Usually, the title of each week’s email is pretty easy to come up with. But this has been a wild week, so please vote for the following after you read this:

• The worst Valentine ever written
• God Knows
• Matthew and I claimed the eyeball
• I already got to touch the intestines
• I put the eyeball in the fire
• Redneck hunting in Africa

I will also put a disclaimer in this week. None of this is made up. None of it ever is, but this week I need to make it clear; I didn’t make this up. And this is a lot longer than usual; sorry but it was too many amazing things.

To begin with, Happy Valentines Day. Be glad that you didn’t get this Valentine, hand written by my son to a girl in his class with no corrections made:

Hannah, no offence but it really embarreses me when you start coversations with me. Frankly this speaks out for all boys but your still my friend. Your friend, JT.

We convinced him that it was not appropriate to send to a girl, but I think it is as close to a Valentine as he will send for a few more years.

The kids were dismissed Friday for a mid term break, and we had the opportunity to stay in a Masai village for the weekend. It was an amazing time, and it began with going to a school for disabled kids. The motto of this place is `No Wheelchairs’ and it was amazing; kids with stumps for legs running and playing soccer, laughing, jumping; there were a bunch of happy kids. When we get the next load of toys, that will be one of the places we give them too.

One of the men who worked there had planted maize, and it was drying up. We expressed our sadness over this, and his response was telling:

God Knows: He knows what we need, and we trust Him.

How I panic when little things don’t go right, and I needed to hear that perspective.

Saturday, the physical therapist we went with had to put casts on a new born whose feet turned inward. He asked me to assist, so I held his legs and tried to comfort him; his momma couldn’t watch. He was so close in age to my son, whose birthday is next month, that I had a good cry afterwards. But the good news was that they were seeing him early; often deformed babies are hidden until they are older, and it makes it so much harder to help them.

The man who runs this school is named Daniel, and his story is remarkable. He had polio as an infant, and walks with a very pronounced limp. He is Masai, and his father had 5 wives. Because Masai tend to be animal herders, he was regarded as worthless growing up, and he had a deep resentment of God because of his handicap. But then the government decried that at least one child from every school had to go to school, and so because he was of `no use’ he was able to go to school. At school, he began to see that he did indeed have purpose, that his handicap was part of that purpose, and that He was created for a reason. Now he is a respected elder in the community, and to see him work with these kids was one of the great rewards of being in Africa.

It is also the thing that made me the most homesick. Our pastor’s wife in Dallas has polio, and both she and Daniel share a tender spirit that made me miss her very much. You can spend five minutes with them and you would not be aware of their handicaps again, but you would savor their sweet spirits. And so, it the middle of a Masai village, I got homesick for my home church.

We left the school and went to his village. Before we went there, we stopped at an open market to buy a few potatoes. As I walked around, I wondered why everyone seemed to be staring at me. I realized that it was because I was white, and we were the only white people in the village. Every white person in America should have that experience once in his or her lives.

The Masai village was two hours away in the very middle of nowhere, with dirt roads and absolutely nothing around. Masai live in dung huts, and we were greeted with a special treat: milk that had been soured for three days, placed in a charcoal lined drinking gourd. It tasted like unflavored yogurt with a distinct charcoal aftertaste. Interesting!

We took a trip to the pump, where the village gets its water, and it was another reminder of how tough life can be here. Many of the people in the village walked several miles a day to obtain water, and it was startling to realize how much of their lives consisted of getting water.

We came back from the pump with Matthew and his friend announcing `We’re having a goat roast and Matthew and I claimed the eyeballs!’ Matthew added: `I already got to touch the intestines.’ Sure enough, later on Matthew proudly displayed his goat eyeball to all who wanted to see and many of us who did not. Later, when asked where the goat eye was, he proudly announced `We put it in the fire for flavoring.’

Goat liver is delicious, but I worry about developing a taste for it. Where might one find goat liver in Dallas?

We ate the meal in Daniel’s home, which he built for his mother. He is only in the village occasionally, because his school is a boarding school. It was built with metal, and it had a poured cement floor, quite a luxury here. But it had something else.

Daniel had a solar panel hooked to a battery, and an antenna. We watched TV. Kenya has only three stations, and one is the government station, which is a fine cure for insomnia. But we watched soccer. In the middle of nowhere, on a black and white TV. But that was not the biggest shock. Guess what the most popular TV show in Africa is?

If you guessed `Masterpiece Theater, you guessed wrong! Frazier? Not on the radar screen.

WWF.

Africans love wrestling. There were a group of Masai men watching TV, and Daniel told me how much he liked wrestling, and although none of the rest spoke English, when wrestling was mentioned, they began to talk about their favorite part of wrestling.

The old clotheslines move. And I sat in this tiny home listening to African men speak in Masai and yet I could distinctly pick out the word clothesline. I promise I am not making this up, and it was definitely the most surreal moment I’ve had in Africa so far.

But it was not to last. We turned off the TV, and 15 of us got into a van. The only way I can describe what we did next is to call it, with all due respect to my southern friends, as `Redneck Hunting’. We had a four wheel drive vehicle, with a spotlight, so we drove through an area that has lions, leopards, pythons, cobras, ostriches, and gazelles to hunt.

The way we hunted was a little different that I had hunted before. We would drive until we saw an animal, and then shine the spotlight on them. Two of the Masai would jump out of the van, running barefooted in the jungle at night carrying 20-pound spear trying to circle the animal and throw their spears. We never got anything, but the longer we did it, the funnier it got.

You ever golf with someone who has to tell you everything? `First hole, the wind was coming out of the east, so the ball hooked a little. Second hole I used a seven; should have used a nine.’ You know the type?

Well, after these guys would throw their spears, they would run back to the van and explain how they missed. And because I don’t speak Masai, they would act it out for me. I don’t have words for it; but it got funnier and funnier the later it got.

We were camping, but I let everyone else go to bed and I laid on the luggage rack and looked at stars for an hour. Saw over 12 shooting stars, and have never seen stars like I saw that night. It was a wonderful reminder that God knows and there is a purpose in every person.

YP

PS. We have gotten permission to try to send pictures! Enclosed is our first try; one of the proud recipients of his first toy.