2011-2013: We packed a container again and moved our life up to Overland’s bush mission compound in July.  Miesha was 3 years old and Titus turned 2 years old a month later.  It was big culture shock to transition from the huge African city of Johannesburg to living in a safari tent in the bush with toddlers.  We were camping under billions of stars  (no light pollution!) and we could often see the mist cloud from the Victoria Falls just up the road. Someone on base had to build a fire under the water tank for hot water for showers, there were tarantulas and other weird spiders on our bed and in our kitchen drawers, there was cafeteria cooking for anywhere between 30-120 people, hotter temperatures (it got up to 131F/51C that year October!) and the rainy season was epic with 4×4 driving in the mud and wild lilies growing on the road.  One time a baby scorpion snuck into my jeans while I was showering and it stung me six times.  Another time a scorpion crawled into my hair in the middle of the night and stung my finger while I was trying to figure out what the tickle was!!  (That wasn’t my favorite) 
 
Elephants and hippos were often on the road as we drove to town, sometimes baboons would try to steal from the base garden, we had a monitor lizard hiding in our house once (this one was “only” about 5 ft long), you had to carefully watch for snakes (we once had a Mozambican spitting cobra in our tiny house and puff adders on the path), vervet monkeys would sneak into our home and steal the fruit, and we experienced several butterfly migrations. Miesha and Titus, who were 3 and 4 years old at the time, would take the cheap butterfly nets and catch 20 butterflies at a time as they would come at drink from the puddles made while watering our plants. Some mornings there were moths the size of my hands on the side of the house we woke up.  Rural Africa has a unique and raw beauty that settles deep in your soul.
 
We also saw God do amazing things as we partnered with Him. There was a deeper dependency on Him and our faith grew tremendously as we edged further and further out of our comfort zones.   We showed the Jesus Film in the local languages and had many people receive salvation, we prayed for the sick and many were healed, people were delivered of demons, a ministry team I was on outreach with prayed over a little paralyzed girl for 2+ hours and at the end she was delivered of demons and started walking!!  We really enjoyed teaching the AMT students and so many of the Zambians we became friends with, we still in contact with today.  Two lovely ladies named their baby girls after me and a family from Malawi named their baby boy Daniel.  What an honor!!
 
The next two years of building our home in the bush and co-leading the 6 months of intensive training each year for future missionaries was the best of times and the hardest of times.  We LOVED the students and the teaching/training/ministry trips to the bush and being a part of what God was doing.  Building the house with limited resources was challenging, living in such close quarters with such young children was hard (our tiny house was 9ft wide and 12 ft long), and living on the mission base and eating every meal with/working/playing/ homeschooling/doing ministry/attending church with the same group of people had its challenging moments too.  To be honest, in this season we were burning out.  We had too much on our plates, a lot of stress, and some interpersonal conflict with other missionaries on the base.  In October of 2013 – Dan confessed a life-long struggle with to the leadership on the base and from that day on everything shifted for us.  Darkness was brought into the light and the sin he was wrestling with for so long was finally in the open so we could get help and healing.  
 
Two weeks later, we were back in the USA.  Dan met with the men’s group leader at one of our supporting churches and began attending the Conquer Series.  Following, we both joined Pure Desire support groups, and started the painful season of communicating with our supporting churches what had happened and why we were back in the states on a sabbatical for support and counseling.  

A few months later, Dan returned to the base in Zambia to pack up our belongings from our little house and to officially put our big house building project on hold since we didn’t know if or when we would return. A few days later Dan was talking around the braai (BBQ) in South Africa with our pastor and three missionary friends and was processing and asking for their input and advice.  Each one invited Dan to join their ministry when we returned to Africa, but eventually they all agreed that it would be ideal if Dan were to start his own ministry so that he could partner with all of them in some capacity.  Our pastor told us, “Dan, take the time you need to heal and then come back.  Africa needs the answers you are discovering on this journey.”  Within a few months, more invitations were coming in to partner in multiple ministries in Zambia and South Africa, even one from Tanzania, but it was usually followed up with them saying “but you should start your own ministry and partner with us…” and that is where the dream of Magezi Ministries was birthed.

At that point we would’ve rather disappeared and healed in privacy, but the Lord made it clear from moment that we were to return to Africa at some point and that included a transparent and open healing journey.