I woke up at 8:15am this morning, it was beautiful. I never thought I would say that 8:15 felt like sleeping in till noon, but it was so nice. Also, since Sarah Beth Harvey left Saturday, I got to move into her room. I’m not happy that she had to leave, but I am very grateful to have her bed now. In our little house there are three rooms, two have queen sized waterbeds, and the other has a less than twin sized normal, non—waterbed mattress; you can probably guess which one I have been sleeping on for the last two weeks. My bed is actually quite comfortable, and I naively picked it out from the beginning because I wanted a mattress with more support on my 80-year-old-women back. All of my back-pleasing desires went out the window after our first night here though. It is hot here. It is really hot here. It is so hot that you don’t want any of your body parts to touch the others. Everyone sits spread-eagle, arms are always outstretched to air out the pits, skirts are always hiked up a little when sitting…well actually they are hiked up and tucked while standing too. So you probably get the idea, sleeping in a narrow squishy foam bed does not compliment my desire to stretch out and release excess heat. At the beginning of last week I even covered my bed with a towel because I wanted to avoid sweating on the sheets. It is gross and I’m sorry I’m writing about it, but it is real friends. So back to the waterbed. I GOT MY OWN WATERBED LAST NIGHT. It is a queen-sized bed, and the water basically sucks all the heat straight out of you, it is glorious, I was even cold last night! So there, that is a small victory, thank you God.

After waking up totally not sweaty, comfortable, and rejuvenated, I headed to church with Mama Sarah and Millie. It was very similar to the other African services I have been to so far—lots of singing and super fun dancing, out-loud praying, and lots of small choirs performing. However, today I noticed something different, for the offering, everyone literally made a dancing Congo-line to go up and give. I got to be in a Congo line IN CONGO! Victory.

After church we made pancakes! This is another victory because I have literally had spaghetti for every single meal of the last week. Our lunch is made for us by two Congolese girls when we are working at the hospital, and for some reason we had spaghetti every lunch and then weirdly every dinner haha. So you go pancakes!

After lunch I biked to the hospital to attempt to Skype my family. It didn’t work for a very long time, the sound didn’t work specifically. So we spent the majority of an hour doing charades (which I have gotten good at here) and writing phrases on paper and then showing them to each other to try to figure out the lack-of-sound situation. But it eventually worked and it was nice to see my mom and Connor the bro.

Post-Skyping was pretty calm, Priscilla and I biked back to our house and took showers before Sunday Night Live at the Harvey’s house, which is basically a worship and testimony sharing time. Miles and Robin spoke and I was super encouraged by their testimonies. Miles’ story specifically was really incredible and he was very honest with the group—that was really brave of him. Sharing your struggles and victories with others is so healthy and I think we need to do it more often. Everyone has a story or something on his or her mind, we need to be less concerned with judgment and more aware of our health and focus. I do love the human body and I am amazed by its ability to heal itself and figure things out. But our body does need outside assistance as well; I wouldn’t be pursuing a career in nursing if that weren’t true. So goes the emotional part of the human body, we can try to figure things out on our own/self-medicate, but letting others in to help and share the burden is healthy too. God wants to do this in our life all the time. He took the burden on the cross and continuously begs us to let him continue carrying it. Give it to God.

Goodnight friends!