February 25, 2007

move forward
“my name is foreigner from a far away
land. my feet are covered in earth,
they’ve been here and back again.
and i have seen great things
from a distance, they beckon me.
i follow them. and i move forward…
i move forward to home…”

- Bethany Dillon, singer/songwriter

ugly culture shock
i ask you, just how much Lionel Richie music can one endure in a single day?!

It’s 5 o’clock in the evening, we’re winding down after a hard day’s work and New Kids on the Block are singing “The Right Stuff” on the radio! Can you believe it? Is there any radio station in all of the U.S. still playing the New Kids?

Culture shock is just a nice way to say “hostile attitude” against the culture within which one is trying to live peaceably. You had to know this was coming…When you remain in a foreign culture for any length of time, they say that a person must struggle through phases of culture shock – or the rejection of that new culture. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate everything. Just certain things. And I pass in and out of this ugliness. But I thought I’d give you a glimpse, should you care to know what I am experiencing. (Please skip this section, if you’re having a bad day and can’t listen to any more whiners. And some of you have been using words such as “noble” and “heroic” to describe what I am doing. I want to dispel those myths right now.)

Right now, for instance, there are all these crazy loud men outside my house (on the street) yelling in a language which I can’t understand about who knows what, and giggling as if high on drugs. It’s late. (This may sound a lot like your neighbors and not at all foreign.)

And why don’t they put screens on the windows so that all these freaky bugs don’t walk in and out of our houses at will?

When we go to church on Sundays and park on the streets, we have to have security guards patrol the parked cars against thieves. Apparently, Lee and Anne Marie used to have small Bible studies at their house, but that had to stop when the thieves started breaking into all of the parked cars in the evenings.

There’s a guard who guards our compound. He walks with heavy, clod-hopping steps around my house all night long, triggering two motion sensor lights, a squeaky gate, and my eyelids. (God – please make me a heavy sleeper!)

And the music at Nairobi Chapel is seriously killing me. At 8 a.m. (not being a morning person either) imagine loud drums, off-key violins, off-key singing to songs you don’t know (and if you do know the songs, you think – oh no, please, please don’t sing it like that) – I look around, out of the corner of my eye, to see if anyone else thinks it sounds funny, but they don’t seem to. So I figure it’s me. Something is wrong with me. Culture shock. I feel like a crabby old person complaining about petty, petty things. That’s what I’m reduced to.

You should taste the ketchup here. It isn’t ketchup.

And the foods that my African friends love such as “ugali” (oo-gal-ee) – I’d like to rename it ugh-ali. Internally, I find myself reacting like a 4-year old.

See – I’m thinking that they do things wrong here, but it isn’t wrong, it’s just different (thanks Pastor Karen for teaching me that).

So please, if you were beginning to place me on a pedestal, kick it over right now.

On to more important matters like water.

Boreholes
They say that wars in the future will not be over oil or land, but over water - an increasingly precious and sought-after resource, especially in developing nations.

Boreholes. That’s what they call “wells” here in British-ease. The work of New Life Homes/Barnabas Ministries is further reaching than I’d imagined. Not only do they care for over 130 babies in 6 homes, but they also reach out to rural people groups in a region called Tana River. This is sub-Saharan Africa. Picture arid and semi-arid regions. No water. Dry land. Hardly the best circumstances for growing and sustaining a food source. Plus, the people are apparently resistant and slow to change (we are a stubborn species!) But one of our goals beginning in March 2007 is to drill 3 boreholes in three of the towns where we have small churches and leadership already in place. We’ll also construct a school at each location to move the schools out from “under the trees” into something more lasting and effective. The boreholes will eventually, hopefully, become sources for not just drinking water, but for irrigation of small agricultural developments. Right now, we have been running Feeding Programs at many of these rural locations because people are starving and there’s been a drought here in Kenya. But we don’t want to continue giving handouts, we want to turn toward creating a sustainable source of food and income for the people, empowering them to meet their needs through the resources that God has provided. Give a man a fish and he’ll feed himself for a day, teach a man how to fish and he’ll feed himself for life… right?

We have a total of 16 sites where we would like to place boreholes, schools, and agricultural developments. (I’m picturing teams coming out for school construction?)

lamenting
i want to leave you with some thoughts on the grief that this world, and these children, have inspired (for lack of a better word) in me.

Thanks for reading and praying.

With love,
janay

though i am free

“though i am free
and belong to no man
i make myself a slave
to everyone to win
as many as possible.”

1 Corinthians 9:19

though i am free
and belong to no man
i belong to all men
women and
children, especially
the children for they belong to Him
who loves
and creates
and rescues.

though i am free
i belong to Him who is my head
for i am His body,
His beautifully
broken and resurrected body.

His body cries and starves
and throws tantrums and
has glazed, unloved eyes.

His body has AIDS and
is sick and dying (again).

His body has bed sores
on heels and elbows so deep
from neglect. His body cries
too often tears fall
from the head.

tears
fall
and
fall
and
fall.

Where are the hands to catch them?

God,
Catch the tears of these babies and put them into Your beautiful bottle
and pour them out onto heads and hands as an anointing to this commission and calling.
Let the salt of these babies’ tears inspire us to follow You at all costs.
Let us be the salt You have created us to be.
amen.

from A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching out to God in the Lost Language of Lament
by Michael Card:

“Jesus wept the tears of the world.
How is it my eyes are dry?
Or only wet with my tears?
For the tiniest speck of one of the millions of seconds of my life has there
ever been the smallest drop of one of the world’s tears in my eyes?
When they see me, does the world see a man of sorrows?
Or do they see a false pretended joy that they could never know because
I have never known it myself? Could never know while holding so dear
my own comforts.
Grant me, O Lord, an acquaintance with such tears that the world
has wept.
Surely the presence of such a great grief in my life would displace my
small sadness, my petty anger, my selfish sorrows.
O red-eyed Jesus, turn my tears into the world’s tears.
And awaken in the deepest part of my falsely satisfied soul
One Vast Loud ‘Ekah!’”*

*Ekah is the Hebrew name for the book of Lamentations; it means “how.”

the babies’ unspoken hearts:

“O Lord, You took up my case;
You redeemed my life.
You have seen, O Lord, the wrong
done to me.
Uphold my cause!”

- Lamentations 3:58