We stand, team mates, single file on a narrow jungle path, amidst the screams of three of our youngest team kids. Impala ants have decided we are an enemy. Moments before, as we ran through the tall jungle grasses, I notice my feet flying over a mass of teeming black ants, and just at that moment begin to feel the burning on my arms. Looking down I see my arm covered in the guard ants, pinchers out and clutching and immediately yell “Impala!!!!”. That was about the same time the screams started. The kids were being bitten too.
Impala ants are fierce and treacherous. They bite hard and dig in, burrowing themselves into skin and drawing blood. They HURT!! As we stood, huddled amid the dense greenery, I stripped shirts off kids, and picked ants from skin, all accompanied by high pitched screaming of the kids, and the biting on my own skin. Michael, a team dad, arrived on the scene and we all ran down toward the river, stripping children’s clothes as we went.

Just moments before we had been sitting peacefully in the dappled shade of a great forest, watching for monkeys, a butterfly landing on my face. Now we are once again in oppressive sun, running for the coolness of a river and freedom from stinging things.

This is Africa. The apple of life and the snake hiding in the bushes, waiting to approach. God’s amazing beauty and wonder in every flower, Satan’s inch long thorns on every stem.

That same night the three couples currently in the district sat at a beautiful candlelight dinner together. The singles on the team did kid-care and cooked a gourmet meal for us. A valentines dinner, early. We sat and really looked at each other for the first time we could remember. No ministry talk, no kids, no Ugandans. Just us, as we know ourselves best, getting to know each other better. What a wonderful evening, candlelight glinting off women’s jewelry and makeup, soft music playing, PDA not off limits. We rediscover parts of ourselves, too often abandoned.

Then last night, we all joined together around a bonfire, to celebrate Josh .. . . Here for only five months, he has won his way into our hearts and lives. What a total sweetheart. We are praying him back to our lives someday soon. We dance, we sing worship songs both African and American, we roast marshmallows and eat food with sauce. We join as Ugandans and Buzungu to pray Josh on his way back to the States. Children run wildly with light sticks, sent in care packages, surprising and frightening African children with their fluorescent glow. And the drums beat, and the guitar plays and our voices rise on the dark African night and life continues, our next steps unknown to us but wonderfully orchestrated by God.
Team makes life here not only liveable, but wonderful in so many surprising ways. We are doubly blessed, triply blessed; by our amazing sending community, our wonderful but taxing Ugandan community, and our soul-catching team community. This is family right now. The people we cry with, laugh with, and trust our whole lives and hearts to on a daily basis, not long ago we were still strangers, but hard things grow friendships fast. Community here must look very much like what God had in mind when he created us to live in relationship; our empty hands always out to each other, and just as often our full hands reaching to help another. And all because, Jesus is always enough.