Under da sea and on the road

I've been waiting for these Mozamique pics. Andrew had an underwater camera! Hooray! So even though these aren't fabulous... their fabulousness lies in the fact that they are a record of my snorkeling experience off an island in Mozambique! It was windy, cloudy and stormy but then I could stick my head underwater and experience this fun, colorful world... it was an odd and striking contrast. We found a reef and I got to see some wonderful fish up there... nemos and dories... and this one teal and purple fish that stuck out its fins to greet me. So fun.

"The fish is my friend too. I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I'm glad we do not have to kill the stars." -Hemingway in "The Old Man and the Sea"

Pt 2

It's a weird life, this.... nomadic, mostly uncomfortable, rustic, surprising, challenging... novel...

(to whom it may concern, this is by far my favorite picture of Chris Youell EVER. He's to the left of Ryan - the guy scowling in the blue shirt and glasses. This captures him - poor 6'3" Chris who is forced to travel for 20 hours with no leg space and not enough food. Grumpy gills.)

This is a really big bug we found at a missionary's house in Mozambique. Yikes.

This is the most thoughtful potty-attempt we've experienced thus far... while out in the bush in Mozambique, the people knew that we were accustomed to sitting down... so they rigged a seat-like operation over the standard hole. So precious.

Here's Katie putting on mascara in the bush. It's so cute how ecstatic and weirded out kids get. But, yaknow, every culture in the world has their beauty rituals and appreciates our attempts.

Here I am doing homeschool with Maggie and Rudo, the missionary kids in Villanculos! The girls did everything from sewing to compiling databases to sorting clothes for orphans to chainsawing trees to building a bathroom.

We are leading crazy lives.

Happy Birthday Brienna!

My team left me yesterday! I am officially at crunch-time now for Jimmy and I to depart to Thailand. We're gonna head to Cambodia, maybe Myanmar, the Philippines and hang out around Thailand to set up the next leg of the journey for World Race. It is actually fun to do all of this networking and all of this "normal" type work. I would ask for you to pray, though, that doors and windows and whatever else we need is open for us, especially in Cambodia and Myanmar! It's lots of work but I think we're cut out for it. Keep us in your prayers!

I miss you, Mom.

Oh, and the point of this post (oops, crazy scatter brained), is Happy Birthday Brienna! My teamie Brienna had a Bday. She is my comic relief and fabulously opinionated "mama" on this trip this year. Our team would be tragically deprived without her! Love you!

p.s. Check out my new travbuddy map on the bottom of this page! It blacks out (or purples out, more specifically) all of the countries I've been to. 14% and counting!

Amanda

My precious friend Amanda left WR as of about 3 weeks ago (has it been that long??). I miss her!! She is a beautiful, godly woman. She has a life full of ministry and fruitfulness ahead of her. She really is one of the friendliest, most open-hearted people I've met. Not to mention she is almost single-handedly (she plus Ninja) responsible for the funnest times on WR. And if that's not a ministry, I don't know what is.

404 4 ever.

My mommy

I do not overspeak when I say that I am nearest of kin to one of the true followers of God. And I miss her so badly I can barely say that much. I think I e-mailed her six times today just to tell her that I've missed her. For the first time in my life I think that I may be a trifle homesick.

But my point is this, in all truth: I want to be the kind of person who purposefully aligns my life with true believers.. people whose theology and character are proven and sure. And, as I was telling my precious Chris Youell the other day, I am related to some such people, not the least of whom is my beautiful mother. She has a level of integrity and lives in such a place of passion for God and truth that I can't help but know that she has seen God. I want to know her secrets and live close to her pattern of life. I want to be her friend and be mentored by her.

I mean it, Mom. I know it's Father's Day and all, but this is my belated Mother's Day post (I'm running about 6 weeks behind on this blogging thing.) I love you so much. I miss you! See you in 5 months!

Swaziland

We're doing debrief and team stuff here in Swazi. We are halfway through our trip! It's amazing to see how far we've come as a team and as individuals.

Before the next team of racers came for training, we had a full day of silence... it was a beautiful time of reflection for me.

Some of my musings:

-From 2/14/07: A prayer, "I don't need to be great. I need to be fully yours."

