last post

I'm not sure how many people will read this, since I'm back in the States now. But I felt the need to make one more entry...for the faithful few still left, here you go...

Since I have been back, I have: used a clothes dryer. Gone for a walk by myself around the neighborhood. Driven my car. Gotten on the internet whenever I wanted. Started collecting stuff for my new apartment. Gone shopping by myself. Used and thrown away a ziploc bag.

All things that I once counted as normal. Now, they seem weird, because I didn’t do those things in South Africa. Even American money is weird.

Welcome to reverse culture shock.

America itself has a different look and feel to it. And it’s not always a “good to be home” feeling. Yes, I celebrate the fact that the houses aren’t walled and gated in, that there’s no trash floating in the streets, that children aren’t running around playing barefoot without their parents, that there aren’t beggars and people trying to sell things at every robot (er, stoplight). But that’s just in my hometown; it doesn’t mean those things don’t happen in other American places. And it doesn’t take away the reality that still exists in Troyeville and so much of South Africa.

I feel slightly guilty that I can just walk away from a place and people in so much need, when they can’t. And I’ve come back to a country obsessed with stuff, with getting more and bigger and better things. I heard a statistic from Cheryl’s daughter-in-law: if America reallocated all the money it spent on ice cream in one year, it would solve the problem of hunger in Africa.

We have so much. They have so little. Why are we just sitting in our comfortable chairs, watching our big screen TVs, giving a sad look when we see the images of poverty on the screen before we switch it off and find something else to do?

But just throwing money at people isn’t a solution. I don’t know what the solution is. It’s a long process.

There are people over there working to help, doing their part to heal the community around them. Cheryl Allen is one of those people. Her heart is huge, and she has done so much for so many, trusting God with everything along the way. If I can be half of the woman of God and minister that she is, I will be lucky.

I constantly wonder what is going on over there, playing the, “It’s so-and-so time over there, meaning they’re doing this activity.” I worry about Nomalanga, Thabo, and Oyisa and how they’re adjusting to the cottage by themselves. I especially worry about Thabo, since both of his biological parents died of AIDS, and now he’s had to endure two more people leaving his life.

Fortunately, I’m not completely cut off from them. I can email back and forth with Carol and Amber, as well as a few other church people. Praise God for the internet.

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This will be my last post on this blog. There’s really no way to wrap it up with a neat little bow and concluding paragraph. Yes, I will be starting a new job and starting seminary in less than a month. But my time in Johannesburg is not “just a phase” or some thing I just did or a chapter in my life that is closing. It’s an experience that will impact me for the rest of my life. And for the people of Johannesburg, this life is still going on.

For those who are interested, you can continue to read about Troyeville Baptist and the Touch Life Centre through Carol and Amber’s blogs, as they will each be there for (at least) one year. The links are on the right side of the screen.

Also, for those who feel led to help out financially, there is information at the bottom of Carol’s site about how you can donate through the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. Every little bit helps. And please continue to pray for the people and the ministry there.

A closing thought from Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis:

“So many of us have been conditioned to think of our faith as solely an issue of us and God. But faith is a communal experience. A shared journey….the point of our stories and our faith journeys is that they are about something much bigger.”

Thank you for your prayers, support, comments, hugs, and love, and for listening to my story. And my prayer is that you may have been touched in some way, that you have been able to see that “something much bigger” that God is doing in us, around us, and through us.