This is something I wrote after I dropped the kids off at boarding school in Senegal and prepared to return to America. I had not planned on posting this… but thru the encouragement of a friend, I will  - in the hopes that the expression of it will help someone else to not feel alone and to remember that God is big enough for anything…

So here I go again, writing out my heart, knowing that I will search for words and find them wanting…yet. There is so very much in my heart, a craving, a yearning, a gut-wrenching need to somehow put a finger on the pulse of my heart.

Little things bother me right now…

 that I have a separate flight itinerary than my children… 

that I have to move to a different room after our first night at the

guesthouse because after tonight there will only be one of us…

that I don’t have to pack water and snacks for 3 people…just me.

 My bag is too light… my hands are too empty… the house is too quiet… and all I can think of is how much I want to rewind time.  Rewind to every day of the last 14 years, beginning when my daughter was born…

I would worry less, and laugh more…work less, and play more… I would be less responsible and more childlike…and I would drink them all in, treasuring each one.  My mind knows that in reality, I would still get lost in the responsibilities of life, partly because of my personality, mostly because it is necessary… and that even then, I would grieve just as hard when I again reached this point.  My heart, however, stubbornly disregards this fact, and persists in grieving what could have… been and now, what will not be.

I force myself to remember the great times I had as an MK growing up in boarding school, the great memories made and treasured, the lifetime friendships formed, the independence and abilities, the variety of experiences so unique to my life… and a tiny piece of me becomes excited for them.

The excitement wars in my heart with the fear… fear that something will happen to them.  The fears range from big- illness, injury, abuse, political upheaval… to small – heartache, homesickness, and discouragement. I fear not being able to get to them when they need me…and I fear that they won’t need me anymore.  I fear that the beautiful friendship blossoming between and my daughter and me, so rare with a 14-year-old, will die from lack of time together.  I fear that my sensitive- hearted son will stop allowing me those periodic glimpses into the beauty of his soul.

As my excitement wages it’s war against the sabotage of fear, I struggle to hold on to truth.  It seems slippery and elusive.  I strain to bring back the moments when my husband and I felt the confirmation from God that this was right.  Was the call to missions really there, or imagined…is it really best for children to be away from their parents… thick waves of smoky doubt surround me echoing with voices from every school of thought, pros and cons fly thick and fast around me until I can no longer count them… and I cry out for help to the One who Knows.

I am so proud of my children… they are so brave, so resilient… and yet so trusting.  Both of them sit quietly on the plane, reading books, smiling and talking to themselves and to me… and yet they have just said goodbye to friends, family, and their own culture for another two years, possibly three.  They know that they are on their way to say goodbye to me as well… and yet they smile… making the best of everything, just as I have taught them to do. 

Meanwhile, I sit across the aisle, fighting with every ounce of strength the urge to weep, to demand the plane be turned around, to grab them up in a huge hug and never, ever, ever, let go.  They are so brave, so strong, and yet still young enough that my son sleeps, sprawled across his seat with his head hanging into the aisle, then wakes without a crick in his neck.  Can I really walk away and leave him?... Is it possible to walk away and leave my children in a foreign country without anyone they know?  While he is gone, will he turn into a young man, will I miss that moment when the butterfly transforms.  My mind knows that for any child there are many such moments, but my heart weeps for the loss of even one… even one uneventful, insignificant moment is too much to give up, too high of a price to pay… and yet I press on. 

These inadvertent words that slip through my mind in a whisper bring me back to my Father, who, through the hand of another, gave me the words…” I press on toward the mark”…

Often life is unbelievably hard. Things happen to us over which we have no control… but I have discovered that there is an entirely different sort of hard… one over which a person has a choice… and I am faced with it now.  I must CHOOSE to do the hard thing… the painful thing…the best thing.  And then, once choosing it, I must run my race, pressing on toward the mark of the upward calling… without shrinking back. 

     It is night now… and I sit, reading the Book of Life… searching, weeping, grasping at anything that might save me from drowning… and I find it…Hebrews.  Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his own son… a pale reflection of my Father’s willingness to sacrifice His… and the whispered request from ny Father that I relinquish my own precious children.  Not sacrifice, but relinquish…and the passages that follow telling of those willing to be beaten,  imprisoned, killed, etc for the sake of the gospel… and then the clincher… and the world was not worthy of them.

THEREFORE…

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses….

And the clarity comes… The sword of truth cuts through the clouds of confusion and doubt… and I KNOW.

           I know that that more than anything, I will not, CANNOT, turn from what God has called me to.  I WILL NOT serve my Father with less than my best… and I WILL NOT give my children any less than the best of an example to follow. I will model for them a life in which they KNOW that my first priority is to keep both them and myself in the center of God's call and that no amount of selfish desire on my part will remove them from the center of God's will for THEIR lives... from the safest place... 

