Birthday Presents

One year ago, my friend Tamara, from Holland, and I ventured out from our little Village of Joy in Pemba, Mozambique to a little beach several miles away called Murrebue. I remember exactly how to get there. You take a left when you get to the aiport and go through the road block where the Mozambicans with guns on their backs stop you and make you nervous, but let you go. Soon after the road block, you take a left and go down a dirt road that is very bumpy for several kilometers and then take a hard left at the fork in the road. Soon you start to see herd of cattle on the right and will see those beautiful turquoise waters and you're there. There is a little restaurant there with one thing on the menu, chicken. Chicken with fries and a little salad that consists of one piece of lettuce, a slice of tomato, and an onion slice, with a dash of olive oil. But now that I think about it, I doubt that was olive oil. All of this is served with a sweaty coke in a bottle and it is cheap and good. The beach is the most amazing in the world. There are white sand beaches in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, but they are missing little restaurants like the little chicken shack and the herd of cattle. We walked along the beach and collected shells. These beaches are untouched and are full of the most amazing shells. They are big and flawless and beautiful. I walked along thinking that they would stop, or that there could only be one or two so amazing, but the more I walked, the more amazing they got. And there was no one in front of me, or anyone behind me, they were all mine for the taking. I recently read an excerpt from Tori Spelling's book that was online on Oxygen TV. I refuse to actually buy the book, because I refuse to admit that I care one thing about her or anything associated with pop culture or certainly reality TV!! But I am a total junkie. Anyway, she writes about how she always thought there were the most amazing shells on Malibu beach and would tell others about these huge shells she had found. She recalls walking along the beach with her mother who always walked behind her carrying her purse and pointing out shells for Tori to pick up. Years later Tori discovered that these were very expensive shells that her mother had bought and planted there along the beach for Tori to find. Now, not that I am comparing Candy Spelling with God, but I can see our God, standing on a beach, planting sea shell blessings for us to find. He walks along beside us, we run ahead like a little child and He calls out our name and points out new amazing things for us to discover. And the discovery will always be amazing and more incredible than the last, because He is a good God and a loving Father and His gifts to His children are good.
So, Tamara and I walked out into this ocean and no matter how far out you went, you could always see your toes. The Village of Joy, depsite being one of the most amazing places on earth, was a little limited on running water, so I had not had a "clean bath" as Granny McCarley calls it, in a long time. So dipping into this ocean water felt amazing to my skin. I almost instinctively swam down to the bottom and brough up fist fulls of white sand and began to scrub my arms, neck and face. I then got out of the water and exfoliated all over and after rinsing, my skin felt amazing. I had found a free sea scrub spa in middle of no where Africa. It was mine for the taking. Again, this was just an amazing encounter of nature and God, loving on me. Isaiah 66 God says, "Heaven's my throne, earth is my footstool". In Genesis 1:26 God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of the Earth." He created it all for us, and gave us charge over it, even those skinny cows on the beach, crushing my shells, even the white sand beaches, the majestic mountains, they belong to us. He gives good gifts.
So, Tamara and I floated out in that ocean for hours and talked about our encounters in mission school, with God, with the poor, and tried to answer the questions that daily confronted us, can a nation be saved? How can the poorest country in the world come to know God? Is it all about infrastructure, economic development, clean water, healthcare or just Jesus? Will we ever be married? Where is he? What does he look like? Will he know how to cut grass and balance the checkbook? We laughed and cried and floated, in awe of how cool God is and just as we trusted that this salt water ocean would hold us forever, we rested in knowing that he held Mozambique in His hands. And He held our lives too and our grass cutting husbands.
Then, we made a pact. It was just a few days before my 30th birthday. So we said sometime around my 40th, 10 years later, we would get together, no matter what. No matter where. We would find each other and spend a week or weekend together in the summer of 2017. We talked about how different our lives would be and tried to think of a fun place to meet, like her father's place in Switzerland or perhaps just a place with an ocean nearby. And now, here I sit, here in her beautiful flat with big pink floral wallpaper and white and black tile floors and a big big window overlooking the town clock tower in the quaint little town of Zutphen, just one little year later, on my 31st birthday. God is soooo good and the giver of the best gifts. I flew here on a buddy pass given to me by a friend and Delta employee and what could have been a disaster, a full flight and me sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting and waiting, or changing flights in New York and waiting and waiting some more, turned into a direct first class flight with wine and cheese and a Pierce Brosnan movie. God is soooo good.