The Masai Mara

Words cannot explain what we just experienced the past two days! I can sit here and try my hardest to tell you what we saw and what we encountered, but it will not do it justice. The one thing I can tell you is that our God is an amazing, creative, and majestic God! We have spent the last two days in the middle of creation, but a different kind of creation. One we aren't used to seeing everyday. One that we can't explain with words or pictures. One that only God could make! My soul is still taken aback by what I saw and what I witnessed. My God is an awesome God! He is Lord of lords. He is my Redeemer and my Creator!

The past two days we have been in the Masai Mara. It is in southern Kenya and is a HUGE game park. This place is like a thousand miles long and who knows how many wide. It is just an endless landscape of wild animals and nature. We took a 6 hour safari van ride to get there with two stops along the way. We left Heart at about 6:30 am and got to the Mara at about 3 pm. Once we were through the park gates, it is an incredible landscape and out in the middle of no where! You think Debbie Jo lives in the sticks, this place makes her house look like it is in the city! As we drove in, we saw antelope, wildebeasts, deek-deeks, and all kinds of other animals. We arrived at our lodge, which looked like a resort, and went to our "tents". These "tents" were a big green safari tent with a thatched roof over it and with a really nice bathroom attached to it. It was awesome!

After we got settled in our tents, we left to get lunch really fast before leaving for safari at 4. Once we had all eaten, we went up to our vans and got ready to go out for the first of four trips. We popped the roofs up and headed out on safari. The first night out we saw four of the BIG 5. The BIG 5 are the elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, and rhino. It was incredible to see that much the first trip we took. When we were coming back to the lodge, the sun set right in front of us. It was beautiful! I can't tell you how cool it is to look out at the landscape and be able to see for miles and miles and see elephants. To look out and see giraffes walking on the horizon. It really brought me to my knees to see what our God has done and what He has made.

When we got back we ate dinner and then hung out for a bit and went to bed. We got up the next morning at about 6 because we left for safari at 6:30. The morning safari was good but not too much happened. We did see two lions, one male and one female. They walked within touching distance of our vans. If I were to put my arm out the window, I could have literally touched it. It was awesome! Another cool thing about the morning safaris were the hot air balloons. As we went out every morning, there would be about 5-10 hot air balloons speckling the horizon. It was really cool to see as well!

We came back in for breakfast and then most of us went to an authentic Masai village. These are the Kenyans that wear red and they are nomads. If you have seen National Geographic, you more than likely know what they are. They are also the ones that do the jumping. We toured the village and the guys even got to participate in the jumping. It was pretty cool. Seeing how they live is quite different from the way we live. They are nomads and move every three years because their houses are made out of cow dung so they only last that long. They are small huts that a family lives in. The Masai warriors, the male children, leave when they are 10 and go into the bush to learn how to hunt lions. When they are ready to go out and prove their manhood, they leave with about 10 others and go hunt one. Once they have killed a lion, they return to the village and then are considered men and can get married. Talk about a transition into manhood!!

After we left the village, we headed back to the lodge to relax for the afternoon. We went out again for another safari and saw some pretty awesome things. We saw a pool of hippos and got really close to some elephants (within about 40 feet). The whole time we had been there, Gentry was wanting to see a crocodile kill, so finally our driver spotted a croc with something. As we drove up, the croc came out of the water and thrashed a cow carcass into the water. It was amazing. Before we came in that night, we also spotted two lions hunting. They were spotted by the herd of zebra so they backed off, but we were really close to seeing them kill!

We came in and ate dinner and then hung out the rest of the night and played cards. After that we went to bed and woke up early the next morning for our last safari. We went out and nothing really happened for the first hour and a half but then one of the drivers spotted a couple of lions eating. We got really close to the lions and saw that it was a wildebeast. We could hear them eating and it was SO cool. It wasn't a kill but it was pretty close to one. After that, we came back and got our stuff ready and headed back to Heart.

We are here now, safe and sound! Everyone has all their limbs and no one got eaten by anything! We have two more days here and we will cherish every minute of it! This place is humbling and uplifting all at the same time.

We were sitting around the fire one night we were there talking to another visitor and they asked Laura Henderson what she was going to take home from this experience. She thought for a minute and answered with one word. I think this word is the theme for our trip here. The one word is perspective. Our perspectives will forever be changed. I strongly believe that no one could ever come here and leave the same person as when they arrived. I believe this experience will forever shape who we are forever! God is an amazing God like I said earlier. He is a God of vision and provision. He is a God of creation and destruction. But He is more importantly a God of love! He has called us to love like Christ and to settle for nothing less. He loved us enough to send a sacrifice for our sins, but He also loved us enough to bless us with everything else on this planet. When I look at a zebra or an elephant or a lion running in the wild, I don't think about the zoo or how awesome animals are; I think about how amazing our God is and how much He loves us! I don't see the sun set and the sun rise and think about how all of this came from a "big bang"; I think about how it came from the God of love. God is mind blowing! None of this happened because of chance, it happened because of God!

I challenge you to go through the next two days, before we return, and think about what God has blessed you with in your everyday life. You don't have to come to Africa to learn about what He has done for you! It is right in front of you! How many times do you pass it by though? How many days do you forget to thank the One who created it all? Take time. Pray. Read. Study. Worship!!

See you tomorrow night! Much love and missing!

I love you Mallory!

- Jameson