           My primary job in raising my children is not to protect them…

that is a temporary role…

More than that my job is to prepare them for life…

BUT

My primary job… my PRIORITY job… is to show them how to follow in the footsteps of Christ….

          …..so, I press on toward the mark…
                .....following in the footsteps of the One who loves me....
                    ......in order that they may know HIM....

Several of you have asked for our wish list - the things that we do not raise support for.  I have to admit that while I was touched by the request, I couldn't bear to give it to you simply because so many of you have done SO MUCH for us already.  BUT, God used a friend to point out to me that if He has put it on someone's heart to help, I should let them.  So here it is.

FOR THE KIDS
A 4 gb flash drive for school
combs
toothbrushes and toothpaste
shampoo
travel box for soap
headlamps
sunscreen
bug repellent
 waterbottle
phone
sheet
towel
flashlight
fleece jacket
itunes - for music for the kids

FOR US
Computer batteries (Toshiba laptop)
Scissors
Crochet hooks (K)
beef jerky
dried fruit
nuts
seeds (garden)
Good movies
Itunes  - for music for the kids

Thank you!

One of the advantages of growing up as a “bush missionary’s kid” was that I got to drive a big truck at a very young age…similar to many of you who grew up on the farm or in rural areas of the States.  I used to absolutely LOVE it when Dad would say “Hey Faith, you want to drive?”  As if I would say NO… are you kidding?

I remember being very young the first time that he did it… maybe 6 or so… I am not sure of the age. He would set me in his lap, put my hands on the steering wheel, and let me “drive” our big old 4-wheel-drive truck.  There is nothing like it…that feeling…I couldn’t get enough of it.  Do you remember that feeling?  I thought I was big stuff then.

            The reality of it was that I was not really driving at all.  Oh, my hands were on the steering wheel and I was turning it, but Dad’s knee was really steering so that I would not get myself into trouble.  His foot operated the brake, gas, and clutch…especially since mine had about 2 feet to grow before there was even contact with the pedals, much less control.

            That is how I feel being here in Sierra Leone.  God is steering.  He doesn’t really need me...but He wants me along.  Just for the fun of it, He lets me “steer” (see patients, diagnose them, and give them medications), but make no mistake, if it were really ME steering we would have crashed and burned a long time ago.  The difference is that now I am grown up enough (at least for the moment) to know that I am not really steering… I am just having a great time working with my “Dad”…my Abba.

            Here is one example.  On November 27, I had a patient named Balu come to see me.  She is family of one of our staff here at the Bible School and has been seriously sick for over a month.  There is presently no nurse available near her home 70+ miles from here, so she and her mother scraped together enough money to come here to try and get medical help.  In fact, she was so ill, that a nurse that came to their village had to give her IV fluids in order to get her well enough to travel.  Balu is about 5 foot 6 or 7 inches, and when I assessed her, she weighed 90.6 pounds.  As I listened to her history and assessed her I (as usual) found myself praying, “Please Lord, show me what to do”.  I don’t have any lab testing materials, but I thought maybe I had found the source of the problem.  Got her started on the Medications that I was able to find that were appropriate, instructed them on how to feed her so that she could rebuild, and we prayed together.

            Yesterday (December 7) after 7 days of treatment, I reweighed her.  She weighs 106 pounds.  She has gained 16 pounds in 7 days.  In fact, after just two days of treatment, she was up and walking around, and after three days, started doing little jobs around the house.  It sure seems miraculous to me, especially when you consider that one of the medicines that I had her taking was a hefty dose of Flagyl.  If you have ever taken Flagyl, you know that it is very unpleasant.  Everything tastes like aluminum foil, and your stomach is upset and queasy most of the time.  There is some debate among Flagyl takers as to whether or not it is better to just stay sick. J

            I am so blessed to have a daily front row seat, on the lap of my heavenly Dad, to the miracles that He does in the lives of the people around me.  To those of you who support us, in finances and in prayer… Thank you…from all of us here in Sierra Leone.

A MK's perspective

My 13-year-old daughter wrote this for her homework assignment.  I thought you might enjoy hearing her perspective:

          If you walk down the road going out of the Bible School, you will see mango leaves blowing in the wind, plants growing, charcoal smoking and people working.  The people you will see will have all different kinds of clothes on. They could be going to work at the farm, walking to town, going to find wood, going to make potato heaps in the swamp, or maybe going to plant rice, peanuts, or sweet potatoes.  They could be going to make charcoal.  If you kept waking, you would begin to see fewer people.  All you would see would be birds of many colors calling to each other and many different kinds of flowers, insects, plants, butterflies and sometimes animals.  All you would hear would be frogs croaking and every once in a while, the sound of an axe on dry wood.          

