Moments in time

Well Africa is filled with those moments in time where you gotta stop and shake your head to make sure it is real. I went for a walk the other day through the dirt streets of our small village. I passed many small vendors along the way, each one selling their 2 or 3 items of either banana's and pineapple's or old refurbished shoes or maybe they were deep frying something. All the while I am being yelled at from all directions, "Mzungu!" Some little kids look up at me with a smile of pure excitement, like a child seeing a monkey in the zoo for the first time and giggling at how funny it looks...that's how I usually feel and seeing as how they always want to pet my arm hair I kinda feel exactly like a monkey in a zoo. Its a lot better than the other kids who scream and run for shelter behind anything with black skin, so long as the white monster stays away. I tried overcoming this reaction one day by using candy but that just seemed to make it worse not to mention I felt like one of those strangers parents warn their kids about in Canada when they say "never take candy from a stranger kids". So I was walking down this road and it wasn't long until I could hear the laughter of children playing. I came around the corner of a mud brick home to find about 50 kids or so playing some football or (soccer) in an open lot in front of a mud house with a step. Most of the children huddled on the step watching while a few of the kids played a "heated game" consisting of a small plastic soccer ball and 2 small bricks propped up to make a small net. The game stopped abruptly when I showed up and I felt like King Kong in New york, they all just kinda lost interest in their "heated" game and starred up at me, some of the smaller children ran for cover and then slowly they walked up and held out a hand. I pointed to their ball and it wasn't long and I was on a team and running around in mudded feet kicking around this plastic ball with my new friends. The crowd on the step got a little bit bigger and many of the parents were now watching from a bit of a distance. I eventually managed so tear away from the kids and said I'd come back. Some of the parents came over to me and said "thank you for playing with our children, please come back and bring your friends...thank you so much" and I did get my friends, my two mzungu buddies and the next day we went back. This time we prayed that God might provide someone to translate for us, well as the game got going I sat on the step with the fans and amidst my arms getting pet from the kids huddled around me I met an older girl who had great English. I soon asked if she would translate so that we could share a story and she was more than willing. It wasn't long and we had the 50-60 kids all singing songs about Jesus and listening to a story about Jesus calming the storm. As we walked away the second day I really had to do another retake and I couldn't believe the moment in time that I was in. One of those moments where you can tell the whole world how much you love your God because He is more than faithful. Daniel