We said we were going to open our eyes to the opportunities God presented and present He did. On Sunday we headed into town to hang out, do some shopping and use the Internet. (We have it at our house but it's incredibly slow and nothing can be uploaded or downloaded.) Our Lonely Plant book tells us where all the best Wi-Fi hotspots are. It just so happens that there is amazingly fast, free Wi-Fi offered at an Irish pub called Bubble O’Leary’s. We had been there once before and it was actually pretty nice.
You would be surprised at the wide array of people you see in Irish Pubs in Uganda - drunken African American London residents, well-off local Ugandans, large forgeign bank owners, single Caucasian women who smoke in the corner and drink straight up vodka all afternoon…the list goes on and on. I think I could take up people-watching there permanently. Anyway, so the 3 of us are sitting there, each of us intently working on projects on our computers, and out of nowhere this attractive, 20-something guy walks up and introduces himself to us.
As it turns out, the guy's name was Stephen. He struck up a conversation and ended up chatting with us on and off for the next 3 hours. He asked what we were doing here and we told him. He said he was impressed with how mature we are for only being 21 - whatever that means...ha ha. He was a 29 year old, extremely healthy business man who was in Uganda for 4 months...on business. He never mentioned what he actually did for a living no matter how many ways we asked. Over the course of the next few hours, he told us some of his story. He grew up as a conservative Christian in a trailer park in North Carolina. Somewhere along the way he "grew out" of his heritage and made a name for himself. We talked about religion and Jesus and the Bible with him for a bit but he seemed so skeptical. After a time, he went his way and we went ours. We won't ever know what happens to him or what in the world he does for a living but we told Stephen that if God was real, He would show Himself to him at some point. We can just pray Stephen keeps his eyes open.
It is now the rainy season here and when Africans say rainy season, they aren’t kidding. It rains almost every day. The nice thing is that the rain surprisingly takes away most of the bugs. Unfortunately, it brings out the army ants. We have heard stories about how army ants can clear out whole towns and how they can kill a human in 15 minutes. So far, we hadn’t seen any close to our house…until yesterday that is. I hear a shaky “Um…Megan…you better come out here…” from Krystin and sure enough, there’s a nice little (understatement of the year) train of them winding through our front yard. Sick. Let's just say we went a little crazy with the bug spray. Anyway, I’m telling you all of this to let you know that, on most days, it rains. Therefore, on Tuesday, when the sky was clear and the sun was shining, we made a B-line back to One Love Beach.
Johnny Rasta and his friends were so happy to see us. They all live on the beach and I think it gets boring sometimes. It was Travis’ first time at the beach and we were all pretty excited to see if the Rasta men could dread his hair. It turns out, Johnny has to call the dread guy and have him come out to the beach this Sunday. We’ll let you know how it goes. =)
Soda comes in glass bottles here and I decided to start collecting the metal bottle caps that come on top. I had seen a floor once that was made completely with caps and I wanted to see if we could test it out at home. One Love Beach sells tons of drinks so there hundreds of them just lying around in the sand. Johnny Rasta saw me collecting them. “You are making art?” he asked. “Kinda.” I told him. He quickly volunteered to collect them for me during the week. He said this while blowing smoke from the joint hanging out of his mouth. I smiled and said that I would love it if he collected them for me. The other Rastas - Livingston, Ronny, and Henry also came up to hang out with us. They are all just about as nice as Johnny. They offered to get the “horse seat” so we could ride the pony and Krystin and Johnny ended up trading blank CDs so that we can burn them some “American” tunes and they can show us what real “African” music sounds like. Ha ha. Basically, these guys are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. 
I set up my towel next to Krystin’s and lay down to catch some sun. I started thinking about the awesome opportunity we had, being friends with Johnny and the other Rastas. I started to wonder how in the world we would ever end up talking about Jesus with the guys. Right about then I hear Johnny talking to Travis. Travis had taken his shirt off and in doing so, Johnny had seen Trav’s tattoo. The tattoo is in the shape of a circle with a mountain range in the center. Travis drew the design himself. His family has been backpacking in that mountain range since he was 5, and there are also several other memories relating to his experiences in the outdoors. I tuned into the conversation right as Johnny was saying “P…p…psalms 121? Oh, oh, the scripture? I’m gonna see if I can look that one up sometime.”
I was dumbfounded. 1st, I was surprised that Johnny even knew scripture. I mean the guy lives on One Love Beach in a tent and smokes weed all day. Lesson number 1: never assume. 2nd, how crazy is it that I had just been wondering how we would start up a conversation about God with them and right then, God comes through. Lesson number 2: don’t underestimate God. 3rd, only God would use something as controversial as a tattoo to reach out to a person as notorious as a Rasta man. Lesson number 3: God can use anything to get His word out to anyone.
I’m not saying any of this to start a discussion of about the physical and moral implications of weed and tattoos. I don’t think everyone should go out and smoke weed and I’m not even going to tell you what I think of tattoos but what I AM saying is that maybe those things really aren’t the point. I mean if we are all honest with ourselves I think we would all agree that while weed and tattoos usually only have the opportunity to hurt the user, things like gossip, lies, greed, and adultery hurt the masses. While we all get so caught up in the legality of it all, we end up missing the entire point of being followers of Jesus. Maybe the point is that sometimes God uses tattoos and Irish pubs to start conversations. Maybe the point is that God IS love. He doesn’t JUST love us, he doesn’t just enable US to love but God and love are the SAME THING, and if people don’t see that when they look at us, then we have epically failed. Who was it that said, “I would believe in Christianity if it weren’t for the Christians.” ? It was Gandhi I think. Every day here, I feel like I learn one more way to prove our friend Gandhi wrong. I hope God continues to teach and mold and consume all that we do while we are here. I’m telling you, this whole “opening our eyes to God’s opportunities” thing is pretty amazing. I dare you to try it. Just be prepared to have your world turned around…=)
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