We ran out of gas coming out of the park and had to wait until a guard hunted some down for us!
2 hours in a 40yr old Landrover in conditions worse than this was totally scarier than the mountain! But another adventure! We did so many 360's and nearly tipped over coming down! Better than any roller coaster out there!
These are the last of the pics. I was so blessed to have this opportunity to climb the 2nd highest mountain in Africa with a wonderful bunch of folks....many whom I just met. I climbed with Roberta and Olivia, a missionary in Kenya and her daughter, and a missionary from Mozambique who is originally from Charlotte and his son is at UNCC! I love making those connections! The rest of the Maxwell clan stayed down at Lake Ellis and caught some amazing trout. But we had some pretty awesome food on the mountain as well thanks to our cooks and our guide, William. It took us 3 days, many layers of clothes (I wore my tye-dyed shirt for 4 days without taking it off!), too many hyraxes to count, drinking water from beautiful mountain streams that I only thought were in the movies, loads of jolly ranchers someone had from home, nearly 15,000 feet of climbing through sleet, a bit of freezing rain, and the bitter cold, a night sleeping on a board with 15 other people, a couple bouts of vomiting from the altitude (not me!), and we reached the top! It was such an amazing, exhilirating feeling! My adrenaline was pumping, and when I got down the rocky part, I literally ran and skipped down the mountain. I felt like I could do it again 3 times that day or run a marathon! But as soon as we got back to base camp and ate some beans and rice, I couldn't move! I could have just curled up right there and slept. That's when the crazy adventure in the Landrover was just beginning! Day 3 was the longest day, as we woke up at 1:30 to summit, and I made it back to Lauren's house in Nairobi at 11pm that night! But it was one of the fullest days I have experienced in a long time! The whole experience reminded me of one of my favorite quotes...
"The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything! God is the ground, the substance, the teaching, the teacher, the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labors." ~Julian of Norwich
I experienced our Master in so many ways on the mountain. I saw Him in sunsets and the sunrise, in cactuses and the Milky Way, in dancing fires and stories from our guards, in people like Paul Zimmerman and his ministry in Mozambique, and Lisa and their ministry in Navaisha, in the Southern cross and the Big Dipper that we could see stretched for miles, in the warm hot chocolate, and the snow crystals on our toes! What a full and rich God we serve!
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