Day 2: Legho Village - Arusha:Meet the Guides

Day 2 - Morning in Legho, Meeting Guides in Arusha

“Thank you Jesus. Praise you Jesus” are the words that echoed throughout the day as Papa Deo welcomed us into his home and village of Legho. We awoke and were met with hot coffee and warm smiles by his family, followed by a family style breakfast of eggs, samosa, hand made tortillas and bananas prepared by Deo’s future daughter-in-law.

After breakfast, we packed our things to head back to Arusha but before departing, Deo showed us a Christian school in the village, where he actually attended school himself. We continued onto the medical clinic for which construction started almost 18 years ago. Today, they have one doctor and one nurse and will soon receive the necessary medical equipment from the government to begin treating patients in Legho and the surrounding villages.

At dinner this evening with the team and Papa Deo, he spoke to us with words that settled differently within each of us:

“Each one of us has different storms we are facing. Storms are good. They make us strong. They make us mature. We are not supposed to be kids forever. We are supposed to grow up…if you run from a storm, you are a coward.”

During the climb to the summit of Kilimanjaro, “we are going to face the physical storm…we invite Jesus into that storm. He has a lesson for us in the storms.”

I think we all feel an array of emotions as we end the day knowing that the mountain awaits us tomorrow. No matter the storm that comes, “when there is destruction, there is construction.” ~Papa Deo

~ Haleigh Jones