Year 26: Adventure: hello friends!

Before I start rambling I wanted to let you know I'm coming back to COLUMBUS on June 21st! Holy cow, it will have been three months and since my visa expires then I'm coming home rather than renew it.

It is feeling pretty bittersweet that I'll be back in America eating chicken fingers and sleeping in my own bed in just three weeks because I have a million things I still want to do and see here before I come back! This week I'm traveling to Nairobi, then to Rwanda to visit my dear friend Jean Claude, then to Zanzibar to visit with a friend from high school. I have two presentations to give on my research here and a group of us are going to climb Mt. Kenya and I know there are still hundreds of babies left for me to snuggle.

It has been a great week, I got two awesome packages from my college roommates packed with snacks, candy and DVD's, we had an awesome outreach on Wednesday where we diagnosed and treated over 100 mothers and children, we had a public holiday on Friday and my friend Jill and I traveled to Meru for lunch and shopping. The weather is starting to cool off and the rainy season is just ending but it still gets hot during the day so I am enjoying lots reading in the sun and I've been going to my favorite garden at a local hotel to read and work lately. Its a little piece of serenity and beauty!

I've been working with the administrative and senior management team here putting together several documents and presentations. I've made Maua's first employee handbook and orientation manual and I've done a lot of research within the hospital staff trying to analyze their high staff turnovers, poor work ethic and unsafe patient to nurse ratios. It has been an interesting and trying experience. I really like structure, stability, organization and order. Everything in Kenya is the complete opposite, kind of chaotic, unorganized, discombobulated and just plain messy. I've learned a lot of patience and I've also learned a ton about the culture through engaging and observing the staff and drawing up plans to make the hospital a better place to work and serve. Its been fun to make friends with the hospital staff and nursing students and I'm hopeful for change and transformation in the near future.

okay now that all that info is out there...here is some of the randomness going on inside me:
I was skyping with my sweet friend Hanna (Hi Hanna!) and I was telling her that I just liked myself better here. I think I'm a better version of myself here than I am at home. I don't know if it is because I have less distractions, less people to please, less worldly things that I feel disappointed by...or maybe it is just because I feel like I have more purpose here, I feel like everyday I am doing something good that is helping people, that is furthering the kingdom, that is changing someones life even if its just a little thing like teaching someone safe family planning...I don't know what it is but I like who I am. I like who I am becoming and I like the simplicity of my life here. Don't get me wrong I miss Netflix, my iPhone and fast-food big time but the simplicity brings such freedom that has been refreshing and revitalizing for me and I'm super thankful for that and excited to be home and striving to be the same person and the best version of myself there too.

I'm nervous to come back home, nervous that nothing will have changed, or that everything will have changed. Its similar to the way I felt after coming back from summer project in 2007. I feel totally different, I've seen and experienced so much and I have a better understanding of myself, of God and of humanity. It changes you. And I don't want to forget that either. After seeing some of the things I saw I feel a responsibility, a responsibility for change. I want to see and help things be different here, even if I spend the rest of my life trying to figure it out. I read this book called, The White Man's Burden, its about how western countries feel an obligation to "save Africa" and so we send lots of money but really we're just enabling the people in Africa to depend on us to save them, rather than enabling them through other means to save themselves. It convicted me because in America we think "oh man there are sick and starving people in Africa, I'll do my part and write a check" and I think that is great, really I do, that God has blessed people financially to bless others. But my heart beats differently when I think of the sick and starving...I want to help people help themselves...and this trip has been primarily about teaching people family planning skills or healthy hygiene. And I know its a small thing and there are a lot of needs, but more good is done if we give people the means to take care of themselves, to help their own country out of poverty. And I don't know the answers, I don't know how to actually solve these problems or what I can do from America, but its something my heart breaks for and I'm excited that God has laid this on my heart and also excited because I know that this won't be my last time in Africa.

My life was really busy in Columbus, and my life here is the complete opposite. I work during the day and then I have a lot of free time. It has been so good for my heart to have down time, to read, reflect, watch movies and go to bed early (Even though the first 2 weeks I was going crazy!) I use to blame busyness for why my relationship with God was hard sometimes...why I felt distant. I was so caught up in ministry, who had time for a relationship?! But since being here and having so much down time, I've been grateful for the opportunity to move closer to God, to reconnect with him again and of course that was scary too, sometimes the way we talk about it, it sounds like a huge giant chore. RECONNECT WITH GOD! Like it will takes days or weeks, or a vow of silence or whatever we think it might be...but really I've learned that it only takes a couple seconds or one small choice to more towards Him. It doesn't have to be this big planned out event, it can take just a whispered prayer, or a thought about Him rather than me. Its simple to move closer to God, because even after one little prayer, I'm closer to Him than I was before. And thats what it really is all about, moving closer to him, even if its just baby steps at first, even if its only a couple minutes...it's not as hard or as scary as I once thought it to be and there isn't as much pressure as I once put on myself.

Here are a couple pictures from the recent week...