Goodbyes are not fun

Every year in NieuCommunities, we have apprentices who leave after 10 months into what God has next for them.  Though it is difficult to let go, we all know that they are moving into their own great future.  This makes it ok.  The process is easier for some, depending on personality, how deeply we have connected, etc.  For me, it has not been particularly difficult to say goodbye because I am so future oriented: I can see what is next for them, and myself, and take great comfort in this which helps ease the pain of goodbye.

But now, we are the ones leaving.  Our family has invested 6+ years in this community, minsitry, team, local friends, and a number of apprentices.  Our departure has been recently accelerated and all the plans we had for hand-offs and goodbyes have been rushed into this month.  This has been quite dificult, and I don’t think we’ve begun to tap into what is taking place in our hearts in the midst of all the necessary business.

Goodbyes are not fun.  First, because it makes our departure tangible.  I wish we could just pretend that we will see each other again soon (ever?), or that we’re ok because it’s all for the best.  My brain thinks that – my heart isn’t so sure.  Also, goodbyes mean ending.  And that is so concrete and final that I’m not prepared to for it, even though we knew it was coming.  Finally, goodbyes mean changes in relationships.  There are people here that we love dearly.  Yes, we may continue to email, and hopefully see one another down the road.  But it won’t be the same as it has been, and this is a hard adjustment.

God, we see your hand at work.  We believe you are in this completely.  But it is hard.  I suppose you know that all too well, and so we ask that your Spirit provides us comfort in these goodbyes.  And grant peace to all those with their own goodbyes in the days and years ahead.

kingdom pictures in the dance of the everyday

Over the past several months, God has been leading my heart to be attentive to the everyday stuff of life. To see Him in the ordinary things of life, the routine, the moments of my day. In his book, The Great Dance, C. Baxter Kruger writes of the beautiful “dance” of the Trinity that we are invited into. Unfortunately, we often miss this extraordinary invitation as we separate the “sacred” and the everyday by using categories in our minds like spiritual and secular.

Kruger writes, Jesus is the light of the world. He is the secret, the key which unlocks the mystery of babies and baseball, fishing and barbecues, romance and love. He is the light which illuminates the mysteries of our humanity, from cooking supper and managing a hardware store and painting houses to friendship and laughter and music, It is all the way the dance of the Trinity is being played out in us.

When you see the Trinity and the incarnation for what they are, you are poised to see yourself and your life in a new light, the true light. You are poised to see that there is nothing ordinary about you and your life at all. You and your life are the living expression of the glory and joy and beauty and love – the great dance – of the Father, Son and Spirit.

So, this week we find ourselves with the assignment to look for pictures of the kingdom as we go about our lives. Armed with nothing more than a camera we are to capture these pictures where we see the Kingdom being lived out. I chose yesterday to document the moments of my life where I felt I could see the realities of God’s kingdom. To the left, there are a few of the pictures that I took.

First of all, early in the morning I waited for two of my good friends, Craig and Bonnie Ward, who are leading a group of InterVarsity students on a 6-week trip to S. Africa and Malawi. I was asked to help lead a trip to Pilanseberg National Park for the day. As I waited in front of my house, I had the growing anticipation of seeing my friends and going to one of my favorite places. Their headlights made for a nice picture and signified the beginning of a beautiful day spent with people I love.

At Pilanseberg, we had the joy of watching a herd of zebra from an underground viewpoint.  It felt like a gift to find zebra playing and interacting just meters away from us as we got a glimpse into the beauty of God’s creation. Later that day, we found giraffe at another lookout point. As I watched this group of university students enjoy the scene together I thought about the beauty of relationships and what a joy it is to share incredible sights with people we know and love.

When I returned safely home that evening, I was tucking my son into bed when he suddenly grabbed the hat off my head, put it on his own head and smiled up at me. A small moment, but one that was so meaningful to me. As I left his room, I went to say “Goodnight” to my daughter and I found my wife reading a story to her. Somewhere in the midst of the story my daughter had fallen asleep. Laying so peacefully next to her mother I was reminded of God’s great care for me, and my family.

