Investing in a child

Sorting through memories of Kenya this week brought up one of my favorite experiences from last year's trip:  It was our first day of sports camp in Nandi, and we found ourselves seated in the first row of a church filled with 600 excited children.  Most of them couldn't get enough of shaking our hands and asking "how are you?" (and giggling when we replied with "fine," the response they're taught in their English lessons).  Many of them had never seen white people before, so we were quite the celebrities.  But I noticed one little girl seated down the row from us, just observing us from her hiding place behind her friend.  She looked to be about 6 or 7 years old (but it's hard to tell since malnutrition stunts children's growth, so she could have been as old as 9 or 10 depending on how much access she had to food).  After the initial rush of children was over, I went over to say hi to her, and she timidly shook my hand.  She didn't speak English (or wasn't comfortable speaking it), so her friend told me her name was Faith.  I didn't want to overwhelm her, so I left her alone the rest of that morning except for the occasional smile I'd throw her way.

The next day, we were all sitting in our front-row seats again (with children scattered throughout our group now), and I looked up to see that Faith had made her way over all by herself to say hi.  I asked if she wanted to sit with me & motioned to the seat next to me, which she cautiously took.  I struggled to get a smile out of her, but she stuck to my side & eventually hopped on my lap, so I called it a success.  When it was time for lunch & all the other children rushed out to where it was being served, Faith still wouldn't leave me & I had to use my very limited Swahili to encourage her to eat.  (Ungapenda kula?--Would you like to eat?)

The next morning, I was up on stage leading the motions for the sports camp music when I looked over & saw Faith climbing up on stage to stand next to me & do the motions.  This little girl who was too scared to come shake my hand 2 days earlier was up on stage leading motions in front of 600 other children.  It was really touching to see that jump in a few short days from a child in the background to a leader, all because I'd gone over to shake her hand.

If just a handshake can do that, I'm encouraged that going to Kenya and investing in the lives of the children there will accomplish amazing things.  I keep praying for Faith, and I hope she's able to touch lives as much as she touched mine.

Forgetfulness

A saying that's never fit me well is "absence makes the heart grow fonder."  I'm sure that fits some people.  But when I'm experiencing an absence of someone/thing, generally I go a little nuts.  Maybe some people interpret that as fondness, but I just interpret it as going insane over something I can't control.  It's not a pleasant feeling at all.
Eventually, I do fall into another cliche:  out of sight, out of mind.  It's not that I care any less about the person or thing that I miss.  It's just that I'm human, and humans forget.  Last July, as I was preparing to go to Kenya with a team from my church, I was forgetting a lot.  I had a lot going on back here in the States, and I wasn't sure I should really be going to Kenya again.  I had people here I wanted to visit, I had the school year coming up to prepare for, and leaving the country (and your comfort zone) is always stressful.  I'd forgotten my experiences the year before, I'd forgotten God's voice calling me back.  But I had committed to the trip, and I knew deep down that it would be a good trip, so I didn't try to back out.
When I got to Kenya and it was no longer "out of sight," I remembered how being there made me feel so much more alive than anything else I'd experienced.  I remembered the joy of working with the children and the church leaders.  I remembered why God had called me to serve there.  I just needed to have my memory jogged.
When I realized that I wouldn't be hopping a plane to Kenya this summer, I worried that I would forget.  It's easy to ignore a calling when it isn't clear yet, when it's to a foreign land, and when it's still so far away.  And I do find myself forgetting:  forgetting to pray about whatever future I may have in Kenya, forgetting to pray for the people I met there, forgetting the resolution I had in knowing I need to go back long-term, forgetting the urgency of preparing myself for whatever comes next.  Distractions aren't hard to find.
So I'm going to make an effort this week to go back and read my journals from my trips to Kenya, to look through my folders of pictures on my hard drive, and, hopefully, dust off the Rosetta Stone for Kiswahili that I'm borrowing from a friend.  I'm hoping to come across stories worth sharing (probably re-sharing for many of you who read this), so check back later in the week once I've jogged my memory!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Today, I got my first letter from Jane.  It let her tell me what some of her favorite things are, including her favorite food:  chapati.

When I saw that, I knew I was meant to be her sponsor!  Hands-down, that is my favorite food in Kenya.

I love this girl already!

Created for a place I've never known

I sometimes have moments where I take a step back from myself and notice that I feel out of place here in America.  I'm not interested in malls or most TV shows or having the nicest car or many other things that our culture tells me I should be interested in.  During these times, I miss Kenya even more, because the people I met there might have had some interest in those things, but it didn't define who they were as people.  The children were more interested in whether you would play a game of football with them than if you had an iPhone.  My friends were more concerned with spending time with friends and family than with lavishing them with unnecessary material gifts.  The community I felt in Kenya was a dramatic contrast to the isolation I often feel in a technologically saturated America.  I could not get enough of just being around the people I met in Kenya.

