leaving on a jet plane

It's that time again - that time when I pack my bags and peace out of town! 

For nearly two years I lived on a bus full of wonderful Africans.  Two groups of people that quickly became my second and third families.  I learned about their cultures, languages, tribes, cities, villages, families..... I realned how to tark with my L's and my R's arr mixed alound.  I learned to sing countless songs in languages I don't know and how to shake my cabina with the best of the white folk.

All the while, looking forward to the day when I could walk on their soil with them and experience their homeland as they have experienced mine. 

Well, friends....

Three more days.

We are on our way to Chicago. Actually, we are on our way to camp and we're stopping in Chicago on the way. Time is running very thin - the kids fly home on Friday. How has it been five months already!? Even I am not sure. We had our last and 100th concert on Sunday, then spent until this morning staying at the church. I love those bits of time together as a family. The next few days will be busy, full of emotions, and as I wave goodbye to my second choir - my family, I'm finding myself spending my little bits of free time researching flights to Uganda...

tick tock

Time.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.  A couple weeks ago I was convinced the wall in my hostie was ticking because I could hear the clock... but it was nowhere to be found.

Time.

I spent time looking for that clock.  It was driving me crazy.

I heard ticking on the bus a few days later, right after Uncle Garry threw away the clock that didn't work. After roaming around the bus with my ear to everything possible, I discovered the clock.

In the dashboard.

Always ticking.  Oi da.

To God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day.

On tour, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day.

February's Support Letter

(Keep an eye on your mailboxes!) 

Dear Friends,

I’m sitting in a warehouse turned Youth Center in northern California while fourteen Africans play what I think is baseball…? But there are no bases, no baseball, and no bat. There are instead four pairs of sneakers in four corners, a tennis ball, and twenty-eight bruised forearms.  In Creole there is a word, “Degaje” – which means to make due with what you have.  I think they’re pretty good at that.  Not always because they have to be – but because they don’t allow their circumstances to dictate their abilities. 

This is the African Children’s Choir at it’s best. 

Time to Hit the Road!

Have you ever sat by your phone and simply waited for it to ring? I mean seriously. Staring so much that your eyes glaze over and your phone ceases to be one and morphs into a blurry mess of many.

But you have no idea if someone is going to call you.

So do you sit by your phone and wait? Or am I alone in this one?

"We used to go to church, but then they started using the Bible SO MUCH."

This past week someone asked me, "Were you the one up there singing last Sunday?"  And so I said yes, that was me.  And he said, "Ahh, yeah, I thought so.  You know we haven't come to church a lot lately, last week was the first time in about 8 months." And I answered, "Oh yeah?" Then came the answer that made me so proud of my church:

"We used to go a lot.  Back when they did more sketches and they didn't use the Bible so much.  But now, it's just not the same.  Bible, Bible, Bible."

And a great big high-five to every single staff member at Crosswinds.

Church should be that way.  It should use the Bible.  "Bible, Bible, Bible."  That's the point.  Learning about it and being challenged by it and worshipping the God that wrote it all.  Together, one big giant family.

I encouraged the person that told me this to keep coming back to church.  I said the Bible is good, it should be used so much - and he said hesitantly, "yeah..."

Dear Crosswinds, kudos to a job well done.

the emotions of fall

I think about my children every day.

No, forget that.

Every hour.  My beautiful African babies that I was so blessed to spend 16 months with on the road.  I miss them terribly, and I have an extremely hard time accepting that it has been nine months since I have seen them.  Time flies by in ways I'm just not willing to accept.  Soon it will be one year since tour.  How does that even happen?

December 6, 2010 we North American Aunties and Uncle stood in the DC airport waving at the top of the escalator as our children disappeared out of sight, and we stood there. Helpless. Tears flowing, hearts full from our time together but completely empty as our precious babies were now on their way back to Africa.  It was cold outside - freezing actually. I remember walking around downtown DC in my ginormous Kermit the Frog coat, enjoying every last moment I had with the Aunties before we too parted ways.

December 6 was easily the single hardest day I've experienced.... maybe ever.

But the days leading up to it, the months, they were beautiful.  Wonderful.

Fall, 2010. It was the best.