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How to Find Christmas in the Dark

  • by nic
  • Posted on December 22, 2017December 12, 2018

“And Jesus said to them, ‘What do you think? If a man owns a hundred…

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  • Africa

After all.

  • by nic
  • Posted on October 18, 2017December 12, 2018

Once upon a time we dreamed of Uganda. It was something like seven years ago,…

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  • Africa

Sing.

  • by nic
  • Posted on August 14, 2017December 12, 2018

A couple years ago I sat in a sea of folding chairs at a school…

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Serving With

  • Africa Inland Mission
  • Epic Church
  • Excel Church
  • First Missionary Church of Berne
  • Kapaa Missionary
  • Lihue Missionary
  • Muncie First Church of the Nazarene
  • Old Stone Presbyterian

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Kijabe, Kenya
00220

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My dorm boys are the actual best. 💛
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been taking life too personally.⁣ ⁣ Hardship’s as plentiful as air these days, and I don’t know how to bystand, how to keep my heart out of the fray. I end up freshly gutted by the same griefs sharpened with familiarity.⁣ ⁣ Still, my life is this lilting, gorgeous parade of things I don’t deserve. Exhibit A: my football girls. They are bright and honest in ways I find achingly funny, and they take care of each other all over the place.⁣ ⁣ I’ve been quitting my life roughly eight times per day, but every time I go back and pick it up and press on because, mainly: these kids. These RVA kids and Cure kids and KKC kids are the best thing that keeps happening to me.⁣ ⁣ If you one day find me keeled over, having drowned in my soup out of sheer exhaustion, please know that it was probably worth it. I might find this life impossible, but it’s also spangled with wonder.
These are the mornings we rise to a world on fire. Some blazes are heartbreakingly literal: New South Wales, Victoria, the Amazon. In others our dignity as humans is burning to the ground.⁣ ⁣ Since leaving the States seven years ago I sometimes feel like a teacher who stepped out to the bathroom, only to return to a class steeped in anarchy.⁣ ⁣ “What happened?” I’ll ask our friends back home. “I left y’all unsupervised for a hot second, and look. It’s all Lord of the Flies in here.”⁣ ⁣ But yesterday a student from our bible college shared about visiting a church in the valley. It’s so remote, she said, there are no roads. No schools, no medical clinics, no water. The Turkana people who live there don’t have houses — “And yet,” she said, “they built a house for God.”⁣ ⁣ She reported that the people received the gifts our church brought, Christmas packages of cooking staples, and immediately pulled open the flour to roll and fry chapatis.⁣ ⁣ “Don’t you want to save this for Christmas?” our people asked.⁣ ⁣ “We will get more,” they said. “Right now let us cook for you.”⁣ ⁣ 😭⁣ ⁣ Just when I think I might suffocate on my disbelief and cynicism, a neighbor drenches us in cold, sweet mercy, and I remember.⁣ ⁣ I remember that we can be kind. I remember that we can be healers and growers and peace brokers, stunningly generous with our flour and our hope. I remember that the very breath of God is in us.
It’s somehow 2020 and the only real thing I did last year was learn to wait quietly with people in pain. Still, it was a gorgeous year. I love how my kids and my dorm kids were funny and brilliant just by showing up. I love how a dark river of wind rushes through this place from twilight to sunrise. I love the baby monkeys wrestling like furry tumbleweeds in our yard. Part of me hopes this next year will be kinder, easier, remarkably better behaved. Most of me knows, though, we live in a broken world and there are things worth fighting for. So okay. 2020 it is. May God be lifted high.
Merry Christmas from Kenya! He has come for us. ♥️
(When you live in Kenya but want to make a snowman, so your mom recruits the frost growing in the freezer)
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