-I love that things like this are in scripture - "Oh that I had wings like a dove; I would fly away and be at rest" (Psalm 55:6).

-My distinction as a missionary is none other than the very presence of God: "....Is it not your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth" (Exodus 33:16b).

-In London my feeling of disquiet began. Sometimes this wandering lifestyle is so tiring! I wrote, "The 'winds change' in my life so much that I'm afraid to put up my sails."

-I was contemplating my time in Mozambique and asking God a lot of pointless "why?'s". I came across a fabulous quote in Chesterton's book The Man Who Was Thursday - "'I am not happy,' said the Professor with his head in his hands, 'because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near hell."

-On a similar note, my favorite book of the Bible comes through again with profundities too precious to be commented on... I could do it no justice. It alone speaks volumes: "And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God hasled you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:2 & 3).

Mozambique!

Little known fact about me: I heart cooking over fires. AND I'm pretty darn good at it, if I do say so myself.

One of the best days of the WR... spent a few days at this orphanage (the tents) with about 25 orphans... we handed out clothes and cooked. It was full of freezing, sleepy nights and sick kids but I had so much joy... unspeakable.

fun day - island trip with Cobus!

M-bique really is gorgeous! The cyclone messed up a lot but rebuilding is well underway.

Jaco family and home

Jesus film - Tim by the lake

The infamous Mozambiquan tree

and maybe similarly infamous Mozambiquan pest(milipede)

Fire with the kids at Pambara... they sang every night the same song... "We are happy to be together/We are happy to be together/We are happy, happy we are happy, happy we are happy to be together."

Our time in Mozambique was redeemed with what can literally only be called the hand of God. In town (we hitchhiked in eventually) we met a missionary man named Jaco. He must have caught a word from God that we needed help. My team soon moved in with his family (camping in his yard by a lake) and helping his family.

At first, my attitude was less than fabulous (obviously?).

I heard this Fiona Apple song that explains how my bitterness clouded my view -

"Because the fact being that/Whatever's in front of me is coloring my view/So I can't see what I see in fact/I only see what I'm looking through." ("Window")

But slowly, seeing Jaco, Maria and their precious kids Maggie and Rudo, I remembered why I'm doing this. THIS is missions. We cleaned their house and cooked their meals and watched their kids. We showed the Jesus film in a nearby neighborhood and people came to the Lord. We had church in their home. It was beautiful... and redemptive... and a little shaming. Shaming because I am so quick to forget that God is a redeemer. I am so quick to blame him or complain to him and so slow to trust him to bring me help and life.

I feel deeply the warning of Hebrews 3:12-14, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today', that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end."

I pray for greater endurance and less foolish despair.

"Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted" (Heb. 12:3); "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has nomight he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and grow weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:28-31).

Mozambique!

*reader discretion advised.

No joke.

This is like the hard and heavy side of missions that most people prefer to not think about. Happy orphans, busy hands, burdened but joyful hearts... this is the stuff that testimonies are made of. Usually. But mine isn't.

Mine sounds more like this:

"[I] am afflicted in every way... perplexed... persecuted... struck down..."

We sat under a tree in Mozambique and I lost it, friends. Whatever shred of sanity or satisfaction I had been retaining, in light of such obvious neglect from leadership, such intense disregard for my well-being... something within me snapped. Maybe it was the cumulative cultural stresses or frustrations with this organization, but I was not okay.

I sat under a tree with abysmally dirty feet near my tent with Amanda. I was wearing old smelly clothes with my glasses and oily face eating cold beans out of a can with a camping spoon. And I asked myself with incredulity, "is this my life?" "Is this for real?"

I'm here to help people and here I sit in one of the most impoverished nations on MY continent, stranded, without a translator, running out of water... with a sprained ankle.. thinking, how is this missions? How is this fulfilling my desire to help people? I have NOTHING. I can do NOTHING. I can't even say, "hello" in this language and there is no one to teach me. What, for the love of God, am I supposed to do?

And I cried.

Then I wrote this...

Emerge Better

Back and forth between

Hot and cold, under

Good and bad, without

Growth or stagnation

Seeming to change.

Push and pull because

One way or another

I must emerge better.

Bright and dark between

Covered and exposed, under

Mystery and revelation, without

Knowledge or ignorance

Seeming to change

Study and sigh because

One way or another

I must emerge better.