But having a community of friends and family in America can be great, too.  Living over 5 hours from most of my family means I don't get to spend a lot of time with them, but I was able to this weekend when I went home to be my sister's Maid of Honor for her wedding.  It was my first time being a Maid of Honor, and it was a lot of work, but I love my sister and I loved doing everything I could to make her day as beautiful and stress-free for her as I could.  I would not have wanted to be anywhere else in the world this past weekend than at home with my family, celebrating this new chapter of my sister's life.

It seems that, no matter where I am in the world, I can find friends and family who make it feel like home, or I can feel like my home is on the other side of the world.  It leaves me feeling a bit unsettled, having my heart in so many places and with so many people.  But I think God wants us to feel like that, that we're never quite home.  In Philippians we're told that "our homeland is in heaven."  We can search all over this world, but as followers of Jesus, we won't find our home here.  I can taste a little bit of heaven when I get to shower my sister with love on her special day.  I can smell it when I sit around a table drinking tea and eating mandazi with friends on the other side of the world.  But I think I see it most in the love that just overflows from the children I met in Kenya, and that is why I always ache to be back there.  It's not quite heaven when I get to love and be loved by those beautiful little people, but it's pretty darn close.

Pressed down, shaken together, and running over

In an earlier post, I mentioned the book "The Circle Maker" by Mark Batterson.  One chapter of it challenges the reader to make a list of God-sized life goals.  Not just easily attainable, average 5-year-plan goals.  Huge, irrational, God-glorifying goals that just aren't humanly possible.  The author had a few examples, such as his goals of writing a book by age 35 (which he did), hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with his son (done), and making a movie (still working on it).  He included his entire list at the end of that chapter, 115-goals long.

I started working on my life goal list, but it's only 3 long right now:
1.)  Have my finances in order to sponsor a child through Compassion International by age 29
2.)  Be debt-free by age 32
3.)  Live in Africa (preferably Kenya) a minimum of 2 years by age 40

Goals 1 & 3 seemed pretty possible to me, and goal 2 seems downright outrageous (especially considering that my student loans alone aren't scheduled to be paid off until I'm 40), but I'm trusting that God gave me these goals, and he'll help me achieve them.

Regarding goal #1, I'd like to introduce you to Jane, a beautiful, 7-year-old girl living in rural Kenya:

I sat down to adjust my budget this weekend based on the blessing God has given me in the past few months as far as income goes (hear me talk about it in the link from this post, and I've also started teaching 2 more students since then--praise God!), and had to add my numbers up three times because I thought for sure I was making a mistake.  But I wasn't, because Jesus tells us that "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”  (Luke 6:38)  My tithing had allowed God to bless me with more, so I can bless others with more.  I reached goal #1 only 2 months after setting it, and 3 years ahead of schedule.  Now I'm able to provide Jane with her basic needs, education, and even education for her guardian.  

Jane lives with her grandmother and 5 siblings, which is what drew me to her as I was looking through Compassion's list of children waiting for sponsors.  I've heard so much about and even met some children in developing countries whose parents, unable to care for them, left them with a grandparent and disappeared.  These grandparents are not always even well enough to care for themselves, and the children are left to run the household:  fixing meals, fetching water (sometimes from miles away), cleaning, and mending.  This doesn't leave much time for education, which I believe is the biggest thing that will help these children to break the cycle of poverty, and to help stop corruption by raising up good, honest leaders in Kenya.  I am so thankful to be able to play a part in providing Jane the opportunity to get an education without worrying about where her food is coming from, who will take the jerry cans to get the water, and where her school fees will come from.


I'm so excited that God is showing up in these big ways.  If he helped me reach this goal 3 years early, what is he going to do to help me reach goals #2 and 3?  I can't wait to find out!

Turning wine into water

This post is in honor of World Water Day, coming up on Thursday, March 22:

One of my favorite non-profits is one I first heard about when I was in college called blood:water mission.  They work with local people in villages in East Africa to build wells to give people access to clean water, and they also work to combat HIV & AIDS. 

Last year, blood:water mission started an annual campaign called 40 Days of Water.  They ask people to give up all beverages but tap water for Lent, and to donate the money they save to blood:water to help build wells in East Africa.  It might be one of the best ideas for Lent that I've heard:  it's an actual sacrifice (40 days with no wine or Diet Pepsi is pretty bad), but it helps people, too.

