don't get too used to this...

So, most of these I cannot take any credit for, but I thought you'd appreciate a few more pictures of what life is like around here. There are 3 different events here and a few shots from each just to give you a little taste of the last week or so...

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Prayers for Caleb Amen: Today Friday 9 March

Is this not the most precious smile ever?! We went to the prayers for a new baby this morning, produced, er, I mean, given birth, by a woman named Nadi who has become a friend, that lives at the compound where Larissa has been doing home stay...this is the new baby. born Monday morning.

Here's the baby with his namesake, Caleb the intern, who celebrated his 22nd birthday the day after this little bundle was born. This precious baby boy was named Caleb Amen (caleb chosen by the maternal grandmother and Amen chosen by the woman "in charge" of the compound where they live)
Larissa and mama Nadi (this is her third)
Lunch (top = egg, middle = linia, left = beans, right = fish)
another shot...the brown blob in the middle is the dreaded linia, which I would like to report is becoming less and less dreaded each time I eat it!

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Caleb the intern's birthday. Theme: mud! Sunday 4 March

Team Spheres of Fury!!!!! (don't knock it, you know you like it :) (me, Gaby Masso, Caleb and Melissa)

above: Team lightning bolts looking ready to rumble (Larissa my housemate, Leanna, Karen and Michael Masso)

below: wheelbarrow races
mud pile #1

after mud pile #2:
muddy buddies
pure happiness!!!!
getting clean-ish...

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Saturday 3 March: overnight at Margaret's (where Larissa is doing her homestay)

look at these precious faces: L-R: Tifo, Monika, Willie, and Edward
Vicki cooking
Willie: 6 month old par excellence
proof I really am here and happy :)

being new

it’s exhausting. totally. completely. utterly. exhausting. I’d forgotten.

constant barrage of input. observations. observations. observations. evaluations. measurements. adjustments. comparisons. judgements. priorities. regulations. acculturations. assimilations? compromise? faithfulness. steadfastness.

you’d think that it would get easier as time goes by, and more and more opportunities present themselves...easier to be new. but that’s the thing about being new. It’s new. It’s not like what you’re familiar with, because otherwise, it’d be old I suppose, so every time is different, by definition.

the whole day is spent taking in and processing. always on. always asking questions (internally or externally). I enjoy a good part of the process. I enjoy being places that are different, situations and people that are different, colors and smells and tastes that are different. I love the things it makes you think about, the conundrums, the joys, the pondering of why and how and who and what and when and so forth...fascinating. I love that things and people and situations and climates and cultures are different. So thankful the world is not bland and dull and universally any certain way.

Then there’s the other part of the process that I’m not a huge fan of. The feeling outside of things. The not feeling at home. The insecurity of wondering how I am being perceived or received. The discord of not understanding and yet wanting so badly to. The battle of how much to fight to maintain who I understand myself to be, and how much to compromise in a new equation. There’s the times when you tell a funny story and not only does no one laugh but no one even understands what you’re talking about. There’s the times when you say totally awkward things and wish you had kept your mouth closed. There’s the times when you stop the dinner conversation with your topics of conversation that are evidently inappropriate for discussion over a meal...note to self: dolphin STD’s are over the line.

There’s the moments when I am surprised with the understanding and inclusion by those around me and their willingness to extend a hand across lines that are out of their own comfort zone. And then there are the moments when I am saddened by my inability to intersect my zone with someone else’s zone, to even know how to begin to try to access their zone.

Then there’s grace. I learned a new definition about a year ago... “unnecessary relationship.” That’s why I’m here. I’m here because more than I know has overrun my life and it’s impact is more than I know what to do with. My cup runneth over. God, give me what I need to live my newness in this grace - to accept and to redirect. It’s an honor but I need help.

so much to tell...

It feels good. Two weeks under my belt. There’s so much to tell...

