Why was a man singing in the stairwell so early in the morning?

When Ted got up his first morning in Nairobi, he asked why a man had been singing in our stairwell so early in the morning.

Dave and I looked at each other, puzzled. We told Ted we hadn’t heard anything, but he assured us he heard a man singing.

Ted was a college student who lived with us for a summer. He had come over to work in one of our offices and the housing coordinator arranged for him to live with us.

He reminded us of our own kids: a great sense of humor, excellent manors, and a positive attitude.

And he called me “Mom.” I loved it.

But his first morning in Nairobi presented a mystery to both Ted and us.

Dave and I hadn’t heard anything, but Ted assured us he heard a man singing and the noise echoed through the stairwell.

Now, our apartment building’s stairwells echoed because the walls and floors were stone or terrazzo (stone chips and concrete with a smooth, hard surface), so we could understand that Ted might have heard an echo.

But, a man singing in the stairwell?

Just then we realized that Ted had heard the Muslims’ pre-dawn call to prayer from a nearby mosque. Their calls occurred five times a day starting about 5:30 am, even before sunrise. Dave and I had become so accustomed to hearing them that we’d tuned them out! (from Grandma’s Letters from Africa, Chapter 15) 

Mystery solved!

Is teaching at an MK school in your future?

Teaching at a school for MKs (missionary kids) could be the greatest experience of your life!

Really!

I know a few dozen teachers who can testify to that, including my husband and my daughter.

Hundreds of MK teaching positions go unfilled every year, but today let’s focus on just one school:

The need:

In Mexico, Oaxaca Christian School’s needs for next year (2012-2013) are as follows:

Principal

Librarian

Music and/or art teacher (part time)

Computer room supervisor

Kindergarten teacher (part time)

Receptionist (second semester)

Social Studies teacher (part time)

In the future, they anticipate the need for a 3rd-4th grade teacher and a physics-chemistry teacher.

All classes are taught in English. Like most missionaries, teachers raise their own support and volunteer their time.

Oaxaca Christian School’s needs are urgent. Missionaries’ ongoing work depends on having teachers for their children.

If you can serve in any of these positions or recommend someone for them, please contact the school at: ocschool@prodigy.net.mx or by phone at: 1-520-829-3107—this is a Vonage Phone and can be called from any American phone.

The setting and the ministry:

Oaxaca, Mexico, is home to hundreds of indigenous peoples, many of whom have no Scriptures in their own languages.

Missionary families serve Oaxaca's indigenous and mixed populations through Bible translation, Bible recordings, community development, church planting, leadership training, medical and other mercy ministries.

Oaxaca Christian School, organized as a volunteer, parent-run, Christian school, serves about 60 children from kindergarten to twelfth grade and prepares the children of missionary families to enter American and other foreign universities offering an American curriculum.

The school is centrally located in Oaxaca City, about 300 miles south of Mexico City. UNESCO has registered the city as an international historic site.

Madelyn’s story:

Madelyn Roese answered the call and writes, “I will forever cherish my experience in Mexico,” but she wasn’t so sure in the beginning.

“When I arrived, my initial reaction was fear,” Madelyn admits. “The classroom’s cement floor was covered with dusty boxes filled with books, files, and teaching materials. Desks and chairs were stacked around the room. And class was to begin in a few days!

“I cried out to the Lord saying, ‘I can’t do this!’Then, in His still small voice I heard Him say, ‘I know you can’t do it, but I can.’”

Click here to read how God gave Madelyn a treasured teaching experience at Oaxaca Christian School.

  

Remember: Oaxaca Christian School’s needs are urgent. Missionaries’ ongoing work depends on having teachers for their children.

If you can serve in any of these positions or recommend someone for them, please contact the school at: ocschool@prodigy.net.mx or by phone at: 1-520-829-3107—this is a Vonage Phone and can be called from any American phone.

A dizzy American (me), continued

Last Wednesday I shared a couple of happenings in Africa that left me dizzy. 

But that’s not all! Consider this letter I wrote home:

We work among an amusing mix of people on our staff—from Switzerland, the United States, England, Scotland, Canada, and New Zealand.

Even among the Americans, some come from the Deep South, others come from New England or California or the Pacific Northwest, and each of us has distinct ways of thinking and living and working.

Add to that our different church denominations, different life experiences, attitudes, education, priorities, and prejudices.

