I’m not happy, I’m joyful

I have had Nede staying with me for the last week and it has been a pure blessing. Not to say that there haven’t been times where I have thought, “what am I doing? Who is this child and why am I waking at 5am to a small voice saying ‘Sista Darda (sounding like dare-dah) poo poo.’” I have sat on the floor of every room of this house trying to persevere beyond the strength of a 4 year old temper tantrum wanting bread for the 4th time in the day. I have also contemplated that this could mean I’ll be single for the rest of my life and may never go on a single date again. BUT…

In the midst of all this I feel such deep, pure- hearted JOY! I am not happy, it’s much deeper. It’s what I have not felt in a very, very long time—if ever. As I ponder this I think that it’s because I have chosen to surrender to something that is so close to the heart of God. It’s WAY bigger than me and it’s God. It’s that simple. Believe me, I am not special or doing anything extravagant. I have just found myself, as I desire to please, serve and worship my Father God, being led, beyond my own choice, back to Mozambique for this small child. As I was rereading a book called “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope” I was touch by this and it’s appropriateness to me today:

Surrender is what cleans off the barnacles that have been clinging to the soul. It is the final act of human openness. Without it I am doomed to live inside a stagnant world called the self.

I do want to surrender, to surrender all of me in a act of worship to have something deeper and real—to be a part of something with TRUE JOY- something of the Father God’s heart.

Nede.

I wish I could tape her giggle for you all to hear. I wish you could see her smile every morning when I assure her that there will be breakfast. In an attempt to fight her fear of being hungry I have made her a basket that I fill with snacks. It’s waiting for her every morning when she wakes up. She is now learning that once these snacks are gone they aren’t refilled. She can eat them anytime during the day but once they are gone, they are gone. She carries this basket around with her everywhere we go (sometimes on her head like in this picture). It’s like the Easter bunny has visited every morning. She’s delighted with it. This morning her cookies were gone before breakfast and she finally was eating her raisins in bed tonight;) Nothing else was left:)

In an attempt to surrender self, in the simplest terms, it’s a challenge not be bothered by Nede eating bread and hard boiled eggs while falling asleep in my bed. And I am trying to get over the fact that she chooses, and insists on wearing, day time clothes to bed and pajamas during the day and she doesn’t know the difference. Or that she actually eats and drinks out of the miniature plastic tea set I bought for her from Shoprite!

I have spent the past year and a half, at least, waiting for this week. I have also spent much time and prayer making sure it isn’t an attempt to fulfill anything that is lacking in me, or my life. I don’t believe this is about finding my “purpose” or “fulfilling me”. It’s all my relationship with the Lord and the journey He has me on. While in the States for about 13 months I somehow lived in the hope that the clothes I was collecting for a four year old and the children’s Bible and books that I hid away in my dresser drawer would indeed someday be needed for this child. In faith, I took the risks of expecting that I would have a week like this, with Nede in my home. I continue to walk in the same faith, not fully satisfied that this is what it is all about but fully expecting that this is something the Lord planted in me and it’s just the beginning of a long life of sacrifice. 

I believe part of my joy is also linked to having to depend on the Lord. I HAVE to have faith that this has all been led by Him and His ways are good, perfect and won’t leave me broken. Rather than fear at this time of risk and sacrifice, I am trusting that as my faith is challenged and grown there is, and will continue to be sweetness in the journey. So, no matter what bumps and challenges are ahead, and there will be many I am sure, His grace is sufficient and at least, right now, I have a bubbling joy as I invest in something beyond my “SELF” and say, "Lord, I worship you with my life!”

Maybe I write this to continue to convince myself and cheer my own self on but, I believe, no matter what happens the joy of these days is of the Lord, and that is what life is to be all about!

 

(I have much more to say about the grace that I continue to experience, how WELL Nede has adapted and what I am thinking about hunger and what I see in Nede, but that’ll have to wait. I know a long post (like this one) is hard for some to get through- TREVOR!)