• how much my dukul feels like home from the moment I stepped foot inside
• how the heat has not been quite as oppressive as I anticipated just yet (although I’m sure there is a cumulative effect to it’s toll)
• how strange it is to not have “muzungu muzungu!” called after me every time I’m out and about (even though “kawacha” or “omoje” are there, they’re mostly not as common)
• how much I dislike linia at first- the staple food here (a mound of a playdoh like starch) and how daunted I am by the thought of having to eat it gracefully whenever visiting friends and being graciously fed...45 minutes later I managed to finish the entire plate - quite a feat, let me tell you - Africans know how to pile a plate. Each time since it has gotten progressively easier, but let me tell you the key: communal eating. There’s no plate full over the brim that you yourself and you have to finish in order to be polite - you have a communal tray that everybody works on so there’s teamwork in the process. I knew I was a fan of team ministry :)
• how encouraging it was to sit next door around Bishop’s fire under the stars on saturday night a week ago with the new deacons and priests and their wives and visitors in town for the ordination service at the Cathedral on Sunday morning...the introductions were lengthy but fascinating with the usual likening of the situation to various pictorial images from entirely unrelated facets of life in metaphors that work beautifully, the food was fabulous (although I just come from my gut filling linia experience - so every bite was effortful), and the strangest moment of the night was after all of the symbolic sharing under the stars when Bishop announced that the movie playing on the little tv screen during dinner was about the Taliban and their oppression of women under Sharia law...hm...ok. random.
• how OUTSIDE of my comfort zone I spend most of my days. I wish I had a head-cam so that you could walk with me through my day. Pursuing absolute strangers - totally completely entirely OUTSIDE my comfort zone.
• how God is teaching me in that feeling so totally completely and entirely helpless, that it’s really up to Him. This is His gig. I’m just along for the ride :)
• how many flashcards I’ve made already in both Moru and Juba Arabic
• how I prayed that God would make it clear to me in the first few weeks which language to pursue and how I’m wondering if I may have found an open door...wondering if it’s really an open door or just an easy door...wondering if that’s ok or if He’s calling me to find the heavy door that’s harder and takes longer to push open. In fact, a week or so before I left St. Louis, my dear cousin told me (in reference to this subject exactly) “don’t just pick the harder one because it’s harder. us Lutjens’, we do that, you know?” We most certainly do, and I had no idea this was an extended family trait... “the more obscure, the more difficult, the more underdog, the more we are drawn to it” she elaborated...oh so true. she so hit the nail on the head and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Good call, cuz
• how interesting it is to me that when you ask a S. Sudanese person how far a new place is away from your current location, they answer in an estimated *distance* (in km of course) when all I really care about is an estimation of how much TIME it will take to reach there. Oh how differently we see the world.
• how interesting it is that the Juba Arabic that I’ve been working on this week has random similarities to the Hebrew I studied 12 years ago, now...maybe a little gift from God?...part of that open door, perchance?
• how much fun we had in the mud on Sunday celebrating Caleb (the 6 mo. intern hopefully extending now to 10 months?) in honor of his birthday on tuesday...a man made mud pit of course, but mud nonetheless. relay races, chicken wrestling, piles of people in the mud, however we could get as muddy as possible and laugh a lot in the process - this was the goal :)
• how fascinating and heartbreaking the conversation we had with Larissa’s homestay family about epileptics and the community’s understanding of how best to handle them in community and family life and the totally unnecessary but totally culturally normative exclusion this leads to..tears literally running down my face as we talked...trying to play it off like they were watering from the smoke from the fire...wait, there was no fire...hm, well...maybe they didn’t notice?...
• how wonderful it is to manage to get a few phrases of one of these two totally different languages out in a way that is understood and appreciated by the native speaker listening and how much joy, my little bit of progress seems to bring them...
• how deflating it is to have people not make eye contact and seem totally disengaged or disappointed or disapproving of me or how little I know as I pursue conversation with them
• how warm the water is coming out of the tap/shower due to the high temperatures day to day...yesterday I went to rinse off my flip flops and I could barely touch the water with my hands as it flowed from the tap...crazy. But it means less breath-taking showers at night (although it might be better if it were a little colder...who woulda thunk I'd ever say that...)
• how refreshingly possible it is to sleep at night after a “room temp” shower...to nice to be clean.
• how remarkably dirty my body is for most of every day...even when I get up in the morning the grit around/under my finger/toe nails, heels, etc that I managed to miss during my shower the night before...unbelievable.
• how much I love mangoes...demonstrated in my perseverance in cutting them despite the nasty poison ivy like rashes I get on my hands and face as a result...
• how tired I am of acne - in combination with my mango rash, I look like a freak show.
• how much I need alone time, with lights low, maybe some music and maybe some writing...crucial to my survival and general sanity

the list could go on, but I'll stop there.

until next time....

new digs...

