Mid-Term. It is what it sounds like… the middle of the term, and we have arrived! It’s a four-day weekend where the dorms clear out, the students are off loaded onto their parents or guardians for a weekend of rest for the students and staff alike. Ironically, this supposed to be rest time always seems to be a party! People take the time to go and do the things that to them feels like rest.

“The basic girls, the bougie girls… then there’s us.” Three teens are looking at pictures sprawled out on my couches, showing the posts of these different groups and chuckling to themselves. Each group did what each group loved. So, what does this group love? Camping.

I’ve camped with these specific ladies at least two other times in the past couple of years, and this was a bucket list hike for them. Leave out our back gate, 13 miles all downhill, set up camp! The next day, hike up our local volcano, around the crater and back, then, hike the 13 miles back up to campus in Kijabe. Thrilling, stunning, exhausting.

As soon as the bell rang, we donned our packs and were off. My friend had volunteered to drive us the first 3 miles, an advance on daylight, and a ride to the tricky to find trail head. He walked us off the mainroad until the path became clear and asked a great question: “Have you considered sleeping under the stars? This tent is heavy…” After awkward stares at each other, the answer was no- we wanted the tent. And so, every fifteen minutes, we had a time check, switching which hands were extra heavy laden. Packs ranging from 20-40 pounds, we kept a brisk pace as the sun slowly set over the ever-closer volcano.

We made it to the main gate around 8pm, about an hour after sunset here, and quickly set to business. After a tense conversation with the night watchman who studied our passports and residency ruthlessly, we were allowed to find our way to the public campsite. I said a prayer of thanks for the two logs still sitting in the firepit, plucking dead wood off the ends of trees to start the fire for dinner while the rest of the group set up the tents. We had two: one for sleeping and one for the food and packs! We weren’t sure if we’d all fit in the big tent, and boy, were we glad that we did!

After an exhausted flop onto mats and hard ground, we fell asleep listening to the sounds of nature. We had the normal cicadas, the nightjar birds, and much, much too close, the whooping call of a hyena. I’m convinced he walked right through our camp, the torn-up trash bag the next morning evidence of SOME visitor.

We woke for a slow start of making coffee and eating hard-boiled eggs as the girls schemed their hike. There were four of them, my roommate for the term, and one of their moms. Since the camp is directly off the path up the mountain, hundreds of people would be walking past and we didn’t want to leave our stuff un-attended. We also didn’t want to break camp and trek 20-40 pound bags up the equivalent of 173 flights of stairs to reach the summit…

Since I’ve already hiked this mountain three times, I was happy to leave the grueling hike and accompanying sore joints and blisters to the girls. While they packed lunches, water and snacks, I hung the hammock and settled in with my book-club-book-of-the-month. Around 10:30 in the morning, they were off! I alternated resting in the shade of the pavilion with my hammock to the sunny park bench, breezing through my easy read as hikers passed by.

Seven hours and five thousand pictures later the girls returned to base camp, ready for another stellar hot dog dinner. As the sun set, the whooping started up again, this time as we were gathered around the campfire, not snug in the tent. A stray dog curled up in hopes of an extra hot dog in return for guarding duty. Collectively, we couldn’t decide if it was reassuring, or terrifying the way he sat up alert, staring into the darkness a low growl building in his chest. Dinner finished and feet washed, we piled once more into the tent for an uncomfortable tossing and turning in search of restless sleep.

Day three dawned bright and early as I set the water to boil on our once more made fire for instant coffee. We spent the morning dawdling, lazy after two days of hiking, and not excited for the entirely up-hill return journey to campus. We gave our faithful watchdogs the remaining hot dogs in the name of weight-reduction, likewise ditching broken buns, some leftover milk, and any disposable containers we could find. We even turned our hot-chocolate into a gift for the very same cantankerous park ranger. Having made space in our packs, there would be no alternating of random loose items.

