Simple Gifts

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The happiest childhood imaginable,

12 hours of sunshine a day with occasional torrents of rain to give rest to the land.

And remind everyone about his or her mom at home waiting.

Free range community

In your face community

Take advantage of you community

Missionaries don’t really get to choose their friends- community.

Homeschooling isn’t that bad.

I was surprised at how much fun it became. 

I released 7 awesome pre-schoolers into the wide world this week.

They will be going to Kindergarten or another country next time.

We used to sing “’Tis a gift to be simple ‘tis a gift to be free,

‘tis a gift to come down where we ought to be” as our closing song every time.

Simple Gifts. Repentance is the theme of that song.

And our 2 classroom rules for the world: Respect and Stay Together!

But now we must part.

Living as minimalists here and they don’t even know what they are missing.

Besides their cousins.

And grandparents.

But today is catching crickets and running free,

Mom can I go to school now? Bounding blue backpack down the hill riding on a little boy with a heart fully alive.  Oh my heart, you are so full of life!

The Glory of God.

15 kids with a half dozen dads playing Ultimate on Sunday afternoon.

2.5 bags of chocolate chips and 2.5 months remaining- we made it!

Waking to a million songbirds in the white foggy dawn on the green hills of Africa.

Make the coffee, read the verses, pray with true gratitude over a bowl of cereal

And for strength to do our work this day.

Give us strength to do this work today.

Homemade pizza every Friday,

Long skirts, t-shirts and ladies with fire wood on their heads- looking like my hair.

Some things I won’t miss.

But then again, the freedom to know that nobody minds if I rock the missionary wardrobe.  Nobody minds, not even me.  Some things I won’t miss, but maybe I will.

How was Africa?

Please don’t ask that.

Africa is a big hot mess and so am I.

More gray and gaunt than I’d care to be, but it is a sign of the times.

I told her we are going soon.

Are you glad?  Yes.

She asked me if I’m ready to go back to the creature comforts.

Well, not really.

It’s not that at all really.

It’s just time.  The season has come.

It’s time to start packing up all our simple gifts of this world into 8 Action Packers.

How can I pack this freedom?

How can I pack this simplicity?

How can I pack community?

Little Miss spent the afternoon making mud balls with her friends.

Mommy, can I take my mud ball with me?

How can I describe to you the feeling of living here and leaving here?

Can your heart stretch to hold this breadth of beauty and plunge to contain this real suffering of humanity?  It’s stretched so thin sometimes I think it might burst.  How can I pack that into a tidy statement

“Oh Africa was nice”?

How can I describe the way people here care for each other,

And respect others,

And speak in such indirect ways so as to not offend anyone,

And they remember people so well here,
And how people can endure.

It’s not tidy but it is simple.

It’s a gift that we have been given.

And we will never be the same for it.