Sharing my life with a 4 year old

I can’t even articulate my thoughts…

Nede and I recited this verse many times today, she repeating after me:

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Psalm 118:24

 

I’m off to bed. With this precious one breathing heavily in the bed next to mine. Bless her Lord and thanks for YOUR PRAYERS! This is the start of another incredible journey…more soon!

Nede

Meet Nede-- Quite possibly the most prayed for child in Mozambique, maybe even ALL of Africa!

Thank you! What a gift you’re giving both her and me.

Sorry if it seems I have been a bit absent recently. The days come and go and I am busy with this and that before I know it it’s 8PM, I check my email and as my eyes droop heavily the last thing I can think of doing is writing something wise or profound. Many days I can’t dream of capturing my thoughts in words and I just head off to bed trying to figure out the meaning of my life.

Even now I can’t adequately “recap” what’s been going on lately. So, I’ll just share a few photos. In the past I have been told by some to take more pictures of what it looks like here, “enough of the kids, I want to see what the country looks like.” :)

Last week I was able to go to South Africa for a week to get some R&R. This is a HUGE baobab tree along the highway as we drove through Zimbabwe.

A view of the coast as we drove back through Mozambique

This is a home over 10km off the main road near where I stay. Coca Cola has literally reached the ends of the earth!

I’m sitting at my “dining room” table (which is a screened in area). It’s winter now and my toes are freezing. I think I’ll heat some water for some tea and fill the hot water bottle I brought back from SA. I have hopes of a quiet night listening to the rain and reading a book. We’ll see what the actuality of the night brings.

Boring post…more soon.

Admit One

Written a few weeks back:

When I was in Phoenix after I returned from Mozambique in 2009 I went to a World Vision exhibit to bring awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Yesterday, I was in the exact exhibit I toured through in the States. Unfortunately, these people don’t have a ticket that allows them to just walk through and browse.

As we drove into Inchope Carlos told me we would be stopping there for breakfast. Inchope is the town better known as the “Crossroads.” It’s the place where the 2 highways meet- the Beira Corridor which runs from Beira, the port city on the coast, to Zimbabwe. The other runs from the capital, Maputo, to Northern Moz. Due to the nature of this environment and the frequency of truck drivers at the Crossroads Inchope has quite a reputation for prostitution. Knowing this, and perhaps the sensitivity in my spirit, my soul is restless each time I travel through this impoverished place. With poverty, prostitution often goes hand in hand. Where there is hunger, there is desperation, with this desperation comes prostitution and, with prostitution, comes HIV.  

As I sat eating my “bread with egg” and “coffee” (a can of instant “Ricoffe” set before us on the table) I watched as men and woman came staggering out of the rooms of this “guest house.” Fortunately my naive mind can’t even imagine what happened the night before in the rooms of these broken men and women. I believe this is part of God’s mercy on me. If I fully understood the culture and happenings of such a place I would likely not be able to cope.

I felt very uncomfortable as I sat in this environment. I didn’t even feel like it was me sitting there. How could I, Dara, be in such a place as this? --somewhere so uncomfortable and strange.  I sat there and actually thought, “Oh, yes, I have seen this before. I have been here before.” But no, I haven’t ever been in this situation. I’ve seen it in an exhibit.

Part of me feels really grateful. Really happy that after I finish eating my bread we’ll just get in the car and I'll go home and make a real cup of coffee in a French press. I can cook dinner tonight and I have NEVER had to contemplate what I would be willing to do to have food on the table for myself or my family. Part of me just wants to praise God that I am not “them.”

When I have these thoughts, I feel terribly guilty. What if I was “them?” What if that was me staggering out of a room with some stranger who just took advantage of my body for only a few dollars? Like walking through a World Vision exhibit, what if my ticket that read “Admit One” didn’t actually include a flight out of this broken, desperate, hurting place. This is NO exhibit for these people. What if I was trapped in this exhibit? What if this was my life?

Only by God’s grace do I hold a ticket that is so simple that all I have to do is send an email and I’ll fly back to a place where I paid money to “experience” exactly this.

There’s nothing just about this.

I am not worthy of this life I was given.