Sway and stop between

Noise and silence, under

Melody and dissonance, without

Fluidity or clumsiness

Seeming to change

Practice and try because

One way or another

I must emerge better.

Rage and rest between

Chaos and silence, under

Stress and solitude, without

Confidence or insecurity

Seeming to change

Storm and hope because

One way or another

I must emerge better.

BUT WHY this way?

Why the constant change

And unending range

Of argument and advice,

Of wrong and right...

To take mine

To make nice

To play the game

Or stack the deck

To follow the rules

Or cause the wreck?

Ruin or reward?

What are you trying to

Bring?

If I know one

Thing

It's that you're not often what you

Seem.

Work and play between

Night and day, under

Freedom and duress, without

Naivete or wisdom

Seeming to change

Pretend and age because

One way or another

I must emerge better.

I simply must get better.

-And so, slowly but surely, though it is still hard, I am holding out for my scriptural end:

"...but not crushed... but not driven to despair... but not forsaken... but not destroyed."

(2 Cor. 4:8 & 9)

South Africa

(pic by my teamie Tim W)

"But for me it is good to be near God..." (Psalm 73:28a)

We landed in Johannesburg and actually had a van picking us at the airport to take us to a *safe* place where we were staying for a week of debrief! It was truly shocking and amazing and I think all of us almost cried. My first step off the plane brought the recognition of being home. There are no adequate words. It is very very well with my soul.

"There is no life/

No life without its hunger/

Each restless heart/

Beats so imperfectly/

But when you come/

And I am filled with wonder/

Sometimes I think/

I glimpse eternity."

("You Raise Me Up")

BA, Argentina

Tango

Our first team pic (welcome, Tim!) after consuming an unhealthy, gluttonous amount of Argentinian Beef at La Baca.

A lesson in "letting go." I had to leave my beloved pink duffle bag because (stupid) British Airways only allowed me one bag. I bought this bag after foolishly fleeing L'Abri with only a small backpack and hand-holding most of my clothes as I rushed to make my bus down the mountain on my way to Italy (I was even holding underwear, if I remember correctly... and yes, it was as chaotic as it sounds). So I get to Florence and find this wonderful, beautiful bag that I dragged across many a train station in Italy, Greece and even France. And now it is somewhere, hopefully given away to travel to exotic places with some other grateful owner. But ne'er shall I meet it again. Adieu beautiful pink bag.

Funny sign... yay Florida

The color district

(This actually happened before London. )

After dusty, busy Villa El Salvador in Peru for 5 weeks, Buenos Aires, Argentina was a welcome time of peace and team-building. We really did bond! After a horrifying and somewhat-dangerous (think drug dealers beating on our door in the middle of the night, no joke) stint at a hostel after our 3am flight landed, my team quickly re-located (thanks to Brienna) to the Milhouse. We had tile floors, a porcelein tub, pizza place across the road, coffee shop next door, free breakfast, internet... in other words, just a fabulous time to relax. We got a new team member, Tim Weisemann, in BA. BA is a really cool city... it's a big city with modern shops and chain restaurants; there's an elaborate and nice subway system; we went to the zoo, park, market, saw some Tango and ate A-LOT-OF-BEEF.

London- one brief day of spring

One of the curious things about traveling is how quickly seasons change. And then sometimes it's a little ridiculous.... In 24 hours I went from impending winter to a beautiful, British spring day. It honestly was so refreshing to my soul. I know I'm supposed to appreciate all of the seasons, ("God created summer and winter") but my Florida body just doesn't understand why there isn't perpetual warmth and sunshine in every corner of the world. So, though I landed in a wintry South Africa, for one brief day I rested in the sunshine and enjoyed spring.

Highlight of my London visit - ever since developing a (somewhat politically hypocritical) crush on Tony Blair, I was actually able to walk by his house. It was off of a sun-speckled sidewalk near parliament. He is very handsome. And that's all I'll say on that subject.

Girls goofing with guards

We stopped over for a brief 8 hours or so to hang out in London. Besides breaking out into hives after a midday jet-lag prevention nap in the park beside Buckingham Palace, it was fun. I love to share new places with Jimmy! (note well the NEW Harry Potter book is coming soon!)