Sunday

Sunday was a good day. I was having a rough day on Saturday for no particular reason and by the end of it I was able to talk about it with a few people, which was precious. There is a lot of power in confession. But Sunday…Sunday was a most excellent day.

First off it was a beautiful day. The birds were extra loud, the sun was a little brighter, the sky a little clearer, the breeze a little fresher. We piled into the Land Cruiser and headed off to Monrovia Christian Fellowship. MCF is remarkably similar to what I have experienced at home, except that the worship team were really firm believers in fast tempos. It seemed like every verse of a song they would speed things up a little more.

After idle after-church chatter we piled back into the Land Cruiser, did a little tour-de-Monrovia, and wound up at Mamba Point for lunch. When we arrived home it was a quick change, and then Dave, Christopher, and I loaded up the Land Cruiser with three surfboards and drove off to Thinker’s Beach.

My first experience of surfing started out magically. As I started paddling I felt so excited. Between water and sky, it was sublime, almost ethereal. This was all before the first wave hit me, filling my foolish gaping mouth full of salt water. After being pounded by wave after wave I wasn’t so sure about the sublime state of surfing anymore.

It took what seemed like a good twenty minutes to clear the beach break. (The break is, apparently, the distance off the beach where the wave stops being all nice and smooth and starts sort of folding into itself and getting all foamy and messy.) Once past the break, I was completely exhausted so I just sat there on my board for a while and received some instructions from Dave. You’re supposed to wait past the break until you see a set of waves coming that suits your fancy, and then you start paddling like mad to try and match the speed of the wave. When the wave catches up to you hold on to the side of your board for dear life as the wave crashes around you and if your lucky you’ll find the balance to stand up. Something like that.

Anyway, I saw a wave that looked nice and big. I started paddling like crazy, at least as crazy as a totally exhausted person can be. The wave started to catch up with me and then it started to crash with a thunderous force around me and I was shot ahead, clinging to my board, not daring to stand up. For a second I experienced the most amazing feeling of being part of the wave rushing into the shore. After that second I was completely pulled under into a turmoil of current and wave and salt water down my throat. After recovering my senses, I slowly drifted into shore, completely wiped of all energy. Yet strangely enough that brief second epiphany was enough to convince me that surfing is very much going to be a big part of my life here.

Behold, photos, this time with CAPTIONS!!!

The House
The Backyard (sort of)
Fellow volunteer and surf extraordinaire
Christopher, with a gecko he caught