Day 72– Sep 9, 2005, Friday: Outback

Today we officially announced that we are sending a team to New Orleans (or somewhere in Mississippi) to help with the Katrina mess. From left to Right they are: Prakash, Steph, Matt (with the mic), Jessica (completely hidden behind Matt), Junichi, Mary, Emily, Milke. Lots of people expressed interest and it came down to a team of 9 people to take there outreach there for the next 2 months. That is one of the things I really love about YWAM. That if they feel they get God telling them to do something, they just do it. Some of the people going had to sacrifice paid for plane tickets, or going to somewhere exotic like Uganda or Cambodia. We lost one team member, Emily. I am excited for her though. We’ll miss her.

After the last meeting with Neil we had a team meeting. It was fun because we had another guy come and share with us about his trip to Uganda a few years ago. He had pictures of the base we will be at and lots of info that was very relevant for us. It got me all excited to get there (which is only 12 days!!!) We will be staying at a YWAM base in a place called Jinja. It is at the head of the Nile. He scared us with all of the possible diseases and then told us not to worry too much about it. I love it. This guy has been doing missions for the last 20 years. He has been to more than 70 different countries. His passions are setting up healthy water for people and teaching them about health care. He’s done some cool stuff. I forget his name though.

At night we had a special treat. We went to Outback steakhouse because one of Neil’s friends back home wanted to share with the married couples here, so he gave us each $60 for dinner. We had a great time eating some awesome food. I had steak and shrimp. Hmmmmmmm I can still taste it. Then we went walking through town with the Bells. We saw the police chase some guy (presumable on crack (a drug that is a big problem here locally)). The guy jumped in the water and just sat out on a lava rock in the ocean for several hours. He was taunting the police and making a fool of himself. Apparently the police can’t go into the water (they really wanted to). I just felt sorry for the guy. Making a total fool of himself. We prayed for him. As we left (we weren’t there for several hours by the way, we just heard from others, we were there for about 5 minutes) we passed some fellow friends that were just out singing praise songs on the street, so we talked and sang with them for a while. It was a little uncomfortable, but fun. Then we got to our goal of icecream with a shot of espresso poured over it. This is good.

We ended the night by sneaking up on the highschool/jr high sleepover and scaring them. We snuck around back and made scratching sounds and tapped on the window while they were watching movies. Some of them got freaked a little. Good times.

Here we are at outback :)