We embarked on another day of beauty, singing, laughter and conversation. While we didn’t talk the whole time, it was nice to catch up on my girls lives, hear how they’ve been doing, and what God has been teaching them these past few weeks. Another joy was getting to spend time with this mom! I loved hearing her share about her almost 20 years on the mission field, stories of how she’s gotten to see God’s power.

One thing she shared was about her husbands ministry with the local fishermen. They had started to observe that days he came out on the boat with them and read bible stories, they always seemed to catch more fish… and so they began to summon him! Of course, this man is the good luck charm! The prayer of my friend and her husband was that the men would come to recognize God as the source of life and livelihood, not her husband. She recounted a conversation her husband had, imploring the fishermen to remove the witchcraft they had woven into their nets, trusting God instead for the day’s catch. Unfazed they continued their typical routine. Some time later, news came of the greatest haul of fish known to the village, everyone rushing out to see the catch. Over seven hundred fish were tallied, many of them over a hundred-pound tuna. Marveling, nobody could figure out what made their haul that different until one of the men approached my friends husband. “You were right.” he said, “But you can’t tell anybody… yesterday, I listened to you and removed the witchcraft.”

My friend explained that the silence request stemmed from the great cost the men paid to have the witchcraft ” installed in the nets, and that removing them would invoke great anger since the price was so high.

I couldn’t figure out if I was listening to a personal experience, or a retelling of Luke 5. God is at work through the lives of these missionaries! Pray for those taking the gospel to unreached peoples!

This was one of many God-sightings she shared with me about her work in ministry. I am so thankful that by teaching her kids (two of which I’ve had in class!), in a small way, I get to support her in her ministry.

And so, our hike continued. Sharing our hearts, sharing laughter, stupid stories, bizarre questions, ridiculous tangents, and segments of silence, the miles (or kilometers… depends on which person you asked!) passed by. About 10 miles into the return trip, we hit the road where we’d been dropped on the way down and the final ascent began. Winding up the mountainside to our home, we hiked in full sun, water down to the last drops. It sounds dramatic because it felt dramatic. Let me tell you-I was READY to be back. We finally made it to the gate, then my driveway, then my yard. That’s where we stopped. Not the house, the yard. Flopped down in the grass, legs outstretched, packs dropped where we were.

After seven showers, 14 stretched legs, 1 taxi to take the mom-daughter duo to their hotel for the next couple days, and an enthusiastic greeting from my pup, I rallied my energy and assembled our pizza dinner. We don’t have dominoes-delivery or even meijer frozen pizza, but I do have an incredible inside worker who had shredded my cheese and made my dough so all I had to do was sauce and top the pizzas before popping them in the oven.

We ate on the couches, watching a movie so neither our legs nor minds had to do much work. Midterm doesn’t end until tomorrow at 3pm, so a giant couch-cushion sleepover is in order for one more night as three of the lovely girls stay here with me until the end.

Today we had a slow-moving morning, our legs still in recovery mode. By the time we got to brunch, I had a load of smelly volcanic-ash-covered laundry already hanging on the line, a second washing in the shed. Ginger had successfully stolen three pieces of bacon, and only one batch of waffles had been burned. The rest of the day was quiet, girls napping, drawing, laying in the grass, talking on the phone to parents, watching a movie, and of course, doom scrolling on social media. And so, we come to the end of another day of midterm. Grading, prepping, planning and meetings commence once again tomorrow, the rest of the long-weekend only a memory in my still recovering blisters and pictures of fun.

Prayer Points

-Pray for the work of the Lord in hard to reach places, and the missionaries that are in those places. If you don’t know who to pray for, send me an email or DM and I can tell you some specific people I know could use your prayers!

-Please pray for this week, this massive project of sophomore restaurant is happening Friday/Saturday and I may or may not have caught a cold from these lovelies 😉

-Please pray for diligence in my work! I’m feeling behind on grading-calc just takes time. I probably spent 4 hours grading tests today and I’m still not quite done…with AP chem labs still on the list.