"Lauren, you have to stop touching the animals!"

Well, last blog entry was rather heavy and serious so I decided this one will be a some what embarrassing one. I hear "Lauren, you have to stop touching the animals!" A LOT. Mainly from the other Americans but I think I say it to myself too. Not that I listen to myself or anything...When I got to Africa, I was expecting to see wild animals and other crazy things, but I get here and all I see are FARM ANIMALS! I LOVE animals back home, and since I have been here I have realized that I am animal deprived back home. I live in the city so the only animals you get are cats and dogs, but here, there are ducks, goats, chickens, cows, and dogs and cats. Everywhere I go I am tempted to touch or pick up and cradle an animal. It doesn't matter if it's a huge bull with mile long horns, I will touch it and I have. My team members are starting to get a little annoyed when we go out of the house, because if there is an animal I will try and sneak up on it and pet it or pick it up. Most of the places are used to me now and will grab the animals for me so I don't look like an idiot running around chasing them. And for that I am forever grateful.



Don't judge me.

after I held this one, the gave me a week old one to hold

These are just the instances where someone had a camera. There have been MANY others with cows, goats and occasional chickens

The Exorcism

No, I am not referring to the movie. I actually witnessed one yesterday. As our usual Thursday's go, we went to Remand Home in the afternoon, which is a home for teens who have committed crimes as they wait to go to court. We did a normal program but instead, at the end we had a "deliverance" session for kids who needed prayer and healing of diseases or habits. We definitely stirred up some demonic activity because as we were walking back to the van to leave, we hear someone screaming and waling. We looked and saw a girl that was unable to stand and was being walked/dragged by some other team members to a more private location. My first thought was that she was being possessed because of how she was acting and what all the kids had just been through with our program. She started to draw a crowd so they brought her into her room, which everyone else, including me followed. I was allowed to enter and pray over her as she was laying on the floor convulsing and screaming. It wasn't the exorcism's that you see on tv where their heads spin around or their eyes go black or they start spewing out Latin, but this was just as scary because I knew the girl was being attacked. They said she would regain consciousness every once and a while and said she was being dragged into darkness and every time someone would say Jesus' name, it would burn. When we got in the room she was still waling and convulsing as 3 other team members were praying, holding her down and demanding the spirit to leave as she was closing her ears and shaking her head. The other Remand Home girls who shared a room with her gathered around her and starting singing Christian songs. We then were asked to leave because we needed to get home, but they said that when they left her, she was sleeping. They also found a voodoo necklace thing around her waist which they took off and later we burnt it at our place. The car ride home was quiet as you can imagine as us American's were trying to process what we had just been witnessed to and a part of. The Ugandan's said that demon possession is common here because of all the witchcraft and voodoo. A lot of the kids at remand home had gone to witch doctors to get healed, which means they are making a pact with the devil. It was definitely an eventful day and one that I will never forget. It just makes me love and thank God even more for saving me from such evil.


Lauren

This World Is Not My Home

I have never been homesick before, but that is because I have never been away from home longer than 2 weeks at a time. This is my first time being away this long and I was surprised to not become homesick until now. I am 2 months in with 1 more month to go, or technically a little over 3 weeks, which flies by here. Weeks go by in a flash and then you realize you are down to weeks left. It felt like maybe 3 weeks ago that I first got here. I know once I get home, once I reunite with my comfy bed, see my family, dog, friends, reintroduce my body to Chick Fil A, once I get bored with home again, I am going to be homesick for here,because I am leaving a piece of me here, hoping I will have the opportunity to come back. The fact that I am homesick however sometimes troubles me because this world is not my home. Philippians 3:20 "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ". The bible mentions multiple time that this world is not our home, that just because we are in the world, does not make us a part of the world. I should really be homesick for Heaven, which in a way I am, but I am so used to the comfortableness of home, that that is what I miss the most and most anxiously await for right now. The bible commands us to take the gospel to all the nations, and the apostles definitely had to leave everything they had behind including their wives and houses in order to follow Christ. If my desire in life is to travel and spread the gospel, then I really need to get over this worldly homesickness.

Lauren