the bush trip that wasn't

Monday night it was hard to sleep...partly because Ryleigh has started some sort of seperation anxiety that only seems to occur at nighttime and partly because the next morning we were driving out to the bush.  If you ask my parents, they'll say they don't really remember a time that I didn't talk about going to a village in Africa to live & tell people about Jesus.  So this day was a day I had dreamed about for at least the past 20ish years.  Considering I'm only 26 that's saying something!  Tuesday morning we got up & dressed for the trip out to Besatra (Mahafaly village).  It was a bit surreal for me because I couldn't really wrap my mind around that this was really happening...it was even more amazing to me b/c I got to share this experience with my husband and daughter. 

The trip takes about 4 hours and we had been told that it would be a rough ride.  Ryleigh was strapped in her carseat when we hit the 1st bump (not really sure these could be classified as just bumps) and she didn't know quite what to think about it.  After about 5 minutes of the worst "road" I've ever been on (and this includes all the times I've been mud riding & 4 wheeler riding), it was obvious Ryleigh would be safer & more comfortable sitting in my lap.  We were only going about 20kmph so we figured it would be fine.  Over the next hour or so, Ryleigh would drift off to sleep until we would come to a really bad spot and she'd wake up screaming.  It was breaking our hearts to see the fear in her eyes.  She didn't understand why we were bouncing around so much or why we might suddenly have to slam on the brakes...

So 2 hours into the trip, we decided that this trip wasn't going to be able to happen.  No one in the IMB that we're aware of had ever tried to take a baby out to this village and it appeared that we weren't going to be the 1st.  We turned our car around and headed back down the rock & hole filled "road" to Tulear.  We went even slower going back to try and have as nice of a ride as possible.  Therefore, we even got in a few photos of Ryleigh's (and our) 1st 1/2 trip out to the bush :)

So that's the story of what happened on Tuesday...the next blog will be a more in depth look of how this mom actually handled it :)