Again, these were all small moments of my day – all together they may have made up 5% of my day.  However, when viewed through the eyes of God’s invitation to join Him in the great dance of the Trinity, I sense His joy as I enjoy my life and the moments of my day.

This Potent Part of My Heart

So some of you know me as Sarah Woolley, staff person with NieuCommunities South Africa, who has a wacky sense of humor, a love for beauty and adventure, and a dangerous sweet tooth. You may also know I like to do art, to write and journal, to capture the world with my camera, and to enjoy the outdoors as much as possible. You might even be aware that I lead a community Check In time here at Pangani every week, try to encourage other staff and apprentices alike to try their hand at the sometimes intimidating art of “art,” and regularly visit Emily, a friend in the township of Soshanguve, to pray for the new-founded business/ministry “Wholesome Bakery.” But only the lucky few know of my heart for Rwanda, and so that is the subject I will atempt to scratch the surface of this morning as I fulfill my obligation (cheerfully) to update the Pangani blog.

Rwanda somehow came onto my radar as I was busy completing my last couple of years of University in Portland, Oregon. I was volunteering for an organization called the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO), where I tutored women one-on-one in English. All of the women assigned to me happened to be African, one of them Rwandan. I was blessed to know Marie from the first moment we met. A newly widowed mother of three young children (Valentin, Valeois, and Vanessa), she had only just arrived in Portland, and so I had the privilege of becoming her friend through that often challenging transition. Over the couple of years I worked with her, our relationship grew in trust and fondness until we eventually just remained friends, after I had stopped volunteering. She asked me to help her learn to drive, and I also took her to job interviews and large shopping trips (difficult for Marie to make without a car) to feed her family. Marie also took an interest in my life, visiting my mom’s art studio with her kids, and attending my final art opening before I graduated. It was a special relationship, one I never took for granted.

Through my friendship with Marie, I became quite interested in Rwanda’s history, and did an in-depth project on the 1994 genocide for school. Marie and I didn’t talk about it much, as we mostly focused on her current life in America and I never pushed her on anything she didn’t want to talk about. But through my studies, I probably learned more than I wanted to. It was incredibly sobering and heart-wrenching, yet somehow powerfully inspiring. I guess I can say that through all that I learned, I was mostly (and still am) touched by the unfathomable capacity God gives people to endure when they are at death’s door, hope beyond hope, and forgive when they have been wronged in the most inhumane, heinous ways. I was taken aback by the incredible waves of anger that washed over me, especially in my learning of the rest of the world’s lack of response and often, deliberate dismissal of Rwanda during this time. Ultimately, over the years since I have studied the genocide, and even after I got to visit Rwanda for the first time myself, I have been faced with those places in my own heart where I need to forgive others, from subjects as abstract as the United Nations to as personal as members of my own family. And though I feel I have much easier subjects to forgive than many Rwandans, I still find I am only beginning to experience the wealth of freedom that comes with pure-hearted forgiveness. And of course it’s often a lifelong process.

As I mentioned, I have been blessed to visit Rwanda. My spiritual mentor from Oregon invited me on a one-week trip November of 2007 organized by her and two South African pastors. This first trip I joined in on was filled with visits to young and thriving churches, the Kigali genocide memorial, the Nyamata church memorial where 2,500 were massacred, and various other individuals, leaders and civilians alike, who shared their stories of hope and struggle with us, not to mention, their most Christ-like hospitality.

I have been amazed as God has continued to bless me with opportunities to go deeper into this particular are of the world. After trying to attend a Christian conference called the “Amahoro Gathering” in Kigali in 2008 but failing due to lack of funds, I was blessed this year as a South African friend asked me to join her on her annual trip to Rwanda and Burundi, as she is finishing up her Ph.D. in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies. On our two-week trip this past June into July, Cori introduced me to a whole new set of friends, whom I know I will keep in touch with now over the years. I also got to connect back up with many of the same people I had met on my first trip, and so I am praising God for His ingenuity in arranging divine appointments throughout my life.