It’s not right that I can continue to walk through as if this were just another exhibit- another ticket that reads, “admit one” and I keep walking on…

just a few faces i love

Carlos’s sweet daughter Jessica enjoying some sugar cane

Pascuali and Gabrielle as they spent the afternoon “helping me” plant some plants outside my house

Tusha (my real helper and friend) after we planted. Now just as long as the cows don’t eat them…

What am I doing here?

Most days I look at my surroundings, my experiences, my plans (as uncertain as they are), my life and think how did I get here and how am I coping?

I don’t have any answers to the above.

Only God knows and it’s CLEARY ONLY by His Grace that I make it. I’m just little ol’ me from the sticks of Northern Minnesota.

I have a hunch you all may wonder “what exactly are you doing there?” Well, no day is like the next but I’ll give you as best explanation as I can.

I am NOT working as a nurse. Currently my role with Hands at Work is to “support” local volunteers. Most recently I do this by working with 3 Mozambican men who are part of what we call our Hands at Work Service Center. The last few weeks we have been working together to write proposals and report to connect the demands of the 1st world donors with the needs of the 3rd world’s poverty. Many days attempting to make these worlds conjoin seems impossible. The easy route would be just to "do it for them” but in all reality, that does nothing for them for the day when there isn’t a “westerner” here. The heart of Hands at Work is to build capacity in local volunteers (from local churches) to care for the poorest of the poor in accordance to the Biblical mandate to care for orphans and widows.

So, “typically” I:

• 6am: Peel myself out of bed, usually to the sound of sheep and chickens also starting their day. Take my malaria prophylaxis, get dressed, eat breakfast and enjoy some coffee as I start my day by reading the Word.
• 8am: Carlos, Manuel and Timosse show up at the office which is a small room about 10 ft from my house. We usually start the day by praying and pray for the daily concerns of those who are recently sick with malaria, so and so whose sister, mother, brother or child have recently died and for wisdom to know how to best care for the children whom are visited by our local volunteers on a daily basis. The next several hours are full of discussions on plans, proposals, answering emails and trying to communicate from English, Portuguese, and Shona. All of this working towards a common goal of providing adequate care to the children whom we have funding to provide 3 essential services. These include- 1) Basic health care (through home based care visits by our amazing volunteers) 2) Education (getting kids back in school, providing school supplies) and 3) Food security (providing monthly supplemental food parcels)
• 12noon: We may break and eat some bread, oranges, bananas, avocado from someone's tree or the market. Then we continue working.
• 430pm: The sheep come home from there grazing around the farm and the men go home to be with there families. I walk 10 feet back to my house.

Throughout this seemingly structured day there are undoubtedly NUMEROUS interruptions of children wanting food or love and attention (from the mission/orphanage in which I live but have no ‘work’ commitment to), adults requesting food or money for something or another, individuals needing a ride to the hospital or money to buy timbers to make a coffin for their loved one that died last night.

Recently, if I am not working in the office I may go out and walk with volunteers doing their home-based care visits. This is what I love to do but it does take a toll. Seeing real community life is hard. Death, disease, extreme poverty, brokenness, child-headed households are the focus of every individual we encounter. My western mind is to fix all this. I can’t. We pray and work together to do what we can for one at a time.

The rest of life here keeps me very busy. Fighting the daily infestation of ants continues. The pump for the water is also broken so refilling water containers and keeping up on activities of daily living take excessively more time than in the West. A weekly trip to Chimoio for groceries takes a full day and planning for incase there is no milk or fuel for the car or propane for the stove seems to exhaust me as it challenges my planning skills.

With my spare time I enjoy coffee with the numerous friends I have here, reading, running and sleeping.

There’s no “typical” day, but this is how it could look if I was able to “plan” it. 

