DISCLAIMER: Peter reads and approves all blogs before I post
them. Just so everyone knows. J
Peter and I went to a Portland Timbers game this
weekend. It’s been a dream of mine to
surprise him with tickets to a Tottenham Hotspurs game (his favorite English
team….don’t worry, I’d never heard of them either). His birthday was last week and since I
couldn’t give him Tottenham tickets, I did the next best thing. Timbers tickets…..? Not QUITE the same, but I was excited just
the same.
The game was so fun! When I bought the seats I really had no
idea where we were sitting but when we arrived and I heard all the chanting
behind us I thought “Oh that’s fun! We’re sitting near the ‘crazy fan section.’” Then I realized we were sitting right in
front of the OPPOSING TEAM’S “crazy fan section.” Oops.
The Timbers kept them pretty quiet though, with a final score of
3-0. My job during the game was to
google all the black players and see if any were from Sierra Leone. No Sierra Leoneans, but a Liberian and
Nigerian so…some good West African representation. Peter was pretty vocal during the game and
would occasionally yell things out in Krio.
I always love watching people around us watch us while trying not to
look like they’re watching us. J I always want to lean over to them and give
them my stalking secret. Sunglasses. You
can look anywhere and nobody knows!!
After the game we stopped off at the hotel before heading to
dinner. We used a gift card we got for
our wedding which is my FAVORITE because I love eating for free!! I love it so
much that, even though we were heading to dinner, I begged Peter to let us stop
off at the hotel restaurant where they were having a “managers reception” with
free appetizers and free drinks!! I just
can’t pass up free Diet Coke!
It ended up being a good thing because our wait time at the restaurant
was over an hour. Thanks Free
Pre-Dinner!!! About 30 minutes into our
wait, Peter looked at me and said, “I don’t know if it was the medicine I took
or what, but I’m feeling really tired.”
I asked him what medicine he took and he told me he took the cold
medicine….the nighttime one, since it’s evening time now.” Ha! There’s 50mg of Benadryl in that
medicine!! He was wiped!! I told him we could just go grab dinner and
take it back to the room but he wanted to press on. J Conversation during dinner was….not
lively. At one point I asked him a
question and it took him 3 seconds to come up with “yyyyeeesss!” You could almost see the neurons trying to
connect through the fatigue. We went
back to the hotel where he walked straight from the door to the bed and was out
in 2.7 seconds. At 9:15. I spent the evening watching HGTV….and am
going to get to hold this one over him for a while! J
The next morning at breakfast I commented how much more
talkative he was when he wasn’t all drugged up and he kept shaking his head and
saying he was never doing that again! J Later we got to have lunch with some good
friends who were actually in Sierra Leone soon after Peter and I started
dating. (Shout out Stephen and Pasha). Steven
had had the mission while he was there to “scope this guy out” and get a guy’s
perspective.
What happened at the end of our weekend is really why I
decided to write a blog. This was just
my really long way of getting there. A
friend of mine works with a Sierra Leonean woman and she called Peter to tell
him about a special prayer time they were having for Sierra Leone in Portland.
It was perfect timing because we were already up there. We spent an incredible 2 hours worshipping the
Lord together and praying about the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and the rest
of West Africa. There were probably
30-40 people there and they were from all over Africa. At the beginning of the meeting the pastor
called up several people who were NOT from West Africa and had them each pray
in their own language. He remarked that
while they weren’t from West Africa, their hearts were still burdened for their
friends and were calling out to God on their behalf. It was beautiful. These people understood. They too are far
from their families and friends, watching the suffering from a distance. I shed tears for Sierra Leone, for the people
who are suffering, the people that are interceding, and for my husband.
I got to watch Peter worship in his own language, sing songs
from his own country and become instant friends with people he just met. I am
intimately acquainted with the loneliness that can come from being so far from
home, but was always so blessed to have a community around me from the United
States. My home culture. Peter hasn’t had that. And his country is in crisis. So although I thoroughly enjoyed spending
time with Sierra Leoneans, speaking Krio (although I was ashamed of how bad it’s
become) and sharing stories, my favorite part was watching my husband enjoy it.
J After the service we were invited to a woman’s
house who had made a staple Sierra Leonean dish (cassava leaf or “green glop”)
that I didn’t even know we could get in the States! Peter was in heaven!! It was the perfect end
to an incredible weekend and as I drove home I marveled at how much God had
blessed us and how incredible the Body of Christ is. Thank you so much Jesus!! Thank you for
stretching us, and thank you for encouraging us!