          This is the place where I am spending part of my life as a missionary kid, around people who act like one big family. They call each other brother or sister even if they haven’t even met before.  They live the life of hard working people, but they always make time for fun.  They have fun working as a group and are always laughing and joking around.  Most of the people here are skinny and don’t get enough food, but that’s what people look like… not WHO he or she is.  They may be the ugliest person you have ever seen but they have a happy, loving feel about them, and their hearts are the most beautiful part about them.  If the world were full of those kinds of people there would not be as many wars.

Sometimes humbleness can come to us in the most unexpected of ways, and most often it is when we were not even aware we were in need of it.  When I teach the Bible School students here about the definition of humility, I teach them that it means being aware of the reality of who we are as compared to God…

I learned that today.

I try on this blog to share some of everything… the funny, the adventurous, the spiritual lessons that I learn, the cross-cultural experiences…

… and - every once in a while, the nitty-gritty, the rubber-meets-the-road realities of life as a missionary..

You get the nitty-gritty today.

There is a Bible School employee who, by Sierra Leonean standards is very well off.  Both he and his wife have jobs, where for most, employment is very difficult to find.  He came to me today to ask for help because he said that he was unable to feed his family.  I suspected that he just wanted money, as he has exhibited that tendency in the past, but didn’t want to ignore a plea for help, so I decided to have compassion on him.  It so happened that we had about a dollar in the house at the time, so I literally had nothing to give him.  I expressed sympathy for him and let him know that I had no money but that I had some groundnuts (a staple food here) that I would give him.  He said groundnuts would not help him.  So, I offered him some sweet potatoes, which he hesitantly accepted. 

Now, here is the nitty-gritty part.  I don’t know how we are going to make it through the month, giving is down.  I am NOT complaining.  I know that December is a hard month for everyone, and we have it good compared to so many others...  I only share this in order to explain that those sweet potatoes were a part of what I was depending on in order to stretch our food supply through the month. 

 Roy helped me bag up some sweet potatoes and gave them to the man and he began to walk away….

     ….WITHOUT so much as a “thank you”.

And I got mad.

I called him back and quietly said, “We shared our food with you, you need to tell my husband thank you”.  That was all I said.

He very sheepishly went and thanked Roy.  And that was all that was said.

But….

In my heart, I was still really frustrated.

About an hour later (yes, I am ashamed to admit it) it was still on my mind as I sat on our verandah doing our hand wash.  (The clothes were getting VERY clean!)  As I washed I was venting to God and asking Him to help me let it go.

I looked up, and there came little 4-year-old Tomue (Too-mway) trit-trotting happily along on the way to our house with a little broken-handled pot on her head.  She walked right up to me, informed me she had brought me a gift, and set her pot down in front of me…

….full of sweet potatoes….

As I looked into those adorable brown eyes, I am quite sure that I saw Jesus looking back at me.  In the quiet of my heart, His voice spoke to remind me …

HE is my protector…

       HE is my defender….

                        HE is my provider…

                                    …for ALL that I need.

Somehow, I think these potatoes are going to taste a lot like humble pie…but ever SO SWEET!

Do you remember the nursery rhyme that we learned in childhood, the one that ended with "...and all in the house that Jack built." ?  One thing just lead to another in the house that Jack built. I have felt an odd sort of affinity with Jack recently.  A series of events has occurred which, had I known what was coming I would have felt quite intimidated, but God in his loving kindness, allowed me to take one step at a time. 
   It all started with one man...the chief's uncle, who had a two month old wound on his foot that would not heal.  He came to me one morning asking for help.  I was happy to help him, but felt a little nervous, him being in the paramount chief's family and all.  Since he could not walk well, I went to his house every day to assess the wound, clean it, and apply a dressing.  The wound was quite large and deep and I was sure that it would take several months for it to close.  This meant paying for a honda taxi everyday to go and come... and I wasn't sure where the money was going to come from.  I kept telling myself that after a few weeks I would be able to cut back to every other day and train family members to change the dressing.
   God is good.  Mr. Balansama's foot healed at record speeds that were amazing to me.  The wound generally shrank by 1 to 2 mm each way, every day.  AMAZING!  On top of that, I have gotten to be good friends with Mr. Balansama and his family.  In fact,he and his family have now given me a Kuranko name... they named me after his mother.  And, if I pass by that side of town and don't stop by to say hello, I get in a little bit of trouble. :)  As his foot began to heal, other patients began to appear on his front porch to be seen, usually 2 or three new ones each day;  his younger brother, with high blood pressure and kidney problems, his wife with a stomach ulcer, and many others.  When his foot was well, and I was ready to sign off on his case... he asked me to see his neighbor, the Fula Paramount Chief for Koinadugu District.  In no time, I was also seeing every one in his family who was not well.
    I did NOT see that one coming.  So now, I see two or three patients a day at the Fula Cheif's house, and two or three patients at the Koranko chief's uncle's house.  In addition to that, going into town each day (now every other day) has led me to form a friendship with my Okada driver (honda taxi) who is a Fula (fulani) by tribe also.  I have had the priveledge of getting to know his family as well and am now trying to learn a little Fula along with my Kuranko ( yes, I do mix them up some days).  A 12-year old girl in the Okada drivers house was not feeling well, so she was warming herself by the fire one morning and her lapa (skirt) caught fire, burning the full length of her outer thigh up on to her buttocks.  This poor child has allowed me to clean her burn, change her dressing each day, and even pull off the dead skin without ever crying out or even shedding a tear.  She has been so very brave.
   Had I known when I started, where this would lead me, I would have probably stayed home... after all, I am not exactly twiddling my thumbs in between homeschooling, teaching the Bible School students, preparing a clinic, and having one-on-one bible studies in addition to running the home.  However, I have gained a lot of experience in treating different illnesses, some of them a little daunting.  I have also gotten practice in trusting God through this.  He has provided every day for the honda taxi... a lot of times it was close, but He provided.  He has blessed the medicines that I have given to make them successful.  And, I have been reminded every day that "..He has prepared, in advance, good works for us to do..."  and "...He who called you is faithful and HE will do it."  It's pretty cool, because all I have to do is just be faithful to show up... and I get a front row seat to the miracles.  Is my Dad (heavenly Father) cool, or what?

