As many you may know, I have had a rough last 6 months since the plane crash on Aug 1st. As a result of that horrible incident, two Christian missionaries, each with 4 children and a wife, died and for some reason that only God knows, Rob and I walked away. I personally had some significant injuries, a broken collarbone, an L3 compression fracture, a small fracture on my right index finger, and a paralytic ileus. The L3 compression fracture was the most serious of the injuries. My 3rd lumbar crunched about 40% and burst away from my spinal cord. If it had burst in the other direction, it would have most likely cut my spinal cord and I would have been paralyzed from that vertebra down. Numerous doctors have told me that I am a walking miracle.

Ironically, the spinal injury has not been the culprit of my pain these past 6 months, the paralytic ileus and digestive system have been. A paralytic ileus is where your entire digestive system shuts down, usually for a short period of time. In the hospital in Africa, I was in intense pain for a week because nothing in my digestive tract was moving and I vomited everything I ate. After a day or two, the doctors put a tube down my throat so that I would no longer vomit bile. After a week of the worst suffering I have ever been through, things started to flow and would not stop flowing for days. I was on the toilet for hours at a time and had to constantly wear diapers. For that first week, I could barely do anything on my own, including bath myself. After two weeks, I finally felt capable of leaving the hospital. The only thing still bothering me were these intense cramps, but since I was able to walk and eat, I figured it was time to go. I had no idea that those intense cramps would still be around today and the cause of them still unknown. Daily, particularly at night, I have bloating, cramping, and random pains in my abdomen, nothing but not eating makes them go away. I am writing this blog from a coffee shop in Atlanta, 30 lbs. lighter than when I left for that crazy adventure to Africa. For the last three months, I have been here with family trying to help me recover.

It has been so moving & we are so pumped to see the world rally around Haiti. It’s all over the talk shows and news, prayed for in our churches and consistently in our conversations. The media seems to really have taken this cause under their wing which I think is a huge factor. We are all talking about Haiti, what’s going on and what we can do.

It makes me wonder… what if we just kept this up. What if after we helped stabilize Haiti, we did not give up the momentum and shifted our eyes to others kinds of distress around the world. It has been 8 days since Haiti’s earthquake and an estimated 200,000 people have died. The thing we forget is that on each one of those days, it is estimated that 25,000 children died from preventable diseases.

It's been a while since you've heard from us. Sorry, things have been especially exciting lately. We spent a few days working our way across the span of Uganda from South to North and finally made it to Sudan. Things went well at the border crossing but since we've arrived it's been pretty crazy. I'm even sitting next to Malaria stricken Tim right now. There's a lot of small stories that I could write about, but you'll just have to ask about them when we get home. For now,I want to go back to the beginning of the trip. We've waited to write about this in hopes to get some conclusive news. Let me explain.

I'll start by giving a shout out to everyone who helped us make connections to their connections of people who are on the front lines of fighting poverty and changing the world.

Another update from the adventures of Timoteo and Daudi (our African names). So I can't remember if we ever happened to mention anything concerning the topic I'm about to address. I believe we planned to wait for the whole story before we'd fail to serve the situation justice in a short Twitter. You will understand what I mean in a short while, just be patient and keep reading.

 So as many of you probably know Dan and I arranged to have two local Africans chaparone us all over Africa throughout our 2 month excursion. We had a couple of very understandable reasons for this. A few young punk mazongos traveling through some of the poorest places in the world with very expensive equipment, this to many does not sound like a good idea. Even if our intentions are good. Also we knew that there would obviously be the language barrier. So in came two cool locals named Jack and Tony who would serve as our body guards, translators and heros. Our agreement before the plane crash was to have them accompany Rob, Dan, Tim and I the whole two months of travel and $1.25 a day living.

David and I have been in Africa nearly three months now andhave about a month to go.  Our checklist of places visited includes Kenya, Uganda, DRCongo, Rwanda, and nowTanzania for over a month.  We hit our goal of living on $1.25 for two months and decided some rest and relaxation were well earned. This trip has been hard and stressful on both of us in many different ways. I think we have overcome every challenge though and have dealt with everything well.  So my bro and I have been vacationing on Zanzibar Island, Tanzania for the week. We came here to cover the slave trade as our excuse but we wanted to eat well and relax also.  We both lost lots of weight and all the wonderful seafood is fattening us healthfully. 

