i have no idea for a title...

here i am, once again....
so yesterday was church day, and church was...well...as you might expect an overseas church in a rural area might be. it was long (though nothing can beat the easter service in south africa...6 hours!!), and not at all organized...not at all. gary gave the message, which was quite good, and they presented us with little chirstmas tree quilts and thank you cards for the work weve done. we then went to a church members home for lunch, which wasnt bad. rice and some sort of green curry-ish type dish. they all fell asleep after that, which was kind of funny, and when they woke up (they being most of the church, about 20 people were there), we had worship, and the pastor preached, or something, for about a half hour.
it was gray and overcast, and had rained a little bit off and on, but oh, no, we were going to see some waterfalls! this poor team just has had the work luck with waterfalls. check out my blog on that adventure from the philippines...and now this. they were only trying to bless us....we drove this time, no hiking, thank the sweet baby Jesus! we drive for a looong distance, in the back of a truck (its true mom, im sorry!), and when we get there, i started laughing out loud. the stupid "waterfall" was a giant trickle coming down man-made rocks. the slightly swimmable portion of it was brown and murky....what a waste!! but they tried. it was sweet. they ended up taking us to the local community pool, our favorite hang-out in town (which btw is about a twenty minute drive). and they watched us swim. in overcast weather. kind of awkward, but whatever!
a few days ago we had a day off.
the caves! oh, the caves.
so yes.
on our day off, they lovingly thought we would enjoy going to check out some local caves. personally, i dont care, ive been in caves before, seen it once, seen it all, is my philosophy. i didnt really have an interest in going, but i didnt vocalize any of that. of course not. a leader would never do that. so we go, and its...well..some big holes in rock formations. kinda smelly, kinda boring. but whatever. some of the people started making fun of one of the girls, and mama bear came out! i was ready to start cracking skulls, no one dares make fun of one of my chickys! i felt so protective and motherly, its apparent that leading this outreach is somewhat helping in preparing me for motherhood (one day looooong from now!!). i was so angry i couldnt even look at them, so she and i went back and waited for everyone else. after cooling off (both of us), and when the rest of the team got back, they thought we would enjoy seeing the worlds oldest teak tree. which we didnt, but tried our hardest to not let that show, and instead thank them for all that they were doing for us. it was really lame, but thats not what its about. they then drove us to this really pretty dam (i think its the queens dam? or something) for lunch, which was pretty good. i dont remember what we had. all i remember is gary and i had a wonderful conversation, and i got iced coffee! they said that they wanted to take us swimming (our group just loves the water!), and we drove to the most disgusting place ive ever seen! it was some sort of floating village, there were probably forty houses/businessess, all run-down and shanty-like, floating on brown, murky, polluted water. it was in the middle of what looked like a bmx-bike course, all dirt hills. one of my rules of thumb on outreach is, if the locals are swimming, so can i. there was not a person to be found anywhere near that nasty-ness. the whole thing made you wonder what they did when they went to the bathroom...sick. we took one look at it, told our translator no way, and they took us back to the swimming pool. ahhhh, sweet, chlorinated water that kills anything on your skin, refreshing water of life!!
all in all though, things are going well here, seriously!
until next time...