It rained today…

I mean it REALLY rained today…a good heavy downpour.  As many of you know we don’t have running water….at least not in the traditional sense.  I like to say that we DO have running water… you run to the well to get it, it runs into the bucket, on the way back it runs down your back or leg (depending on how you are carrying it)… and then it runs into the sink as you pour it.  That being said… whenever it rains we take all of our buckets and put them out under the edge of the roof to catch the water as it runs off.  We don’t have any eaves troughs, but Roy recently put a cut piece of 4 inch pipe about 4 feet long along the edge of the overhang, so the water comes out of both ends of it at a pretty good rate. 

     But, I digress.  As this torrential downpour came unexpectedly, the kids and I ran to quickly put all of our buckets out. We needn’t have hurried.  In about 15 minutes we had filled all of our five gallon buckets, poured the water into our water barrels, and filled them again for a total of 10 times.  Yes, that is 50 gallons of water in less than 15 minutes.  When our water barrels were full, I lined the full buckets up in our hallway…and the rain kept coming.  I had nothing left to put water in, I was out of buckets. 

    Why am I telling you this!  As I walked down our hallway past the row of buckets….I had a lightbulb moment.  See , I have to confess that I have been a little discouraged, perhaps even lost perspective.  I have been sick with a fever and headache for the last month.  (Yes, that is not a type-o).  I have run a fever continuously for a month.  It is finally resolving, but I don’t sit still very well…and not feeling well enough to do anything started to get on my nerves.  So, I got crabby….and then I got discouraged.  The enemy really started to do a number on me.  In the middle of all of this God sent me to the same scripture multiple times.  I am telling you, I would start out turning to Paul’s writings or the gospels and yet I would still somehow end up in II Samuel.

  A woman whose husband had died had fallen on hard times… she and her sons had run out of food and had run out of money.  She came to the prophet Elisha asking for help because she had nowhere else to turn.  He told her that God wanted her to go and borrow as many jars as she could from her neighbors.  She did as she was told and then she began to pour the meager amount of oil that she had left into each jar.  God did a miraculous outpouring of His blessing for her that day… and she filled ALL the jars.  As she filled the last jar, the oil finished. 

     God spoke to me in my discouragement and pointed out that  I needed to be about getting ready for his blessing.  Never mind what is happening right now, the blessing is coming…. But here is the trick…

  What if the woman had only borrowed a few jars? 

I have often heard people talk about “according to the measure of your faith”  but was never really sure what that meant.  I think it is about having enough buckets.  His blessing, like the rain we had today, will come in HIS time and in HIS way.  Do you and I have the faith to be ready for it?  When the rain starts falling, it is a little late to run out and buy more buckets.  The widow didn’t have the chance to go borrow more jars.  She could have, in the name of practicality, borrowed just a few jars and said, “we’ll see how it goes and then if we need to we will go borrow more”.  Guess what?  She would have run out of oil.  As many jars as she had the faith to borrow… that was how many were filled. 

    I struggle with the balance between practicality and faith.  We value being realistic…. But are we prepared for the norm…. or are we prepared for an overflowing abundance…
“beyond all we ask or imagine’ (James)… of GOD’s blessing?  I have come to the realization that I am not prepared.  So, once again God is stretching me (do you hear the creaks and groans?) reshaping me into someone who will hopefully be more like him.  In the process, I am being stretched and enlarged into someone with a greater capacity for catching the outpouring of HIS blessing.  I just can’t wait to see what happens. 

For now…

 I am going to buy more buckets!