So, finally some pictures - hopefully prove I am really here, and yes it really is dry season. I think Karen took some pictures of my arrival on the MAF flight, but I've gotta track those down sometime soon.

The residential side of the compound: dry season and post bush fires about 2 weeks ago. My dukul (tukul is the local word for house or hut or something of that sort - and since these are duplexes of sorts, the team dubbed the structures: "dukuls" :) - mine, shared with the lovely Larissa Wolowec) is the one in the foreground on the left with the stunning magenta Schwinn in front. also mine :) Jennifer D: your dukul is the one just past ours in the distance on the left. just to the right of the small tree in the middle: the latrine/bathing rooms (more detail to follow). John S: In the distance on the right is the dukul waiting for you to make it home. Note also the hammock on the right. Seems to be the place to be on hot nights under the stars. Me and hammocks don't really get along (imagine Heidi flipped upside down suspended prostrate from the hammock as she hangs on for dear life as her nose nearly brushes the ground...yep, pure grace, folks) but I perch myself in a bwamba chair and enjoy my own view.
"the shire" as it has been dubbed prior to my arrival - the dukul I share with Larissa
common space in our dukul looking at the front door. the doorway into my room is just past the shelves on the right, just to the right of the front door
I can take no credit for the loveliness of the common space - but I will enjoy it :)
my room (looking at the front door)
my room has never and will never be tidy enough to be a pottery barn catalog (or anything even remotely close - just ask my mom and my roommates!), but look how cozy it is :) has felt like home since day 1. so thankful. Designed by the lovely Christine Olmeda, the first inhabitant of the room. Note the blue cushion on the left which is a window seat :)
the latrine/bath house (which by the way, has two sides, each of which has a latrine and shower rooms)...the side shown is the "girls' side" closest to the girls' dukuls...
it's about enough of a mirror as I can handle in the morning, crazy hair and all :)
behind the door on the left: the squatty potty. remove the wooden cover with the handle, position your feet on the cement blocks, squat, and well, do your business. Note the TP. not to be taken for granted - not to be found in just any pit latrine.
behind the door on the right: I scintilating shot, I know, but gotta cover it all, you know :) The shower room, much bigger than shown - nice big rack for shampoo and razors and such behind where I'm standing.
the back side of the team house: facing the "residential" portion of the compound. complete with porch and bwamba chairs from Uganda - I imagine perfect for sitting and watching the rain I hope will come one day :) taken from the front door of my dukul.
team house kitchen: after eating/living all together for several years it was decided that both the Masso's and the singles' needed some space. Now the team eats together on wednesdays and sundays, and the rest of the week the singles use this kitchen and the Masso's have their own (much smaller scale) in their house. Note the deep freezer AND fridge on the left wall - both solar powered.
living/dining space in the team house. table built to seat 12.
the home of Michael and Karen Masso (our team leaders) and their kids (Acacia - 14 and away at RVA, Leana - 12, and Gaby - 9.5)

So, there you have it. The long distance, virtual tour of part of the WHM S. Sudan compound...

the physical space feels like home, the relational "home" will likely take a good deal longer. do pray that I would learn to demonstrate love to my teammates well, be bold in doing it, and that the Lord would knit us together in a way that ONLY He could manage - with much grace and mercy in abundance.

Aroboya! (thank you)

From Thursday:

Thank you for your prayers thus far. I am happy to be writing to you from home, Mundri, S. Sudan. Travel here went without a hitch and my first day was not too terribly hot. Yesterday was a little warmer (105 inside), but Larissa (my teammate and housemate) and I had a great time greeting in the market and doing some shopping for the singles' food supply. I can't get over how different it is here as compared to Bundibugyo, Uganda where I spent my last term. More on that later.

market remarks:

- "she looks like the wife of Michael" (aka Karen Masso - our team leaders)

- "she has a body that looks like mine - it is fat" (great, thanks, it's good to meet you too :) (actually is a compliment coming from an African...)

- "thank you for coming, we don't have enough people working there (at the health center) our children are dying."

- "Thanks be to God for bringing you here."

- "We hope God brings even more of you to come help us here."

