We’re 22 days into the new year now. My journal is filled with scribbly accidental 2011s crossed out to become 2012. I haven’t made any resolutions – since any sort of fitness goal I may have for myself would be close to absolutely impossible to maintain or reach on the Race. I have little time to care for myself, and because I have no control over the changes my body is making, I kind of just have to accept that this is what I’m going to look like for a while. It’s hard, and I know that it has been hard on everyone involved – even the men on our squad, who have been wasting away before our eyes. So I guess the only resolution I would have for this year is to trust in what Daddy has in store for me – to trust more deeply, more fully, just. . .more. If I step off the plane in August resembling more like Jabba the Hut than Tiffany, then I have to trust that god will help you recognize me. 😉
However, a new trend that’s being passed around here (because of course, in any community, there are inevitable trends) is writing down 100 Dreams. It’s kind of like a bucket list, but a little more lenient on the fantastical or seemingly impossible. I’m up to about eighty something. A couple of days ago, I was stuck on 62, and I felt kind of pathetic because I didn’t have enough dreams.
Heh, but then, I realized that God isn’t limited to what my puny imagination could dream up.
Let me describe to you where I am right now. I’m near Mbabane, Swaziland sitting atop a boulder, which sits atop the peak of a giant mountain, surrounded by an extensive mountainous landscape. Pastoral hills roll down before me, and diaphanous clouds float above me. On some distant afternoons, this mountain gets caught in a cloud, and I realize that this might be the closest to heaven that I’ll ever get. Before me, the hills descend into a valley with a river that changes its colors throughout the day as the Sun’s rays reflect onto the waters. I couldn’t have even conceived of the idea of this place. I couldn’t have dreamed it better. So Dad, while I’ve come up with 80 some-odd dreams, I’ll still leave the dreaming to You, because You’re the Creator and Fulfiller of dreams.
I wish you could see this place. No photograph, no video, no written or verbal description could accurately illustrate the beauty of this place. The only caveat is that the bugs here are the size of my face and they creep in on the unsuspecting. We’re now halfway through our time here at El Shaddai ministries. This ministry alone was a fulfilled dream. There are about 50 kids from ages <1 to 14ish. There’s a church onsite, a clinic, and a school. Some of us have been busy painting the school, spending time with the kids, and leading church services. I have taken up a mural project with three of the other girls from other teams. It has been so refreshing to paint again. You’d think that after spending the last four years of my life surrounded by art and the smell of paint, losing sleep over an image on canvas and wood, that I’d be sick of it. But I’m learning not to second-guess my passions anymore, because I was made this way.
I love this ministry. It’s a shame that we’re spending so little time here, we’re leaving for Romania (not Bulgaria, change in route, by the way) the first couple of days of February. Off to another continent.
So. . . was Africa everything that I thought it would be? Not at all. Is it as desolate and desperate that the West makes it out to be? It’s certainly rural and there aren’t many of what we assume to be “modern” and “necessary” amenities, but it turns out what Africa needs isn’t sympathy, or even pity, it needs love.
I can leave in peace because yesterday I saw a baby giraffe on safari.
Check!
