Holy Cow

Yesterday was the first day of ministry that we had here without the rest of the team, and it was an experience. WE woke up around 8 and all had some time to be with the Lord. After an hour or so we grabbed a cow from the compound and headed to our friend patricia's house. Patrica and her husband run a center for children called discover to recover. The center is for Orphans who are HIV positive, and need a place to live becasue they have been thrown out by society. Pstricia is also HIV posotive and has gone through MANY social strugles because of it. Cows are very important here, and are regarded as a sign of wealth. The Holy Cow program is a program that was developed to jump start the economy of orginizations or families. It works like this: a female cow is given to a family as a gift, when the first calf it is given to the person who donated it, considering it is a female. When the second calf is born the family gets to keep it, and so on and so on. This program is used as a way for the person who recieves the cow to generate income. Now there isn't some cow transport machine that you can just put the cow on and get them to thir destination, no no, we had to walk her there. It was about a two hour walk to get the cow to it's destination. It wasn't bad though, we saw and talked to a lot of great people on the way. I had to run down a circumsision parade so that I could donate to thier cause. Now I know what you are thinking, a circmsision parade? In some tribes the boys are circumsised at around the age of 15 and when the time is right for that boy he and his friends run the streets of the town yelling and dancing trying to raise some money for the event. So I ran them down and gave them some dough. All in all the trip to Patricia's house was awesome, and we all learned a lot.