Staying in the Game

July 8, 2016

Brian keeps telling the team that this is the point in the trip that is so important to stay in the game. 

Rather than just endure the next 8 days, he encouraged everyone to try to enjoy the days ahead and to not miss what God has for us. We talk a lot on our trip about the stages of “redlining” when we have just about had enough dealing with so many differences and we have fight or flight instincts kick in. I know that there have been moments that Taylor has just been ready to come home.  But I also know that there have been times when I don’t think that anything is sinking in that he surprises me with a deep comment or insight that blows me away.

Even now as I was writing this post  tonight, Taylor was up late with the college students playing a card game and having the best time. He’s become the little brother to many here and they’ve made it clear that he’s a big part of the team.

I was looking for Anna the other morning in our large group meeting to return the key to her and I could not find her for a minute as she blended in so well with all the college girls. Other than being a bit sleep deprived, she is thriving here and told me last night before bed that she has grown so much in her faith on this trip and she is growing to depend on God more.  She said “It has been amazing to get to know God, myself and the Bible more.”  Glad Brian and Debbie brought the “Miracle Grow” and have been sprinkling it all around!  

Over the last few days, we have had the chance to visit the Focus offices (the equivalent here in Kenya to InterVarsity in the US) and the AIM (African Inland Missions) headquarters to learn more about their work here. 

Anna was soaking this up at AIM headquarters and asked so many questions about being an aviation engineer - it certainly sparked her interest! 

On Wednesday, I was asked to give a 3 hour training session in conflict resolution to the staff at Sanctuary of Hope this week and really enjoyed the time with them. 

Yesterday, we spent the day with some boys who were serving 4 months in a juvenile prison near Nairobi and it was an amazing day playing games and getting to know their stories. The staff there are really committed to helping to transform the lives of these boys, and it was a place that held a lot of hope and promise. Hearing about why some of them were there (for 4 month terms of rehabilitation) was really sobering. Some of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some of them had taken desperate measures because of being treated unfairly by someone else and they had no recourse. As a mom going there, it was heartbreaking imagining their own mothers who had watched them fall into trouble with the law. We certainly prayed that their lives would turn around so that this would not be the end of the story but just a detour. 

Pictures above was from a WONDERFUL time with my dear friend Gladys (whom I was on the Global Project team with in 1994!!) She came to visit from Nakuru and stayed last night at the center with us. We stayed up late like two schoolgirls talking and catching up. What pure grace! 

I read this from Nadia Bolz-Weber last spring but it came to mind as we have been here the last 5-6 weeks. I am so thankful for her raw honesty as she reflects on ministry and service:

“ I drove in the dark through small town Wisconsin thinking about how I had inadvertently become one of Bishop Bruce’s pastors during the time of his wife’s death, and how it was an honor, but that if I was totally honest, I also felt some kind of weird pride about it. He is easy to love and I was happy to get to be one of the people who, in a small way, was able to help carry him through. We call this kind of thing, “serving others” as though it’s an entirely selfless thing, but to tell the truth, I’ve never known how to keep from feeling self-important when I help people.  Being the one who gets to serve is a position of power. No matter how selfless I’d like to think I am, there’s always something in it for me—even if it’s the satisfaction of knowing that I am a good Matthew 25 Christian, that I am “being Christ” to someone else. While we as people of God are certainly called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that whole “we’re blessed to be a blessing” thing can still be kind of dangerous.  It can be dangerous when we self-importantly place ourselves above the world, waiting to descend on those below so that we can be the “blessing” they’ve been waiting for, like it or not.  Plus, seeing myself as the blessing can pretty easily obscure the way in which I am actually part of the problem and can hide the ways in which I, too, am poor and needing care.  Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as “the blessing”—like so many mission trips to help “those less fortunate than ourselves” – can easily descend into a blend of benevolence and paternalism.  We can start to see the “poor” as supporting characters in a big story about how noble, selfless, and helpful we are.  After meeting Bruce and struggling with what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world when I am so prone to pride, I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if Jesus said “I was hungry and you fed me,” then Christ’s presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but Christ’s presence is in the hungry being fed.  Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisoned but in the imprisoned being cared for.  And to be clear, Christ does not come to us as the poor and hungry. Because as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh-and-blood people knows, the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of Christlike people. And those who meet the needs are not a romantic special class of Christlike people. We are equally as sinful and saintly as the other. No, Christ comes to us in the needs of the poor and hungry, needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of God might be known. No one gets to play Jesus. But we do get to experience Jesus in that holy place where we meet others’ needs and have our own needs met. We are all the needy and the ones who meet needs. To place ourselves or anyone else in only one category is to lie to ourselves.” – Accidental Saints (pages 46-48)