tour wasn't a good idea at my age and level of fitness either.  But I did think we could handle more than the "nice and easy" walk through the cave.  So I underlined the Moderate hikes, and noticed that some tours included parts of other tours. For instance, the New Entrance Tour included the Frozen Niagara Tour and more, so no need to do both of those. 

Our second tour was the Snowball Tour. In 100 degree heat, just the name sounded quite appealing! The temperature inside the caves is about 54 degrees year round, and although we all brought sweatshirts, I had mine tied around my waist most of the time.  It felt WONDERFUL in there. Of course my hubby was freezing - we are the couple that has him wrapped up in a quilt while I'm lying on top of the blankets with the ceiling fan going full blast. But I digress. 

The Snowball Tour entered the caves at the Carmichael Entrance, a different location than the New Entrance. The almost 200 stairs at this entrance went straight down underground, like walking down the steps of city hall, rather than winding in a spiral down a shaft.  This was a wider, flatter, more open cavern which led us for 1.5 miles through places like "Clevelands Avenue", to the Snowball Dining Room, about 250 feet below the surface.  

 We learned the names of every single kind of rock inside the caves....

Limestone. Limestone.... and limestone. 

The Snowball Tour gets its name from calcium carbonate deposits growing on the ceiling and walls. It looks like snow!  

Only clear water bottles are allowed in the cave - no bags, backpacks,camera bags... but on this tour you are allowed to bring lunch in a mesh bag or clear ziploc bag.  I packed sandwiches, cheese & crackers, and granola bars in a mesh beach bag for our picnic way down under. Box lunches were available, as well as vending machine fare. The dining room had a number of picnic tables, as well as rest rooms, which were a welcome amenity.  

We were fortunate to have fairly small groups of 40 or less on all 3 tours, and the guides were very personable and informative. They stopped and shared lots of interesting facts about the history of the caves, its exploration, its geology.  Jason wanted to be right up front to hear everything that the ranger had to say! 

One of the things we learned about was the early tour guides, when the caves were privately owned, back in the mid-late 1800s. These young men, many of them African-American slaves or former slaves, explored miles and miles of cave, and led groups of curious people through the passageways. One way that they earned tips was to write the name of the person on the ceiling, using a candle attached to a long pole.  This was called smoke writing. Some names were carved, some were painted.  After the land was bought by the federal government, the practice of writing on the walls and ceilings was halted. But there is a lot of fascinating history in those names and dates. 

Our final tour was the evening Star Chamber tour, which was conducted by gas lantern light. 

This was very cool, as we entered through the historic natural entrance and heard about some  historical uses of the cave - the saltpeter mine, the tuberculosis huts, the church where a congregations actually held services. Then there was the "giant's coffin", and the "star chamber", in which the ceiling, darkened by smoke from years of lantern light, was chipped by enterprising young guides who threw stones to expose flecks of white stone, thus creating a "star" for a grateful customer.

looking back at the light ... it is DARK in the cave

Sometimes... You win!

My 20 yr old son, Eric, got a pleasant surprise this week when he was notified that he won the Grand Prize in the Ford Racing Street Tour Sweepstakes! While at the NC State Fair last month, he had dropped an entry in to the box at the NASCAR exhibit - he enters every drawing and sweepstakes he can find, figuring he'll hit big some time. Well, this time he did it! The prize is a 4-night trip for two to Miami,FL for the Ford Championship Weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway! Included is airfare, rental car, hotel accomodations, $400 Visa gift card for food, VIP passes to Ford Racefest, grandstand tickets to all three races that weekend, private VIP tour with a Ford Racing representative, and 2 Ford Racing apparel gift packages! Pretty amazing, even for us non-NASCAR fans!

Eric asked Mark to go with him. He needed someone older than 25 to be able to rent a car (!), but he also enjoys spending time with his dad! So they'll have 5 days of male bonding in sunny South Florida - airboats in the Everglades, snorkeling at Key Largo, laying on the beautiful Florida beaches.... oh yeah, and watching fast cars go round and round a racetrack. :-) Fortunately Eric hasn't missed any of his classes at Appalachian State this semester, so he has some excused absences that he can use... see, it PAYS to go to class so that when some great opportunity to take a free trip to Florida unexpectedly drops in your lap, you can GO!!!
Now he just must avoid the flu until Christmas break...

Living on a Prayer

Having two kids far away overseas is a little harder than I expected. When they're away at college, I can still call whenever I want to on the cell phone, send emails and get a pretty quick answer, check up with what they are doing on Facebook, etc. But the difficulty of communicating to and from Iraq / Ethiopia is quite different. Alex has been in Iraq since February, and will be there until next spring. We only get to talk via Skype ( free internet video phone ) once every couple of weeks. He called Wednesday and the connection was very slow, causing about a 20 second delay between when I spoke and when he heard me, so we resorted to using the Skype instant messager and typing out our conversation. I still got to see him, though, and he looks good, but tired ( it was after midnight there ). He is frustrated by some things, but couldn't really talk about them. There is a lot he can't really tell us ... security concerns, you know.

Sarah is spending the month of June in Ethiopia. She arrived in Addis Ababa on Sunday, and sent an email right away. But that is the last we've heard from her. Yesterday, I did email the American program manager at the house where she is staying, and got a reply that everything is fine. But the internet connection there is unreliable and power outages are common. Hopefully she'll be able to get through over the weekend.

I want to know what they are doing. I long for pictures, details... c'mon people, this is the Information Age! I am totally spoiled by being able to find out just about anything I want at a moment's notice via the internet or cell phone. But that just isn't happening with these two.
So... that leaves me right where I'm supposed to be, I guess, and that is on my knees. I pray for their safety, for their health, for friends to encourage them, for emotional strength and spiritual growth, for God to show himself to them in big ways and little ways every day.