So, about a week after I returned from my leave in Nairobi, Kenya my partner (in Sudan, not life) Jamie and I piled into our sweet land cruiser for a quick day trip to the village of Akot. Our mission was to seek the counsel of three Dinka Baptist pastors on the matter of our Christmas play. We were driving along, and all of a sudden we hit 9 am traffic. Now this kind of traffic is very different than the kind everywhere else. See, the Dinkas are big cattle people, pastoralists if you may, and figured “Hey, why don’t we drive our cattle on this nice big road every morning and every afternoon?” And so 9 am traffic and 5 pm traffic means trying to get through herds of 200+ cows. So we manage to get through 2 big herds of cattle and only had one last small one to go. As the last cow was following her fellow heifers out of the way, I almost gave a sigh of relief until that last cow decided, “Wait, I don’t want to follow my fellow heifers”. BAM!! The cow caught the corner of our vehicle.
We then spent the rest of the morning, and a good chunk of the afternoon, stuck in a police shack negotiating. Since cows are basically the currency here, I was in big trouble. The cow owner, began to demand $1,500 U.S. dollars for breaking two ribs of his cow. But, God is faithful, and sent our friend John who happens to be a Baptist pastor to help us.
At one point, I was stuck in the police shack by myself with about 7 Dinka policemen, and decided to practice my Dinka. After using about every Dinka word and phrase I could think of, I began to recite bible verses that I had memorized in Dinka. After messing up John 3:16, I brought out my Dinka New Testaments to say it correctly. One of the policemen then grabbed my bible, and started reading the rest of John chapter 3 to all the people in the shack! Praise the Lord!
The funny part of the story is that according to the policemen, the reason why I hit the cow was because I was “…Wearing the sunglasses, and so you could not see the cow in front of you. And that is why you hit the cow. You are a very bad girl” In the end, everything got sorted and we were finally able to go home.
Moral of the story: Don’t wear the sunglasses or else you might hit a cow.
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5 comments:
Wow! What an amazing story! I was especially amazed when the policeman finished reading John 3 aloud!
I enjoy your posts, Laura! HUGS!
So YOU were the one who hitthe cow.
ooh laura!! I am so glad instead of you going to jail, people got to hear the word of Jesus!
thanks for the tip... i will take off my sunglasses now when driving through cows :)
So Laura, is that thing about the sunglasses a "cow tip"? Anyway, what a great scripture for them to read...imagine trying to share something from Leviticus! Laura, I think you're doing amazing work. I'm very proud of you! Next time I check my dad's cows in the pasture I'm definitely wearing sunglasses...i might need a good excuse if I hit one!
That's crazy! Amazing Story though.
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