Here's the promo video about 40 Days of Water:

And here's a video showing some of the results of their work in a village named Kodhok in western Kenya:

It astounds me that, in the age of iPads and self-driving cars, there are still so many people without access to clean water.  How dehumanizing must it be to be forced to drink water filled with frog eggs, cholera, and typhoid, from a pond covered in green scum?

I'm thankful for the opportunity to take my wine and turn it into water for people like Monica, and for children like Jennifer who now spend their time in school rather than walking for hours to fetch water.  The more barriers to education that we can eliminate, the more hope there is for the future of East Africa.

Making a Difference

I had the opportunity today to speak at my church about my dreams for going to Kenya, what God's doing in my life about it now, and what I'm doing about it now.  Two of my friends also got to speak, so be sure to listen to their stories, too!  The audio of the service is here, and my section starts at about 4:18.  According to a friend, I gave a sermon on tithing there in the middle of my story, which is something huge God's been working on in me.  (Side note:  it's strange to listen to your own voice.  Do I really sound like that?)

I really love sharing the great things God does in my life, so I'd love it if you could take a listen!

Lenten Sacrifices

I've been giving things up for Lent since I was in about 9th grade.  The first thing I remember giving up was strawberry Cremesavers.  (Remember those creamy, individually-wrapped Lifesavers?)  I grew up with a number of Catholic friends, so I picked that habit up from them, and am quite grateful for it.

Since about 2007, I've given up facebook for Lent.  It's always difficult at first because of how much I've come to rely on facebook for communication and staying in the loop with my friends around the world, but I've come to look forward to it every year.  By this time of the year, I've usually become so attached to my need to know what's happening in all of my friends' lives, and my need to share every mundane detail of my life, that facebook takes up much more of my free time than it should.  In giving up facebook for Lent, I'm freed for 40 days (46 days, really, because I don't take Sundays "off") from the anxiety of wondering if I've missed some big news, and from the narcissistic idea that nearly 700 people care that I got new curtains.  I have so much more free time than I ever imagined I actually had in my packed schedule.

I try to fill that free time with worthwhile activities each Lent.  This year, in addition to catching up on some reading, I'm trying to learn some Swahili.  I just installed Rosetta Stone for Kiswahili on my computer, and I am so excited to get started.  After going to both Mombasa and the Rift Valley in Kenya and seeing how few children in those areas were comfortable communicating in English, I realized I really should try to learn some Swahili.  Swahili and English are the two official languages in Kenya, but English isn't very widespread outside of the urban areas.  In addition to the official languages, there are dozens of local/tribal languages and dialects.  Despite three years of German in high school, I've never really felt comfortable with any language other than English, so it's going to take some work, but I'm willing to put in the effort.

600 children ready for VBS out in the Rift Valley

All of the amazing things that happen to me during Lent--better prayer life, more consistently working out, more time for self-improvement--make me feel like giving up facebook for Lent isn't much of a sacrifice at all.  It reminds me (in a small way) of how Jesus told us that "All who have given up home or brothers and sisters or father and mother or children or land for me will be given a hundred times as much."  (Matthew 19:29).  No, giving up facebook isn't the same as giving up a home or a family, but in giving it up, I do feel like I'm being given 100 times as much fulfillment in return.

What are you giving up for Lent this year?  How is God working in your life through that sacrifice?

Prayer circles

I recently read a book called "The Circle Maker" by a local pastor & author named Mark Batterson.  In it, he talks about how God wants us to "pray circles" around our biggest dreams and greatest fears.  Prayer has never really been one of my strengths, but this book has inspired and excited me to pray bolder prayers and dream bigger dreams.

I'm discovering that I like to be doing something physical while I pray, to help me focus.  Usually it's hiking or running, but this week I tried some prayer-painting.  It served the double purpose of allowing me to pray for my dreams while painting, and also giving me a physical reminder to KEEP praying circles around my dreams:

 

The dreams God has placed in my heart aren't completely clear yet, but I know they involve me spending an extended period of time in Kenya.  I cannot adequately explain to you how much joy being in Kenya and serving the people there brings me.  Over the past two summers, I've spent a total of nearly 6 weeks in various parts of Kenya, loving on the children and serving their leaders through several different outreaches.  I fell in love with the country and the people, and I know God has given me this dream to serve the people of Kenya full-time.

I don't know when God will call me to go back to Kenya with a one-way ticket, and I don't know what it will look like when I get there, but I'm praying circles around that dream in the meantime.  I'm praying for clarity for my vision, for provision to get me there, and for the faith I'll need to rely on God in whatever situations I end up.  I've already started recruiting some friends to be praying for my dreams with me, and I'd like to invite you to be praying, too.  And check out "The Circle Maker" and start praying for bigger dreams & visions for yourself, as well, and let me know how I can pray for those dreams for you, too.