What does a day hold at the Village of Joy? What possibilities are held waiting within today?

5:30 am // Morning light.I wake to my screened view of the sunrise. With twelve girls stacked snug in bunks around me I creep out of my mosquito net to make a coffee and wrap myself in a cozy hammock on the porch for a morning chat with Jesus. My King. This time with Him is priceless. Vision for today.

6:30am// Daily Bread.      The breakfast bell rings to gather twelve bread rolls at ‘The Bread Tree’ for my housemates.    We break bread, scrambling around for peanut butter, hair-brushes, water bottles, sunscreen, toothbrushes, tea. We tie capalanas while braiding hair, laughing, scratching bug bites and cracking jokes about our weird sleep patterns. Once a week each of us has an assigned laundry day. It’s best to get your laundry on the line first thing before the washline is filled to capacity.

 8:00 am // Harvest School Hut      Here we worship, here we grow. We are hungry to praise, we are hungry to be watered by our faithful leaders. Our attention never wanders. It is an honor to be taught in this place by planet shakers from across the world.

1:30 pm // Rice and Beans     The lunch line gets kind of crazy! But it is a time I won’t forget, socializing and laughing and trying to communicate in Portuguese. Sometimes the line takes over an hour for a bowl of rice and beans, but it never tasted so good. I am so excited when I get it! I think God made my stomach for this food 🙂

3:00 pm // Town Run // Back Porches   In the afternoons we have the opportunity to hear from special guest teachers on optional classes we call ‘back porch’. I have most enjoyed hearing from a visiting team from Scotland.        
If I am not in a back porch, we can go to town and get groceries at the local store or fruit and veg market. Apples and peanut butter are a treat and I make sure to get enough for the week.

4:00pm // Beaches
       Once or twice a week we have time to walk down to the beach. A walk in the beauty of the ungroomed sand is especially refreshing after working in the red dirt of the hot villages.

5:30 pm // Evening light      What a treat to see the sun rise and set everyday. The expanse and variety of the sky in Mozambique is one of my most favorite things I could write an entire post about. If I could only capture a photo of the night sky. I have never seen so many stars in such detail! The vastness of our Creators love for beauty is beyond my comprehension.

6:00 pm // Matapa vs. Fish Heads

You never can tell what you will find on your rice at dinner time. Hungrily making it to the end of the dinner line to face a blackened fish head was slightly not as satisfying as you might think. But the Mozambicans love it. So I embrace it. This is love.  If not fish, we are served a plant based sauce called Matapa. Matapa is basically ground up leaves cooked with some spices. It’s a bit gritty in texture because of the sand stuck to the leaves. Hopefully my intestines appreciate the scrubbing, my teeth are not as stoked.

9:00 pm // Bedtime! This bottom bunk has been my resting place the four weeks! With 12 girls in two bedrooms we have laughed and fought and cried and laughed some more. This is the place where true character is born. Sleeping here is not the most peaceful routine, with doors banging and shuffling and dropping stuff on eachother, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.