And, I’m Back

It’s a long one, but, it’s been a while:) Much to my surprise it seems the problems (you’ll read below) have been resolved. I do have internet, text and phone capabilities again! Thank GOODNESS! I also need to mention that it seems some emails that I have been sending have not been delivered to people. I also know of a few people who I don’t receive messages from, so…please forgive me if I haven’t responded. It could be that I have tried and you haven’t gotten it or that I haven’t received yours, or that the internet hasn’t been working for weeks, or that I just haven’t written and I will when I can. Thanks for your grace! Here’s what been happening…

(This is a nice walk away from where I live—a place of retreat and real peace)

Written May 1 for blog:

It’s been a long time since you have heard from me. There are many reasons why, a lot has happened since my last interaction. The busyness picked up in preparation for the Hands at Work conference that was held here on April 22-24. I was honored to be here and be part of the preparations. Thankfully it was not my responsibility alone to prepare for the arrival of approximately 60 people. About a week before the conference 3 others from Hands at Work arrived here to the mission to help get things prepared. Upon their arrival I was no longer alone and thoroughly enjoyed having company to share conversation and tasks with.

Ironically, just hours before the arrival of about 20 people we quite a destructive storm blow in that displayed the first hail recalled for 25 years. In addition, trees came down blocking the driveways and multiple power lines where damaged resulting in a few days without electricity—just what I feared with the pending arrival of our guests! In retrospect it turned out fine, everyone had a dry bed to sleep in, the food was well prepared and water and candles are all one really needs for a good experience here in Mozambique.

It was a real encouraging time to have many from Hands at Work here and to be reminded that I am not in this alone. I am truly blessed to be part of this organization whose hearts beat to help the widow and orphan. In addition, it truly is like a family how they all care for each other—it’s a beautiful example of community and love.

(The first Hands at Work Mozambique/Zimbabwe Conference)

Since the 24^th, when the majority of those attending the conference departed, I have continued to have the company of many Canadians :). There was a group of 4 that stayed on after the conference to see more of the ministry of Hands at Work here in Mozambique. It was again an honor to be a part of their experience. I was able to accompany them out to do home-based care (visiting children and patients in their homes), be part of workshops and times of encouraging the local volunteers we work with. It’s always a gift to be able to see things through fresh eyes.

As things started to “normalize” one morning last week we woke to no cell phone service. At first it was just an annoyance but then when we made a trip to town to do our weekly shopping we then realized that this outage also meant that the ATMs were not working. With minimal cash and no access to any finances things started to feel a bit more, um, uncomfortable?! Thankfully I am still accompanied by 3 fellow Hands at Work friends so we were able to pool our money and strategize the priorities for our funds. For the next several days we laughed and bantered about how the whole country is out of communication (so we were told). Apparently a ship damaged the fiberoptics (blah, blah…don’t know how any of this works) which has affected the whole country of its landline and cellular communication means. We laughed about how any number of things could be going on in the world and we have no way of finding out. It’s truly amazing how God knows who and what I need in my life at just the right time, even when I don’t know what I need. I am fully and completely grateful that I am not sitting here alone every night with no means of communication with ANYONE. It’s a HUGE blessing to have Jayme, Lynn and Marc here to work with and to enjoy. Again, it’s an incredible privilege to work with such amazing people who are dedicating their lives to fight for the orphan and oppressed!

I sure miss hearing from everyone. I look forward to when I can post this. There could be much more to say, but for now, the inconveniences of life help me to remember what’s really important.

Miss you.

Written earlier in the day on May 8, 2010:

Well, I am minimally back connected with the world. The cell phones seem to be functional again, although, without communication for so long the network seems a bit overloaded and it’s still not easy to make or receive calls. Still no internet- but, I write with hope. Hope that one day there will be! ATM machines started working shortly after the outage as well so no need to worry, I am well!

It’s getting quieter around here again. Jayme and Lynn left to go back to South Africa, now it’s just Marc and myself. It’s wonderful having him here. It gives us great opportunity for many discussions about life, our lives here and what the Lord is teaching both of us as we walk this journey.

Many days I ask myself, “what am I doing here?” The more I experience the more I realize the difficulty with development and the depth of the pain here (and everywhere?!). The more time I spend here the less I understand the culture and my heartaches for a solution, a solution that is not available. In the midst of the questions and struggles there are small things, small moments when I am affirmed, this is why I am here! When these moments come, I cherish them and cling to them until the next one awes me again.

