This one's for you, Becca....

This is why I love fall in Dahlonega, and I told you I'd take pictures for you :)

Contentment

Ah, contentment. Something the Lord has been trying to drill into my head ever since I've been back from Africa, and only very recently have I let it sink in. When I got back I was depressed, sad, angry, and just did not want to be here. I think deep down, I wanted to feel that way. I wanted to come back changed, and maybe that meant being depressed if I wasn't in Africa. I think somehow I thought that if I tried to be content here, I'd go right back to the person I used to be, unchanged, and this summer wouldn't have made a difference in my life and how I live it.
I kept thinking about joy and how so many Africans had it despite their circumstances. I mean heck, I even blogged about it. I LOVED that they had so much joy when they had nothing. They found joy in their circumstances, yet I couldn't turn that around and look at it in my own life.
Maybe my circumstances weren't what I hoped they were. I was sad b/c I missed Africa and the people that I grew to love there. I wanted to be back there holding those children, spending time with our translators, and having a blast with my team. It's also so easy to forget your problems in Africa. We were thousands of miles away from our problems. Being here, we have to face them. Even though I may not have wanted to be here, why couldn't I find joy here? I think I was just too stubborn to see the joys in life here. I didn't want to be joyful. Deep down, I wanted to mope around and not be happy. And the devil used every opportunity he could to keep me there. It took some great friends who never gave up on me and gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get me to snap out of it. In all that mess, I lost focus on God and my relationship with Him, and I hurt people close to me that I lo.
When these realizations hit me, I knew something had to change. I wanted to change. And God really changed my heart in so many ways. I'm content with being here, in America. I'm joyful here. I worked at my daycare the other day and at recess I sat on the playground where the kids were playing. Anthony, who happens to be black, was apparently tired and decided to sit with me. Then he layed his head in my lap. It brought me back to Africa (not just cause he's black) because kids would always just sit with me or lay on me. It's one thing I missed most. And in that moment, with Anthony laying on me, I knew I was in fact content here. I even knew that if I was to never make it back to Africa, never see my kids again, I'd be okay. I had a peace about it. God blessed me with an incredible experience that I'm thankful for, not something that leads me to be discontent with where He has me right now. I'm not just content here, I'm joyful as well, and I want to be here.

June 12th

When insomnia kicks in, sometimes I decide to write. I know it's been awhile, but I'm writing now :). And since it's late (after 4am) I'm just going to copy some out of my journal. It was the end of our first week in Nsoko... "Today our task was manual labor. Half of the group went to Manzini (city about an hour and a half from Nsoko) to stay at the white house (the house owned by AIM) and half stayed here to work on building a house and doing stuff for Pastor Gift. Anna, Zech, and I helped Pastor Gift with some concrete stuff that lasted around noon (We made a cover for his septic tank, and put some concrete next to some water spickets). Later, we were talking to Nelly, Thandie's sister (Thandie was our translator) and decided to go on a walk. I stupidly wore my Old Navy shower shoes and they absolutely killed my feet. I have really painful blisters from the strap between my toes and also close to the heels of my feet. They were full of dirt and just painful. The walk was great besides the pain, but the whole time I had to think about how I'm blessed to have shoes and that many of them, especially the children, don't. I have no room to complain when they have so much less that I do. Then, later, I walked barefoot (seeing how I couldn't wear my shoes b/c of the blisters) to the fire pit with a little girl. I didn't know there were prickly thorns EVERYWHERE on the ground and they hurt SO bad. Once I got out there, I had to come right back (and you might be thinking, "what was the point of going out there then? well, I'm asking myself the same thing) and there was no way around it. The girl I was with didn't have shoes, and I could tell the thorns hurt her just as badly, so I carried her on my back which added to the pain b/c of the extra weight. While I walked back, I kept thinking that Christ suffered so much for us, the VERY least I could do was take a little pain and not complain if it meant this little girl wouldn't be in pain."
And the next day, I had to hike a mountain. Sound painful? Indeed it was. But God taught me a whole through my pain and many illnesses, and I wouldn't take them back for anything. God broke me. Physically. He physically broke me so that I could relate to the Swazis in ways that my teammates maybe weren't able to relate to them. I knew what kind of pain was caused from not wearing shoes. I became so much more aware of whether a child had on shoes and if their feet were in any pain. So many times I carried a kid on my back even if it wasn't comfortable after awhile b/c I knew they would have to walk barefoot otherwise. I just couldn't put them down. And I think I had a cold or some sort of sickness 85% of the time I was there. Not all that fun, but God was able to let me relate to them. So many of them were sick. Dying even. It made me thankful for my life and that I did merely just have a cold when the majority of the people we came across who were coughing or had cold-symptoms probably had TB. Being in Africa and seeing the pain and the sickness and the death makes you so much more thankful just for life. I'll never take my life for granted again. God moves even in sickness, even in pain.