This past trip for me was a re-awakening of my heart to help and come alongside people as well as to represent the beauty I encounter through various art forms. To give you a better idea of what the trip was like for me, please go to my Picasa Web Album and view the photos I just put on. My hope for the future in regards to my heart for Rwanda is that I’ll continue to build on the relationships I’ve made, visit when I can, and simply be a friend to those who need empowerment or are attemting to empower others in their current realities. I am excited to continue to nurture those connections even as I deeper submerge into South African life and culture. Thanks for letting me share this small but potent part of my heart with you. And Imana Ishimwe (“Praise God”) for it, as I know it is His doing.

Sacred Romance

Hello World!!!  This is Colletta, I’m one of the apprentices this year and I want to put a disclaimer out there… this is the first time I have blogged ever in my life, so be gentle with me…:)

This week our community got the pleasure of having Sean Daly fly out to take us through a journey of the heart. We spent the week listening to a conference based off the book Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge.  The message was all about understanding the importance of the hearts that God has given each one of us and getting in touch with our own hearts so that we can draw closer to God’s heart.

“The true story of each person is the journey of his heart.”

When I reflect back and think about the larger story of God I see that all He did, he did because of love, because of His heart. He created us, rescues us and frees us because of His heart for us.  It makes sense then to think that our hearts really do play a crucial role in our life with God.  Since we are created in His image and His likeness then we are to  live with our hearts.

For some members of our community (like myself) this week has been a fresh exploration of relating and connecting to God through our hearts.  This week generated a stirring that I pray we continue to respond to individually and collectively.   If you have never read the book or want to take a deeper look at God’s design and purpose for our heart, I highly recommend Sacred Romance; it will rock your world, in a good way…hehehhe

God Bless, CC

My new friend Sylvia

Here’s a story about my good friend Sylvia.  She grew up about 4 hours away in a more rural village and then her family moved to the township of Mamelodi outside of Pretoria. Now, with her husband and family, Sylvia lives in Block KK, Soshanguve.  I met her about four months ago that is when she began sharing her story and her heart.

For a long time Sylvia has had a heart for God and while living in Soshanguve her heart for God has led her to start caring for her neighbors.  It first began about three years ago when a baby girl was brought to Sylvia’s house.  The baby was three months old but was so malnourished it only looked about 1 month old and her skin was starting to rot and become infected.  The most rotten parts of her skin were her private parts.  This baby was living with some distant relative but totally neglected and ignored.  Sylvia couldn’t stand by and do nothing.  She did her best to contact social services to in order to find help, but like many people in this country, Sylvia only met social workers who were only concerned about their position and did nothing to help the community.  Many promises were made that came back empty.  Sylvia encountered this country’s inadequate social welfare system.  The government is filled with people only appointed because of their connections instead of their ability to provide the service they were hired to do.  (I have run into this problem many times during my 4 years in South Africa.)

Well, Sylvia decided to take matters into her own hands if the government was going to fail.  She contacted several people who might be willing to help.  Through this she was able to get free donations of food and clothing to help some.  She went door to door in her Block to survey those who needed help but wasn’t receiving any.  She found 54 orphans from 22 families that were in need and received no help from the government.  She took four of these orphans into her home doing the best she could.  She told her story to Rianna, the woman she works for as a domestic worker, and Rianna took it upon herself to help.  Eventually Sylvia and Rianna made it on the Nation’s Talk Radio Station to share their story and frustration in the lack of basic social service.

It was soon after this that I met Sylvia and knew walking with her was what God was calling me to do.  So I started by listening and praying.  Colletta joined with me in this venture and we began visiting families and encouraging Sylvia.  So far, we’ve helped Sylvia begin a community garden and we are working with her to get a piece of land to build to community center/safe house in order to support those in great need.  This will not be a short process, but in the end we hope it will have a long lasting impact.

And I have to admit that the hurdles we have to overcome and move past can sometimes seem discouraging to me, but Sylvia is always there with a positive attitude and a trust in God that keeps me encouraged.

Doug