I had one of those moments this morning after I had a rough start to the day. I’ve been really tired lately so I was greatly looking forward to sleeping in this morning. I was sleeping beautifully until 730am when I heard a loud rap on my back door. I heard it, acknowledge it in my head, did not recognize the voice so I thought, can’t be that important, I want to sleep. After 2 more repeated raps they left. But could I return to sleep? Of course not! I felt guilty for not having answered the door. But DON’T worry! They returned at 8am. I felt a bit cranky still so I begrudgingly opened the door and tried to muster out an appropriate “bom dia.” It was apparently clear that I had been sleeping and after some apologizes the man got on with the point of his interruption and asked for change for a 500 meticais bill! This didn’t help my frustrations. What could be so urgent that he needed cash right then? There’s no where to spend money right here! Anyway, it got me going for the day, maybe so I could get moving to have my small moment of affirmation.

Since I was now up I decided to stay up and go for a run. As I was completing my loop and was coming up the drive I passed two small girls. One looked about 7 years and the other 5ish years old. I greeted them, passed them and continued on. Then, above the noise of my Ipod I heard a few giggles. I looked over my should to see that I was being joined by these two small girls. There they were, little legs just a churning, carrying there oranges, smiling from ear to ear. We talked a bit. I learned there names. We picked up the pace and they accompanied me for about a half mile or so. Then, suddenly they said a little “ciao” and they were off up a trail on there way to their Vovo’s (grandmother) house. I waved and smiled. It was a small moment that made me glad I am here!

I don’t know that there was anything significance in that, but it felt significant. I seems important and it most definitely seems worth it. God uses moments like that to encourage me. It’s times like today that I am reminded that is is just where I am supposed to be for “such a time as this.” And, as long as I have those reminders, I am glad to be here!

(This mother is using her hand as a cup to give her child a drink—another simple thing)

(Can you see the man sleeping in the back of this truck we followed down the highway? These frequent interesting situations also spice up the days.)

It’s 10pm and I almost can’t believe it—the powers on, the water just came back on, my phone works and there is internet! I practically don’t know what to do first;) Thanks for the emails and concern from those of you who haven’t heard from me for a while. It’s good to know I am not forgotten:) Love you!

Grateful

It’s been a beautiful day. It’s raining, the first in over 3 weeks since my arrival. I haven’t sweat a bead. As I sit here, a cool breeze refreshes my house. The powers been on and off all day and night. Never mind though, I don’t need it today. I’ve had all I need—time to rest, reflect and enjoy a few good books. And now, I sit with the opportunity to share with all of you, far away but so close to my heart.

It’s the simple things that have me hoping and content with life today. As I sit at the table looking out over the eucalyptus forest the mist continues to hang around as dusk is falling. Next to me I enjoy a simple luxury—an ice cold bottle of Coke.

I feel at ease today as I won the battle of ants that threatened my sanity for most of the week. I now can reclaim access to my kitchen counter as it has stopped looking like a moving sidewalk (moving with ants) and I may dare to put an item of food on it tonight in my dinner prep. Zenia, one of the girls from the mission, is a current hero in my eyes. She delivered to me a “mystery” powder from the Gondola market which, within minutes of a thorough sprinkle, thousands of millions of ants were falling to their death. Hopefully this powder isn’t too powerful of a carcinogen and I won’t be needing it often. Here’s a picture of what I swept off the top of an outlet (and the ground below) what apparently served as an entry point for these nuisances. Quadrillions of tiny ants…

It’s the simply things that make me REALLY grateful here. No more ants, coke from a bottle and the technology to stay connected. Also, as I lay in bed last night, listening to the rain falling on my roof, I started thinking of the homes of most people here—mud huts. How do they manage on cool, rainy nights like this? I drifted off to sleep praying for them.

I’ll never understand why I can blog on my laptop when the power is out with a bottle of Coke in hand in my warm, clean (relatively) house. I’ll never understand this but, I am grateful. Very grateful, for simple things.

My grateful heart feels peace and joy today.