- and then the best was the "ay yi yi"s and huge smiles and hand shakes they gave Larissa when I managed to greet them and tell them my name when they asked in Moru :) it's the little things :)

Aroboya to God for his timing as well. Yesterday, the youngest member of our team, Gaby Masso (9 1/2) was pretty sick. Fever, vomiting, and add those things to the heat and you have a recipe for a dehydrated disaster. After making my first consult call to Jennifer Myhre in Kenya (former team leader, friend, and the pediatrician I worked with in Uganda) to ensure I was thinking through things correctly and to check on the correct volume for a fluid bolus, etc., last night I put an IV in the very brave little guy and gave him a bolus of IV fluid. Checked in on him in the middle of the night, flushed his IV to make sure it would be patent this morning if we needed to use it, and thankfully this morning, things have improved a bit. His belly still hurts a lot, so please pray for him to be back to his usual 9 1/2 year old boy energetic self :) Thankful to be able to be here when it happened, and slightly intimidated by the task of being the one to make health decisions like these. Thankful there are doctors and friends, people who *really* know what they're doing, just a phone call away :)

Will write more soon, hopefully, but wanted you all to know I was here in one piece.

Update: Saturday 25 February

Gaby is doing much better. He got 4 boluses over the course of 3 days and this morning is up and around on his own a little more, talking and laughing a bit more and looking more and more bright eyed every day.

I am every day learning a few more words in Moru, slowly by slowly as they say. The first day I was headed to the market and almost felt like I was going to hyperventilate with fear and intimidation about the task of language learning ahead of me. Larissa prayed and we headed out. Since, God has been gracious and I have been more content with the "slowly by slowly" approach to taking on just a few new things everyday, or just reviewing the things from the day before...just putting one foot in front of the other instead of putting my head up and trying to see the next 12 months out in front of me.

hopefully I'll take some pictures around our compound and town in the next week and get them up for you to see for yourself a bit of where I am.

T-1

Well, tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow I fly into S. Sudan.

Hard to believe the time has come, and simultaneously feels like it's about time!

I'm ready to settle down after 2 months on the go. I'm excited to see my WHM Mundri friends and family. I'm excited to meet the S. Sudanese that will become my Mundri friends and family as well. I'm nervous about starting over in a new place. New language(s), new team, new way of life, new climate, new culture, new everything.

Nope, nix that. Not new everything. There is one thing that is the same. My God. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, He is the same.

On the flight from Philly to, well, what was supposed to be to London and ended up being to Amsterdam, I put my ear buds in and listened to my iPod for a bit before drifting off for a bit of sleep. When embarking on new things, I often like to listen to music that is rooted in my past, music that reminds me of my history, where God has brought me from, how faithful He is. We didn't listen to much Christian music growing up, but we did listen to James Ward. I have one of his albums on my iPod and the tears started to flow on the plane when Rock of Ages came up in the queue.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

let me hide myself in thee;

let the water and the blood,

from thy wounded side which flowed,

be of sin the double cure;

save from wrath and make me pure.

Not the labors of my hands

can fulfill thy law's commands;

could my zeal no respite know,

could my tears forever flow,

all for sin could not atone;

thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

simply to the cross I cling;

naked, come to thee for dress;

helpless, look to thee for grace;

foul, I to the fountain fly;

wash me, Savior, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,

when mine eyes shall close in death,

when I soar to worlds unknown,

see thee on thy judgment throne,

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

let me hide myself in thee.

Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

The other anthem for this phase of life is this old Spiritual I grew up singing:

I want Jesus to walk with me:

I want Jesus to walk with me;

all along my pilgrim journey,

Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.

In my trials, Lord, walk with me;

in my trials, Lord, walk with me;

when my heart is almost breaking,

Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.

When I’m in brouble, Lord, walk with me;

when I'm in trouble, Lord, walk with me;

when my head is bowed in sorrow,

Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.

The Spiritual Emphasis speaker at the CMDA conference in Kenya kept saying, "If you remember one thing, remember that before your feet hit the ground in the morning, ask God, "Can I walk with you today?'" I suppose I do agree that life is more about us walking with God than Him walking with us, but you get the idea, right? Me and God. Walking the roads of S. Sudan together. A friend in Philly had the same image as she prayed for me. Seems like a good one.

