Yesterday, I went to the beach with a group of missionaries to celebrate a birthday. Lying on the sand and looking at the sky (photo below) I am always overwhelmed by the beauty of this place. My week had been a tough one. The great missionary Jeff Reed said, “It’s a good day when nobody dies”. When your good day is based on no one dying, it leaves a lot of room for other bad things to happen. Such beauty and such poverty. This is my world.
I may have told you this before, but I am often reminded of running into Mallory Stuckey maybe 2 years ago in Morningside, we were getting frozen yogurt. And I had just had dinner at Rosebuds. Ahhh. Food. Berries. As we interviewed each other, catching up, she asked me what I was doing and I told her, “the same”. I had been working at the capitol for 10 years. She asked if I liked it and I shrugged. When asked what I really wanted to do I confessed I wanted to move to Africa. This stirring in my heart was unrelenting and it consumed by thoughts and actions as I was quietly making plans to do so. I expected her to call me crazy or unknowingly belittle my plans (sorry Mal) as most people do when thrown a curve ball like “moving to Africa”. Her reply was shocking, “don’t we all”. I knew then that she too had this desire, as do many of you I have met along the way. You will all get here in one way or another, as God doesn’t leave these seeds unwatered. But I knew then that others had this dream and I was not alone. I have several close friends back home who all would love to be doing this work. They encourage me like no one else. Yet, I think of them on all my really hard days. Mallory, will you come draw water? Mary, my students keep asking me for money. Money for help with life threatening illnesses or for transport to funerals for young people who died tragic deaths. What do I do? Ky, I miss Atlanta, want to switch places next weekend? I want to go to Rosebuds and eat yogurt with berries.
Most every day that I have been here I have felt total and complete grace for this place and these surroundings. The rat and the snake did rattle me a bit but I survived that. The heat is awful, but we survive. I have this nagging ache in my kidney but it is bearable. I get tired of eating the same things over and over but I have food. There are some days that the grace lifts a tiny bit and you feel every struggle and discomfort without anesthesia and it is painful. I absolutely need His grace to sustain me.
As I looked at the calendar this week and rearranged plans, the future is completely unknown. There is no 10 year plan. I did that already. I get to see it maybe six months at a time. That drives me crazy. But it makes me ever more dependent on Him and that is the only way. This life has made me fully, completely, totally, utterly dependent on Him. I have to seek His counsel on everything.
Just this week a student came to me crying, recovering from malaria, weak and sick. His step mother had been to the witch doctor and he believed she had put a curse on him. His brother was doing “very, very bad things” and he says it is from going to the witch doctor too. I can’t listen to and respond to these requests and concerns from a desk. I can’t handle these situations from arms length. I can’t give canned answers. I have to give this child hope and teach him truth and to do so, I have to know it myself! There on the side of the road, I pray for him. A car stops on the side of the road and a man gets out and says that he has many sick people in his family and wanted to know where my church is. During the time it happened I was honestly annoyed. Can I girl not pray for a boy on the side of the road without someone wanting something from me? I see this nation with their hands out wanting. It is hard for me. The statistics are heart wrenching. I’ve never been hungry, I’ve never been desperate. Their desperation shocks me. So this job isn’t easy. For me to meet this boy with the answers that he needs I have to be on my toes. I have to know some truths and have them daily on my tongue. I tell him not to fear and I find scripture coming out of my mouth. I tell him that he is light and all darkness has to flee.
I have to leave him because I have a room full of students waiting and I go to class. More boys eager for me to teach them what I know. We laugh and go over “the continuous” for the umpteenth time. On the scooter rides home I always take in the view of the sea. It never ceases to make me smile inside and out. I have to slow down for a boy pushing a legless man in a wheelchair in the middle of the roundabout. I slow again for the chickens in my driveway. All of these moments change me a little. And it is my prayer that they never cease from changing me. The man in the wheelchair. The barefooted boy. The paraplegic woman who crawls using wooden blocks in her hands. All of these people change me. I do nothing for them, but they change me just by looking at them. I just pray it all sticks and these changes are forever.
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