What we were doing last Halloween?

Today, November 1st, I'm working on putting together a computer file of all the counseling/training hours I compiled during our year abroad. In doing that, I opened the computer file that contains the daily journal that we kept while we were traveling. Yep, that's right, we kept a DAILY journal to remember everything we did this past year. At times it got a little annoying and cumbersome, but now that we're back, it's AWESOME! Especially now as I'm trying to remember how long I trained there and what we did then, etc.

Anyway, as I was working this morning, I came upon our journal entry of last October 31st. It's weird to think that one year ago, we were in Zimbabwe doing this on Halloween. This is the exact journal entry that we wrote that night (I added the pics to the blog post for proof :-))....

Saturday October 31st:

Today, the plan was to leave at 10 to head straight to an African Wedding! At this point we are not sure who the couple is, but we are excited to see how it all works. We got all dressed up, Justin in a tie and khakis, and Krista in a nice skirt and blouse. We had a super breakfast of eggs and bread and coffee (yay!); and met some visitors that had come in for the wedding and had arrived at 3am that morning. 10 am came and went; and we found out that the guests didn’t know where to go so we needed to wait for them. The wedding organizer was a little frustrated since she was hoping to get there as soon as possible. It was interesting to see a local get a little anxious about time since we seem to feel it all the time. Finally at about 11 we were off to the wedding, but gas first, and then the wedding. We walked right in and it was hard to tell at first if we wereat the ceremony or the reception. Nearly everyone was sitting down in rows, but people were cheering and talking; and there was a large crowd at the front around the Bride and Groom. Some seats were found for us at the front… it’s good to be with such honored guests like Lucia and the visitors. Turns out they are the pastor and his wife from the Groom’s church in South Africa, and the newly married couple will return to that church. So yeah, being associated with the big dogs gets you good seats. The large crowd at the front consisted of the Bride and Groom, a whole entourage of camera-men and videographers, a lot of bridesmaids and groomsmen, all sitting down behind the camera crew, and then behind them another set of bridesmaids and groom-children – just a younger and smaller version of the typical wedding party… probably all around 10 years old. There was a bunch going on in Shona, so we were pretty lost. Then they kissed… well that part is the familiar. And they did a receiving line of everyone in the place (which was quite a few, maybe 150 to 200), again, pretty familiar, we could see this happening in the states.
So we’re thinking we are probably about done, but nobody seemed to be getting ready to leave. Oh, there is more… they cut the cake, at the ceremony, a little different, but cool. Then they presented bigger pieces of cake to family members and respected people in their lives (Lucia got a big piece), and they gave out bite sized pieces to everyone there. It was delicious.

The AMAZING cake (even with Fall Harvest colors)! Check out the Africa Hut!

Other stuff happened and then the toasts and speeches started. About 4 or 5 from each side of the family… then Lucia got up there and talked for a little while (she is always a crowd pleaser) and introduced the couple that had gotten there that morning, and they went to the front and gave a little sermon and advice to the lucky couple. At least that part we could understand since they spoke in English and someone translated,

not sure what they spoke in SA, but the common language was English. And at some point relatively soon after that they all danced their way out of the ceremony hall… the little one’s first, then the “regular” bridesmaids and groomsmen and then the happy couple. And we were done. At this point it was probably about 1 ish, and the wedding technically started at 9 – Yeah, 4 hours for the “Ceremony”. We then followed the whole wedding party to where they were going to take pictures; Lucia wanted a picture with the Married couple. And apparently somebody wanted us to have a picture with them as well, because before w

e knew it we were standing next to the newlyweds and everyone was snapped photos of us as well.

See, I wasn't lying. They really had us take a photo with the Bride and Groom!

Then back to the hall for some lunch and the reception. We hung around outside for a while after lunch, bought some ice cream, talked to a few of the people there we knew (we talked about the big church service we were going to go to on Sunday), hung out some more, and then finally we went in. They were at the gift receiving stage… not sure what was going on while we were outside, maybe just gift giving, I hear it can take a while. People come up family by family, or person by person, and give a gift, and the emcee announces to everyone what they gave. Crazy huh? I wonder what would happen if we did that in America? And then churches give and the emcee announces that too!… so we went up with Lucia and everyone from Eternal Word Ministries and we even gave a little donation (as “Eternal Word America”). Then we finally headed out… it’s about 4 or 5 pm at this point....but the party probably kept on going.

The End

There you have it. What we were doing last year on Halloween. Wow, it seems almost surreal that a year ago we were doing that when yesterday we were here in Colorado, mountain biked with friends, went to church, ran some errands, and handed out candy to neighborhood kidos. And now that we've been back for a month now, I'm realizing that God is found in both the extravagant and romantic as well as the mundane.