Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
--Mother Theresa--

The world truly does get smaller every day.

A couple of conversations with good friends brought Africa to the forefront of my mind. In hindsight I really don’t feel like I hold romanticized ideals about the way things were. Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly things I miss about Africa, but there are also things I would pay not to go through again.

I don’t miss being the nameless white girl that can’t walk anywhere without being noticed; I enjoy feeling like I can get some alone time without being hollered at by all who pass. I don’t miss being befriended because I’m from America, getting cut in line EVERYWHERE I GO, sleeping under mosquito nets, constantly being asked for money, or having to explain myself twice over to a man. But there are, quite possibly, more things that I do miss. I miss the kids on my walk to school; laughing and speaking in broken Luganda while getting peed on by a baby and getting my sandals fixed for 25 cents (perhaps minus the pee). I miss the obvious: the weather, the food, the avocados.

But most of all I miss those I had come to call my family. I miss our “dance parties” which ended in a “well done” to Dani and laughter directed toward my attempts. I miss working in the garden until every part of my body is sore and my nose is burnt to a crisp. I miss cooking over fire and continually being told to “Be patient; it‘s not finished yet.” I miss walking home from class to hear Mama singing Christmas carols with the ladies from the church in accents I have to listen closely to understand. I miss hugs and kisses on the cheek with those I’ve just met. I miss the good conversation that comes when you talk to people you will never fully understand.

Though it is good to be back, a piece of me remains there. My new suite mate Ann Marie is from Cameroon, Africa so I still feel like a piece of last semester is here with me. And she definitely reminds me of the students at UCU. It’s funny; all the places I’ve been blur together more and more as time goes on. It was when I was in the Mexican Market on Nolensville the other day that the realization came. It seems unreal that within a matter of minutes I am speaking Spanish to buy groceries, passing by the roughest part of Nashville while waving to my friends on the streets, entering onto a beautifully kept campus, enjoying the company of my roommate, and laughing with an African. The world truly does get smaller every day.

Another one of those things that just don't have an answer...

Perhaps death is never an easy thing for those of us still walking around, but some forms of death seem far more difficult to take in than others.

Wesley; a man who could talk. If you were his friend, he would kill to keep you safe. On the contrary, you'd better watch out if you were on his bad side. I had seen him laugh; I had seen him cry. Glimpses of love were undeniable in some of his most sincere and sober moments.

But his greatest love of all was alcohol.

Upon returning to Nashville, I soon discovered that Wesley had frozen to death on the streets this winter. Recurring tears came as I realized the depth of the underlying truth. Anyone could find a place to stay in Nashville if they needed one. With Room in the Inn and various shelters, there's always somewhere. And then it struck me; he must have been drinking and thought he was warm.

My papa away from home; that's what I called him. And in his most sober moments, I really respected him as one. I sincerely hope he's "resting in peace."

I am Because We are.

I keep waiting for a day when there is an abundance of free time to sit and write; it's funny how those days never really sneak their way into our lives unless we force them to. And when we do intentionally lay them aside, sitting down and writing a blog is not the first thing that comes to mind.

So today I sit, finally making it a priority to communicate with those of you who keep up on my life, faithfully praying in the midst of your lives. And though this is a disconnected and electronic sort of "general" communication, I feel oddly connected to you all; particularly those from Antioch, the church I grew up in. I am continually recognizing so many of the subtle ways your investment in my life has impacted me, especially my interaction with generations both older and younger than myself. You all demonstrated a sort of love and hope in the lives of us young folk that I cannot ignore. Because you believed (and continue to, even when it's difficult) that God could do anything through us, I now believe it's true. Likewise, I now believe it about the little ones I see running around.

And today, that is the best encouragement. Because if I were the only one that believed God is still at work in the world, it would be terribly difficult to have any sort of faith at all. Especially in times when the country with the highest poverty rate in the world gets shaken by an earthquake not once, but twice. So it is that we lean on each other when weakness overtakes us, allowing Christ to make Himself all the more known as that weakness is transformed.

It's funny how such simple concepts take on so much meaning when they are lived out.

I've been back a month now and everything seems clear to me.

Just kidding.

Perhaps the reason I sat staring at the computer screen for 30 minutes before typing is because the opposite is true.

I am still sorting through the texts we read over the course of the semester, still gaining new insight as I read portions again, still agreeing with some parts while discovering I disagree with things I thought I agreed with. Still, on some days, refusing to open any books at all.

I was attempting to pack for second semester when I decided I ought to sit down and attempt to write about this portion of my life before going back to Nashville. More than just coming back from Africa to be at Trevecca again lays ahead. It will be strange to be back in Nashville and not living in the basement of a church, working for CSM and seeing all of the familiar faces throughout the city.

I mean, who ever ENJOYS packing for college, right? haha. But it somehow seems heightened.
Hearing Mama's voice over the phone or receiving text messages from my African friends seems strange. Though these things would have happened very similarly while there, I now gently touch a screen in order to text as opposed to using my screen-cracked punch-button phone from the same town. The relationships, though still between the same people, seem somehow different.

I had a pretty decent case of parasites, for those of you who desire to know. Going the natural route of colon cleansing and herbal remedies, I used the age-old remedy that's been around for centuries now: Wormwood, Black Walnut Hull and Cloves. But I'll be honest, the process of getting healthy again was longer and slightly less enjoyable than it would have been to simply pop the antibiotics.

Farewell to the people I have come to love

Goodbyes were difficult, undoubtedly. Due to the fact words seem far from sufficient to express the present, I won't ramble in an attempt to offer some sort of conclusion.

I anticipate seeing ALL of your faces!! So much more than you know. Perhaps this is an encouragement to you as it was to me:

I would like to beg you dear sir, as well as I can to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way to the answer (Rainer Maria Wilke (1903), Letters to a Young Poet).

The best use of $250 in quite some time

Some things in life are over-romanticized, leaving people disappointed when long awaited anticipation becomes reality. Safaris certainly do not fall into that category. After much confliction as to whether $250 and the final weekend away from my family here was justifiable, we headed for Merchison Falls.

Upon entrance into the Wildlife reserve, the first sight of a baboon began to chip away at my formerly held presuppositions as to what this weekend would entail. Though initially I felt like we were imposing on the animals' environment by traipsing about in our safari vehicles and making spectacles out of them, further exposure and discussion with those in the vehicle sparked a shift in mindset.

Who knows if the area would be preserved at all without tourist dollars sustaining its existence? At the rate Uganda is developing, it may inevitably be renovated if not serving some sort of purpose. In the world today, a price tag can't be put on preservation of the natural world. Though in words I would have made this statement before, the visual sight of what it implies is profound.

To speak of the visual sight in terms of beauty seems an understatement in some ways and in others, not fitting at all. Let's just be honest; not ALL animals are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But in the midst of the awkwardness of warthogs, the authority of lions, the grace of giraffes, and the divine interaction between tick-infested water buffalo and birds eating the ticks off of their backs, the beautiful sight of interdependence inevitably moves something deep within.

And I am left to wonder how we can doubt that there is something beyond ourselves.