Also, with being in a diverse paradise, we had to do some SCUBA.

          Today we were walking through Mwanza and came across some kids playing soccer on a dirt field.  Tim and I decided to sit down and watch them for a little.  We happened to sit right next too a man who spoke decent English which is pretty rare here.  He said his name is Jophet.  We talked about a number of things with our new English speaking friend.  At one point he even found out that I played soccer and talked the kids into letting me play with them!

            When I got back from kicking the ball around he went on to explain that he is a teacher.  He’s not just any teacher though.  Jophet has started his own school.  In two years he already has 50 students.  The kids parents can only afford to pay around 3000 TZS ($2.30) a month.  This obviously doesn’t cover all the expenses of desks, books, and uniforms so Jophet covers the difference with the profit from his farm.  Now when I say that the kid’s parents pay, that only includes 40 of the students.  10 of the students are especially special to Jophet.

Today Rachel, my friend and director of Remba here in Rwanda, introduced me to a woman who used to sell her body to multiple men a night.  I got the amazing privilege to interview her and ask her personal questions about what that part of her life was like. This woman’s name is Devotta. As you can imagine, a number of hard-hitting things were spoken by her throughout the hour of film the tape held. In answer to my questions, she would say things like, “I would make a couple of dollars per client”, “The average was about 3 to 4 men a night” and “For four years that was my life.”

  She then explained how she grew up never knowing what it felt like to be loved.  From an early age her parents left her alone in this world.  What seemed to be nothing but a bleak existence one day somehow turned around.  During one of those dark nights on the streets, a pastor’s wife showed up and told her about the love Christ has for her.  As they got to know each other eventually the woman said words that Devotta had never heard before, “I love you.” Devotta found this Being, who placed the love that she was now feeling through this woman, worthy of her life. “Now my heart always feels happy, and I have people whom I can call my friends.  I realized that all I really wanted my whole life was just to be loved.”  Toward the end of our conversation, she told Rachel and I that we should come with her tonight. You see, instead of getting as far away from that dark part of her life as possible, Devotta chooses to walk night after night, up and down the same streets she used to work on.  Her hope is that the same love that once changed her life would be felt by those still out there.  Accepting the invitation, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. 

We were never planning to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo.  We were introduced to a friend of a dude we met in the hospital after the crash.  When asked if it was safe, we got a “yah it’s fine…usually” with a big grin.  We grinned right back.  We found out later that on his last visit he had hastily evacuated ahead of advancing rebels.

When we arrived at the border, we were met by this dude’s friend called Engineer.  He happened to be a water engineer who had started a NGO (non-governmental org) to provide clean water to the towns of DRCongo. 

He had a 4x4 and a driver and once we got the red tape cut or the bribe paid, we jammed it.  The driver was flying.  Our heads slammed the ceiling multiple times but we kept laughing about the scene in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, where he is all bouncy on a smooth road.  A funny visual but this was not a smooth road.  I would not even call it a road.  We only saw like 2 other trucks.  I thought it was also strange that very few were walking because everywhere else we had been; the roads were constantly populated with walkers.  

Tim and I got an opportunity to stay at the Food for the Hungry office in Kampala, Uganda for a few nights.  They were incredibly generous to us and we didn’t have to pay for anything while we were there.  They also supplied a personal servent just for the two of us!  Unfortunately we could only enjoy her cooking once a day because Tim and I are continuing the $1.25 a day for food and water.  One of the rules that Dan, Rob and I established, as you may know, was that we could only accept one free meal a day if it was offered to us.  Anyway, I would like to tell you the story of Grace.

  First of all I want to start by saying Grace is an angel.  Don’t worry mom and dad she is a lot older than me so I won’t be bringing her home as a wife or anything:] Grace grew up in Northwestern Uganda in a city called Arua.  She persevered through a very tough childhood often only eating one meal a day and lost both of her parents at the age of 11.  After her mother died of an unknown sickness and her father of an accident she lived with her uncle for a while.  I believe she was sexually abused by him, but never said it directly.  She would say things like, “I wasn’t treated well when I stayed with my uncle” and “I even began to hate myself”.