Coveting your prayers.

"we are diverting to Amsterdam"

ahhhhh, international air travel. I love it. I really do. the people watching in airports that can tell you so much about a place, the figuring out how to maneuver to where you want to be in airports you've never been in, the anticipation of what movies you might get on this particular flight, leaving your luggage at the ticket counter and not having to pick it up until you reach your destination, the complimentary mini bottles of wine :) love it.

truth be told, however, I'm really not much of a fan of my plans being changed. But, TIA so I've had to get used to it. And it's actually a lot easier for me, when I know I really have absolutely nothing I can/could have done to avoid it.

So, 6.5 hours to London on Saturday night. My lovely sister had dropped me off, helped me get my luggage to the counter, and even rearranged/ditch things for later delivery when the pieces were, of course, overweight...risking coming VERY close to getting her first ticket on the car that was just moments into being in her care...crying with me as I hugged the last of my stateside people before heading off to yet another life...she rocks...but back to the 6.5 hours to London.

I read the first half of my first library loaned Kindle book - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time...great book, by the way, but more on that for another time...I ate food, drank a glass of red wine with my lasagna, and attempted to watch Moneyball but drifted to sleep - finally pulling out my red inflatable (yes, inflatable) fleece neck pillow that's amazing for just a time as this - and got maybe an hour of shut eye before it was time to eat again and get ready to land...or so we thought.

Our captain announced that our landing at Heathrow would be delayed for at least a half hour due to bad weather (mist and a bit of snow) in London. no problem. Next announcement about a half our later - "Heathrow has closed and we are diverting to Amsterdam"...hm. the next several announcements were harried messages from the head bursar on the flight who was obviously totally unsure as to what the plan was for all of us and feeling a bit pressured by that...

well, long story made short, when we got off the plane, we were instructed by a BA staff person which baggage claim to reclaim our luggage from and then which ticket counter to go to in order to find out how we would eventually reach our final destination. It turned out there were approximately 3 other jumbo jets full of people coming from such places as Bangkok and Sao Paulo, who were told the same thing. This makes for a long line. A VERY long line. But I get ahead of myself.

You will note that we were told to reclaim our luggage. In the end, this was the WORST part of the ordeal. I had a LOT of luggage. 5 years worth, to be exact. Including a bike box. I wasn't sure I was going to get it all onto one trolley, and was imagining how in the world me myself and I was going to manage 2 luggage trolleys...well, it all fit on one trolley. just barely. the bike box was perched on the outside edge, lying horizontally...well, that didn't really fit through the doorways so I had to turn it so that it rested vertically on the edge...but that in fact was impossible for me to see over, soooooo imagine me maneuvering this luggage trolley with approximately 300 pounds of luggage through the Amsterdam airport peering around each side every few seconds and proceeding VERY slowly so as not to mow anything or anyone down in the process...sheesh. Only once did I lose the bike box off the front of the trolley and luckily no one was injured in the process!

I managed to make my way very slowly to the ticket counter where I waited with all the others from my flight. We were on the first or second of the 4 or so international flights with BA that arrived unexpectedly and that meant we got to the front-ish of the line. I still waited about 4 hours in that line...and the people at the back of the line...I'm not even sure they made it to the counter before midnight....they had at least 12 hours of waiting ahead of them, and that's only to find out WHAT your new travel plan was - which may well include a lot more waiting. 2 lonely, strung out BA people at the counter trying to rebook 4 flights worth of people to their correct destinations. They deserved an award...but instead got mostly hateful looks from angry passengers...

My rebooking included BA putting me up in an airport hotel overnight and getting out on a KLM flight in the morning to Entebbe by way of Kigali. There was no skating on the canals of Amsterdam as my dad imagined, only conking out for a night of sleep in a hotel room that looked like an IKEA catalog :) The flight was smooth in the end and even better movie arrangements! It's the important things, you know? :)

I arrived at MAF guesthouse in Kampala without a hitch, but alas, there was no power. A shower by candlelight and a bed was just fine with me, and waking to do final packing and heading to the airport again to head to Kenya the next morning meant a short night.

But here I am in Kenya and the rest is history! Thankful to be here and see some of "my people"...old teammates and new, and learn a bit more about this endeavor that awaits me in S. Sudan!