Learning (little by little)

Living here, I feel like I am learning how to live all over again. Simple things that I used to be completely capable of doing on my own are now challenges that I have to force myself to overcome. Learning how and where to buy food, as well as how to cook and eat it. How to have even basic conversations with people. Learning these roads. Learning what is acceptable and what is not. Dealing with friendly blank stares from others and also giving a bunch myself, followed by holding up my hands with an "I'm sorry!" expression. 

Where is this place? How do you say this? What is that? Can you repeat that again? Yes I know you just told me 4 times. Oh, I wasn’t supposed to do that? This word also means that? Oh. 

Not to mention the complications of trying to organize a nutrition program with language barriers and no one has any idea what is really going on. People have different ideas and expectations and plans easily get lost in translation. Some people, not knowing any better, think I have lots of answers and a good plan. That makes me laugh, as I don’t really have either. 

I’m learning how much I need God for every little thing. I need Him to show me the way.  I thought I knew that already, but there is something about having it as a reality that stuns me that I have thought I could do so many things on my own.

With every new day and opportunity, I have a choice to make. Even when I realize how much help I need, how lost I am without God’s Spirit to guide me, I can still choose to say no. I can stay where I am comfortable and don’t have to submit myself to awkward interactions and situations that I don’t know what I’m doing.  Sometimes I am tempted to stay in this safe place.

But I look at the life of Jesus and I see a different approach. In Him God came down to our level, our world. He sat with us in the dirt of our lives and sin and mistakes. He learned how to live with us. He made himself vulnerable, something that I often try so hard to fight against because who wants that, really? It’s so uncomfortable and awkward.

But what if that wasn’t the end. What if there was something else hidden in the vulnerability and messy situations? What if this helpless position of my heart is what God delights in, knowing that I am absolutely nothing and can do nothing without Him? What if there is actually joy in losing control over my life? 

Which brings me to the other choice I have every day. The one I pray God will give me the strength to say “yes” to again and again. The choice to step out of my comfort zone. To say “yes” in the face of fear and anxiety of the unknown, of mistakes, of being misunderstood.  To sit with people and learn from them and allow myself to feel their pain as if it were my own. To just love and not worry about the perfect little details about how everything will all happen and come together.  To say no to myself and yes to Jesus, because even though I’ve gotten it wrong so many times His grace is still enough.

 

They teach me French words by pointing at things around the little courtyard as we sit there eating peanuts. I love family visits like these. Communication looks like a few words and lots of hand motions, facial expressions, and laughing. I watch them pound boiled plaintains into dough, and when they let me try mashing too they get a big kick out of it. We talk with the family and see how they are doing. The little boy is HIV positive but thanks to the medicine he gets from the clinic he is otherwise healthy. I get to pray with them before we go and attempt praying in French for the first time. When I proudly finish stumbling through it, the small group breaks out into excited shouting and clapping and laughing. We say goodbye with the promise of coming back soon. I feel alive, and part of something so much bigger than myself. 

In the mess that I can be so hesitant to jump into, I am finding simple, beautiful joy. Learning and laughter and growth and new relationships and love, all which I could never have known by staying where I feel safe and comfortable.  Because from these places of being so in need of help, there is also the experience of feeling of being totally cared for and taken care of by a God who loves me and is more than capable.

To the little girl in the green dress

I spent last weekend in a village about 4 hours away.  Members from many churches in the surrounding area all met together for a few days of bible teaching, togetherness, and lots of singing and dancing! We arrived on Friday around noon just in time for lunch. Some of the women from the village we are staying at are selling foutou with spicy peamont sauce. Foutou looks like a big ball of raw bread dough and has about the same consistency.

As I eat all the village kids come and sit by me, their eyes full of wonder at seeing a white person. I smile and make attempts at communication but without knowing French I feel useless. I can't say anything to them that they understand and I can't understand them either. The afternoon teaching is about to start, and as these kids press in tight around me I notice a little girl in a green dress behind me, looking unsure of where to go. I motion that there is room for her too, to come and sit, and her eyes light up as she runs over and squeezes herself between 2 others right in front of me. The whole time we sit there she keeps looking back and smiling.

As it turns out, where I am staying for the next 3 days is right across from this little girls small cement house, which is probably about the size of my kitchen back in America. As we start to walk there she looks up at me and smiles.  Taking my bag from my hands, she carrys it the rest of the way on her head. Over the next few days, hers is one of the first faces I see in the morning as I step out from under the tin roof of the little house where I am staying. She is never far from my side during the day and she holds my hand as we walk the narrow dirt path back to our houses in the evening, to take bucket showers and eat rice and acheke for dinner. At night everyone meets together again by the makeshift bamboo hut where we have been meeting during the day, to sing and dance for Jesus under the stars. As the Africans dance, their feet kick up the red dirt and it makes a dusty cloud that rises above our heads and up to the heavens. The last night I just sit and take it all in, my little friend exhausted and asleep in my lap.

The next day is Sunday and after church and some lunch we pack up the truck to head back to Abengourou, waving goodbye to our friends who had so generously welcomed us into their homes and taken care of us for the weekend. I hug my friend goodbye, this little girl whose name I don't even know. From the truck as we back out, I see her just standing in her green dress, the same one she was wearing when I first saw her. She is crying, tears streaming down her face. My heart breaks.

I wish I could do something more for her. I wish I could tell her that she matters and that she is loved. I don't really know how to put my feelings into words, but it is something like the helplessness I felt a few days ago when I first arrived and was at a loss of how to communicate. As we drive back over the bumpy dirt-covered roads full of holes, all I can do is pray that Jesus will take care of her. She is His, after all, so I give Him all my worries over her life and trust that He is able to look after her. I realize that I am not the one in control of things and that I can't save anyone anyway. And as I realize that I know I am learning something else too. That maybe just the short time we had together was enough. That maybe how Jesus uses His followers to bring God's Kingdom to earth it is really as simple as taking the time to love the one who needs love right in front of us, one day at a time. And trusting that as we love, Jesus will come and make His love known, the life and hope that this world is crying out for.