Each has his or her own expectations, spoken and unspoken assumptions (such as the place or value of women), and unique communication style—though most of us don’t recognize we have them.

All these factors can cause offense, though I’m sure no one intends to offend.

Too often the following is true:

Add to that fatigue, disappointment, sickness, marital issues, culture stress, and homesickness.

Some people talk too much and work too little, and others talk too little and work too hard.

Add all that up and what do we have?

A whole bunch of people in need of God’s grace! Only He could accomplish anything through a group like ours. (from Chapter 13, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)  

A dizzy American in Kenya

Here’s a glimpse of life for an American in Kenya:

It was sharing an office lunch table with a Cameroonian man, an English colleague, another from Ireland, a Swiss woman who usually worked in Central African Republic, and two Kenyans.

It was being an American standing in a Kenyan store owned by an Asian merchant, buying a jar of honey with a label in both English and Arabic which says, “Produce of Australia, packaged in Singapore for Giant Impex of Manchester, England.”  (from Chapter 11, Grandma’s Letters fromAfrica) 

No wonder I felt dizzy sometimes!

What is home? Where is home?

I always envisioned that when I grew old, I’d live the life of a traditional, quaint little grandma—the kind that knits baby blankets and focuses on all things family and home.…

… but, I was in for The Surprise of My Life. God and my husband, Dave, had other ideas: Africa!

A few months into it, thanks to my non-traditional missionary assignment, I was asking myself: What is home? Where is home?

I wrote this in a letter:

April 30, 1995

Nairobi, Kenya

During our first twenty-two months in Wycliffe, we have changed countries thirty-nine times.

On our recent trip, which began last November, we did business in seven African countries.

Then, on December 3, we set foot on three continents: Africa, Europe, and North America.

Our work in North America took us to thirty-two states and two Canadian provinces.

Over our trip’s five and a half months, we slept in sixty-six beds and put about twenty thousand miles on the car.

         

And now we’re back home in Nairobi.

For those of us whose assignments require a lot of travel, “home” is the place where you get to unpack your suitcase—all the way.

“Home” is where you get to choose which TV program to watch.

“Home” is where you make the rules—and take out the trash and make all the meals. (from Chapter 8, Grandma’s Letters from Africa) 

What is home? Where is home? Missionaries and their kids ask those questions a lot.

Answers don’t come easily, and when they do, they don’t always fit into a tidy, traditional definition or locale.

Marilyn, a former MK (missionary kid) asks, “What is ‘home’? When you’ve moved a lot you can’t help but ask yourself that question often.… My mom taught me early on in life that home is where your suitcase is.”

In Marilyn’s blog post “Defining Home” at communicating.across.boundaries, she writes of the need for creating a home, the need for “starting traditions, planting roots where there was seemingly rootlessness and providing all the textures, sounds and smells that make up home.” 

When Dave and I left for Africa, our daughter Karen, fresh out of college, wondered about her home. In her guest blog post, Where was home? Karen wrote, “I had always known that no matter what, I could always go home. But where was home if my parents were in Africa?"

In Loss? OrAdventure? Karen wrote, “I’ve learned that home isn’t a building.…  I missed my parents but just like God, it didn’t matter where I was compared to them, they were always available, their love and care didn’t falter. Home was with them—even in letters, e-mails, brief phone calls, and summer visits. God’s love and provision was steadfast and true. His Word was challenge and comfort and home.”

At such times, we recognize the truth of the wonderful old song, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.…”

While dwelling on this earth, we need to do what Marilyn said: plant roots where there is seeming rootlessness and provide all the textures, sounds and smells that make up home—but, all the while, hold home loosely in our hands. 

Something better waits.

This Mother’s Day: A way to help mothers around the world

This is an updated post from April 25, 2010.

Mother's Day is May 13, and you can honor the mothers in your life AND support women like the ones pictured here by shopping for great gifts at Amani ya Juu’s online shop. 

Amani ya Juu is offering FREE SHIPPING on orders over $25 now through May 4. 

I have a personal connection to Amani ya Juu.

I’m so excited to tell you this! God answered my prayer of many years: Among employee photos on Amani ya Juu’s Facebook page, I found Elizabeth! 

If you’ve read Grandma’s Letters from Africa, you know how dear Elizabeth is to me. I’ve prayed for her every day, hoping God would provide for her and her daughters, and now I know Amani ya Juu is the answer to those prayers!

