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McLennan girl explains her mission trip to Africa
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Children in Africa salute the mission group as they make their way past the children.
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The students on the mission had a chance of a lifetime travelling to Africa as part of a mission. Tanaya explains she would recommend the experience to any teenager.
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Tanaya Johnson
Special to the Express
My mission trip to Africa was simply amazing and a once in a life time experience.
I first had two weeks of boot camp in Orlando Florida at the main base, where we were trained and conditioned for the mission field.
We had an obstacle course where we sorted the books of the bible labelled on small wooden crates then ran around and over a mountain of tires, swung over a slough, crawled through tunnel tubes and over a tall, and wide rope ladder known as Jacobs ladder; this was completed at 6 a.m. in the morning. Our regular wake up call was 5 a.m.
After the two weeks of boot camp we set off on long tiresome flights to Malawi Africa. A 12-hour layover in London resulted in a tour of the wonderful city of London where we got to see Big Ben, Buckingham palace, and even get a turn on London’s eye. We had about four or five exhausting flights in order to reach Lilongwe, Malawi, Africa.
We had a multiple hour drive after that to reach the base at Chipoka, which is located on the shores of Lake Malawi. When we reached Chipoka we had to unpack everything, though we should have been exhausted we were all excited at finally arriving at our destination. After our first night we had become sick from exhaustion and jet lag from the strenuous and restless hours on all the planes and the hour layovers in each airport. After about a week we had caught up all our lost sleep and were on tune with time zone of Malawi.
We covered four orphan rescue units within our time in Malawi; we travelled to the separate units in a canvas truck. It took us from two hours to half a day to get to a different unit; we usually spent from one week to two weeks at each unit. This allowed us time to wash all the orphans’ feet and give them new socks and shoes. We played, sang and danced with all the children as well. Every day we had a work group and an evangelism group, which alternated each day. The work group would help build things like rabbit houses for the units to raise rabbits for meat, cut grass down for play fields, and break bricks down to gravel sized chunks to be laid down as foundation for buildings; which a thin layer of cement would be poured over to even out. The evangelism group would walk to nearby villages(which could be up to two hours walk) carrying a puppet trunk. They would get permission from the chief then set up and do a presentation. The presentation would include introductions, puppets, songs in English
and their native language Chichewa, and a testimony and an alter call; where we would ask if there was any one that wanted to accept Jesus into their heart. We made many friends among the children and adults, the kids were always so eager to hold our hands and the mothers always hopeful we would hold their crying babies. We were all very sad when we had to leave each village and teary when we had our last day in Africa.
Our trip back to Florida was tiring and restless, especially since our trip was nearing the end and we were anxious to get home to our families. When we arrived back in Florida at the main base we were all tired and mostly all of us were a bit homesick.
We spent a week of debriefing at the main base in Orlando; we had courses on how we were going to share our trip and what we should expect. We learned it wouldn’t be easy coming from some of the countries we had gone to then going home where we had everything at our door.
Our debrief time was spent mostly getting us accustomed to American culture again and it was also a fun and relaxing time for us. We experienced a bit of a culture shock coming back and seeing how things were everyday in our society.
Then the time came when we had to say bye to all our beloved team members when it was time for us to fly home, it was sad leaving our dear friends to go home but also a happy time to be able to go home and see our family and friends back at home.
I have learned a lot on my trip, and I am definitely grateful for things I have never taken notice of before.
The hardest thing for me there was to see how little they had and how happy they were when we have so much and we are so dissatisfied with it all.
We had a debriefing time which prepared us for going home and experiencing a sudden abundance of everything that we have been deprived of. We had lessons on how to share what we have learned with everyone back home, and how it will be different for us to see how we live compared to how they live back in Africa.
This trip has been the most amazing trip of my life, I learned lots, loved every minute of it even though some times were hard.
If I had a chance to go again I most certainly would, I recommend taking a trip to a 3rd world country like Africa for a mission any day.
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