Mounds of Stone: Trading Worlds

And just like that, 2 years have gone by. I remember preparing to move to Tenwek and wondering how I would ever learn to live in this culture, a culture I didn’t know, didn’t understand, had no frame of reference for. And now, here we are, ready to leave and rejoin our home culture. By no means have I mastered living in Africa, or Kenya specifically, but I do feel like I have figured out how to live here day by day (well, some days).

There are things I am so looking forward to in America: clean water, consistent electricity, stores close by, privacy, the library (yep, nerd), cheese, cereal, family and friends, holidays. But there will be things to miss as well: beautiful weather year round, the view out my front window, the ladies selling carrots at my door, the man who brings eggs (and raises money for the orphanage he runs), my kids BFF’s right outside the door always ready to have a Nerf war, always being able to borrow things from someone on the compound, friends that "get" missionary life, my househelpers that brighten my home (and my bathroom), ten cent avocados and mangos.

There are the questions:

Will I figure out how to work an oven that actually cooks at the temperature it says?

Will the grocery store overwhelm me?

Will I remember how to drive??

Will I “look like a missionary”? (if I do, don’t tell me, just buy me some new clothes)

Will I have grace when I see someone pay $4 for a coffee that could feed a child I know for 4 days?

Will I forget quickly the lessons I have learned?

Will I take what I’ve learned and use it in a new context?

Will I love the poor when the poor look very different from the poor I know here?

My mind keeps going back to a story I heard this week about a primary age boarding school in Massai land (a little more than an hour from here) that is only feeding it’s students Wed-Saturday because they don’t have enough food for 7 days a week. Food doesn’t grow well out in their barren land where there is never enough rain. Heaven help them.

There are lots of hard questions with no good answers. But God calls us to be faithful to what He has called us to, where we are. To look beyond ourselves to the hurting around us, to live below our means, to love the unlovely. He is now calling our family to America for the next 2 years. Pray with us that we will be faithful His call in Africa, in America, wherever He takes us. And pray that I don’t have an anxiety attack in the cereal aisle at Meijer.