Member-only story
Man plans, God laughs
Will I get to take my long-delayed Uganda trip this summer? God only knows, but I am hopeful…
This is not the first time I have had an Africa trip postponed due to disease. In fact, it’s the second time in a row….
Let me backtrack a little. Prior to 2002, I’d have told you I was not cut out for foreign mission travel. But in the summer of that year, my friend Gail Drake (now Gail Castle) talked me into going to Nicaragua with LEAMIS International Ministries, the group she’d co-founded with the Rev. Debra Snellen. The trip took place in January 2003; I wore my winter coat on the drive up to the Nashville airport, then handed it to my parents and asked them to bring it with them when they picked me up.
I have taken nine foreign mission trips — two to Central America, one to South America and six to Africa — and, by far, that first one was the hardest in terms of living conditions. We were living in people’s homes in an extremely rural area of Nicaragua. Frank Schroer and I were in a dirt-floor shack, with no running water, one light bulb, and one TV set. Yes, they had a TV set. Whenever Frank and I were in the room and the TV was on, our host family would point it in our direction, as a courtesy to their guests — even though neither of us was fluent enough in Spanish to follow what was going on.
