Trained to Trust

There is a mountain range behind the Chimala mission hospital. Every morning the sun hits the top of those mountains and they beckon me to climb to the top. This weekend, I finally got the opportunity to summit.

Due to the risk of coming across a deadly poisonous green mamba while hiking, we decided to take a vehicle up the mountain instead. I was disappointed that we weren’t going to hike until I saw the vehicle in which we were riding. “That thing is like a tank!” someone exclaimed as it pulled up. It was like a mix between an army tank and an African safari jeep. It was appropriately named: Defender.

We excitedly climbed into the back of the Defender and rattled up the mountain on a dirt road. They say the trail has fifty-two switch backs, but who’s counting? All I know is that we were on the edge of a mountain taking 180 degree turns on a road as narrow as a four-wheeler trail covered in large pot holes and boulders. At times, I looked out the window only to see sheer drop offs without a trace of the road below. It was epic.

I think our chaperone, Mrs. Patty, was scared for our lives when she asked, “Has everyone in this car been baptized?” That one went down in the quote book, and we have laughed hysterically about it for days.

Once we finally reached the top of the mountain range, we could see for miles. As it turns out, the mountains were more like a giant plateau with rolling hills, fields, and villages on top. Our trusty driver and navigator, Nyenye, turned the Defender off the dirt road and towards a small hut. We stopped just in front of a field of grass that was taller than the safari tank itself. A guard came out of the hut, and Nyenye exchanged a few words with him in Swahili. Just when we thought Nyenye would put the Defender in reverse and turn around, he instead put it in first gear and pressed forward – right into the weeds.

“Where in the world are we going?” Mrs. Patty asked aloud. “TIA.” We responded. This is Africa. This has become our go-to phrase when we come upon an African adventure.

I don’t know how Nyenye could see the road (if there was one even there), but to us, it looked like we were driving off into the bush. Tall golden blades of grass disappeared from the windshield in front of us and then popped back up in the rear view mirror behind us.

“Are you sure you know where you are going?” Mrs. Patty asked Nyenye. He stopped the car and looked back at her from the driver’s seat. “The old building.” He pointed in some direction, but all we saw were endless rolling hills and savanna trees sticking out of the tall grass.

“Oh...okay,” we all said when really we were wondering what in the world he was talking about.

“The old Chimala mission building?” We asked. “Yes,” he replied, and kept on driving into nowhere.

Allison, meanwhile, was about to have a panic attack. “I don’t like this one bit!” She said with worry written on her face. I must have not hid the excitement on my face very well because she then asked me, “Are you actually enjoying this?” In truth, I was having a blast. This was just the adventure that I had been anticipating. We spent the whole afternoon in the "bush", seeing rural villages, giant spiders, mountain streams with waterfalls, sunflower fields all turned towards the blazing sun overhead, and parts of Africa that felt like no one had ever been before...until we saw a white object bobbing along the top of the grass. A random guy with a sack of something on his head came walking through the weeds past our car. "Where in the world did he come from and where is he going?" we asked. So we smiled, waved, and kept on driving.

“I think this is so fun,” Meghan expressed. “I have no idea where we are going, and I kind of like it!”

As soon as she said that, I made the connection. It’s kind of like faith. Faith is like an adventure involving bumpy roads, switch backs, tall grass, and endless valleys. You may not know where you are going, but you know you have a great guide and a trusty vehicle. Half of the adventure is the anticipation of not knowing where you are going or even how you will get there. You are trained to trust that your guide will see you through.

With Nyenye, I feared no snakes, no falling off cliffs, no flat tires, no getting lost. I have been trained to trust my guide in vulnerable situations. In the same way, we train ourselves to trust the Lord as our Guide. When the weeds get tall and the path seems abandoned in the bush, we sit back, relax, believe in our Navigator and Guide.

Later that evening, we seven nursing students and Mrs. Patty tried to explain to the rest of the group where we had gone on our wild African safari. “Oooooh, you went to the old Chimala mission building?” Dr. Frank exclaimed. “That’s waaaay out in the bush!”

“Yeah!” We all burst into laughter together at the accuracy of that statement. It was certainly an adventure that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. In the middle of nowhere Africa, I began to understand the adventure aspect of my faith, and I decided that I don’t ever want to miss out on it.