Those of you who know how much I enjoy driving would be proud of me. On Wednesday, Jen and I visited a village in our people group with a name longer than Oconomowoc or Mukwonago, and I drove the whole almost-four hour round trip on my moto. Aren’t you proud of me?!? The speedometer of my moto even passed 70 for the first time with me driving (ok, it’s in kilometers, but still, it was fast). I was grateful that there was no deep, loose sand along the way, since that is always a good reason to white-knuckle it.
So what did we do in this village-with-a-long-name? Well, first of all, we found out where it was. It was on our map, but not in the right place. Thanks to my GPS (which I love!), we were able to put it correctly on the map. We also sat down and talked to village leaders, greeted others as we wandered through the village, etc. They were excited to have us come and visit, and asked us to come back again soon. Oh, and they also gave me a name that was familiar to them – Mariam, the local equivalent of Mary or Marie.
How did we get to go there? For long-term benefits, we don’t want to just show up in a village on a moto and say hi – we want to go with someone who is known there or go visit someone we know there. We had gotten stuck, with plans to go visit villages continually falling through. So I decided to go back and visit a village we had already been to, and within 10 minutes of arriving I had an offer to go visit this village with someone who was originally from there. What an answer to prayer!