Amani ya Juu (which means “a higher peace” in Swahili) is a sewing-marketing-training project for marginalized women in Africa, and when I lived in Nairobi I often shopped at their store. (I still use their potholders, placemats, and eyeglass holders every day.)

Amani’s mission is to spread God’s peace by addressing physical, spiritual, emotional, and social needs for refugees, victims of ethnic clashes, famine, war—for women marginalized for various reasons.

Amani equips and empowers women to become agents of peace in their own families and communities.

I consider Amani ya Juu a celebration of what God wants to do—and delights to do—when people come together to help one another, especially the most needy.

Learn more about Elizabeth, Rahab, Amani ya Juu, and a way to help mothers around the world by checking out Amani ya Juu’s online catalog, their blog, their Web site, and Facebook Page. 

ELIZABETH

That’s Elizabeth pictured on the top right!

Her daughter Rahab’s picture is below. She, too, works at Amani ya Juu.

After losing track of Elizabeth for several years, I contacted her through Amani ya Juu and she wrote back, saying that Rahab and her younger daughter, Hilda, have finished their education and are grown up with children of their own now.

Amani ya Juu quoted Rahab in their blog about Mother’s Day:

"As women, we are the teachers of our children. That which we have taught them shall be passed on to their children too."  - Rahab, a mother from Kenya and a leader in Amani’s jewelry department

Amani produces high-quality bags, jewelry, home decor, clothing, and accessories in original designs using local materials.

Remember, in honor of mothers everywhere, Amani ya Juu is offering free shipping for orders over $25 between now and May 4.  

A gift from Amani inspires hope, shares peace, and helps rebuild lives, families, and entire communities—for Elizabeth, Rahab, Hilda, and hundreds more like them.

I hope you’ll check out their online shop. Let me know what you buy! Perhaps your purchases were hand-made by Elizabeth or Rahab!

Kanga: A most interesting and essential item

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Shortly after Elizabeth started working at our flat, she politely explained that employers supply their househelpers with a kanga, a colorful piece of cloth, to cover their clothes like an apron.

We talked it over—should I buy one or give her money and let her choose one for herself? I decided to give her money, the equivalent of a couple of dollars.

         

That conversation served as my introduction to a most interesting and essential item within the East African culture. People wear kangas—rectangular pieces of lightweight cotton fabric, worn sometimes by men but most often by women—in dozens of ways for dozens of purposes.

Kangas can serve as aprons, dresses, skirts, head wraps, shawls, baby slings, diapers, tablecloths, tote bags, and blankets. I’ve even seen women roll them into a doughnut-shape and place them on their heads to balance baskets of produce.

Each kanga consists of a bold traditional design in bright colors and a border containing a Swahili saying or proverb. And this is the most intriguing part: the sayings and colors silently communicate important messages to others—personal, religious, educational, or political.

For example, they might encourage hard work, good character, and generosity.

A woman wears a white kanga during the full moon to tell her husband that her heart is pure.

A woman’s kanga can convey that she’s happy, sad, jealous, vengeful, ready for romance, ready to marry, or ready to divorce.

There are special kangas for pubescent girls, brides, newlyweds, the divorced, the dead, and for a woman who has just given birth.

With a kanga, a woman can tell her mother-in-law to keep her distance or warn her husband he’d better not stray.

Given all that, and since kangas’ messages are in Swahili and very difficult to understand, I’m glad I asked Elizabeth to choose one for herself. There’s no telling what I might have picked out! (from Grandma’s Letters from Africa, Chapter 11)

When my mother visited Kenya, Elizabeth—bless her heart—gave Mom a kanga.

The Swahili message on it read: "Moyo wakupenda hauna subira,” which means “When you love someone you have to keep checking on how they are doing.” How perfect for a mother who traveled half way around the world to check how her daughter was doing!

Here Elizabeth is showing Mom one of the ways to wear a kanga.

I still have that kanga. It’s a treasure because it was from Elizabeth.

Here’s a YouTube video clip in which three sweet young Tanzanian women show how to wear kangas and explain what their Swahili messages mean.

You might want to fast forward to the 2:30 mark to see an impressive demonstration: using a kanga to carry a heavy bucket of water on the head—without spilling a drop!