Real Lives

well...another 10 days have passed since we wrote. there are so many ways in which it feels like 2 months! each day here feels so rich and full. it is so much more unknown what is going to happen each day than when we were in minnesota. there was a predictability (that we can miss) to waking up, seeing Liz's car in her driveway, saying hi to Janet, talking to my mom at 8 a.m., bopping around town, trying to convince Jeff to go to Chipotle or Punch or Noodles for dinner, etc...

it feels like here there is a much more blank slate and unpredictability to how the day will go. a lot of that is linked to having george and dorothy and osward HERE at our house and inviting them into our lives. there really are, with them and katie here now, 9 people's lives being lived here during the day. it is VERY dynamic! i will get into some of that dynamic in a minute, but first want to communicate that there is a tremendous peace and calmness at the same time. i am sitting on our covered patio with the wind gently blowing, birds chirping, sun shining. i have a cup of coffee (in my favorite new pink mug!), i went running this morning and so have that sweaty sense of accomplishment, etc...so it isn't HECTIC, persay, just very DYNAMIC!

first of all, katie mooty has arrived! she got here 9 days ago. it has been amazing. she is a wonderful friend who graduated from westmont this spring and is headed to grad school in a year and was willing to join us here for a few months. we will have her do a blog soon to communicate her experience (and clara is dying to, also, so that will be coming, too!). last night i was flipping through my journal reading some stuff to jeff and i found the day when it dawned on me to call her to see if she could come...fun to read that now in light of the last 9 days we've spent together. God knew when she said yes what a JOY she would be for all of us. she is loving and caring and thoughtful, has a servant's heart that sees needs and quietly meets them. she has taken on a mentoring role with the girls-- is reading Scriptures with them where Jesus talks about loving our neighbor, and has thoughts on the poor. She is out in the yard kicking the soccerball around with them, etc. She is already an integral part of our family life. Jeff and I are going to be able to have a date nite each week, which will be wonderful...all of these things are a gift. But, i would say the biggest gift of all has been the connection that she and i have had. We come from a similar place-- Edina, Colonial, Westmont-- so there is some deep understanding that makes sense because of that. But, beyond that, as i have watched/heard her digest her first days here, i have just said, "uh, huh, yes, i know, yes, yes, yes..." our reactions and needs are similar-- wanting to KNOW these people, what that does (open you up to MORE than you can imagine) balanced with a deep need for rest/reflection time...needless to say it has been a total gift and joy to have her join our family!

we have had a few major happenings in the midst of a lot of little, normal things. i'll start by sharing some of the normal things. we have really established dinner time. our meals have become pretty "normal"-- stir fry, burritos, chicken and rice, etc.. it feels like there is a real rhythm with that time, and it's at our table that we've had our whole marriage and sometimes in the midst of dinner you can forget that the context has completely changed. i have my car and it's insured now, so i do a fair amount of running around-- going to the store, little errands, picking the kids up at school (more on that in a minute), weekends are "weekend-y"-- sleeping in a bit, coffee, jammies till 10 a.m, etc...

so many other things that are NOT normal!!!! i am sitting here at this table watching george water a garden that's been started that will feed an army. i am serious. i think there are 40 tomato plants, carrots, lettuces, squash, watermelons, peas, etc... we've never had a garden. the kids are very excited. jeff asked george to give the kids jobs in there for the weekend so they are excited about that. they also want to get chickens, so we can have chicks and eggs! it's like a little hobby farm. no goats or anything yet (or ever!) but it's very different than our branson st. yard with hostas and impatients!!!

the girls are going full steam ahead with their organization they started at home, TFC (things for children, and other people in need). clara dreamed this up and started it with her neighbor friend sara in MN and brought some money they had made from selling cards, artwork, bead necklaces, etc. they turned the $50 into kwachas and have used those kwachas to do some incredible things. the biggest one was part of an amazing story.

last friday a young woman came to our gate looking for dorothy. i got dorothy and then dorothy came to me to explain that this woman (young, early 20's, baby on her back, 4 year old in tow) lived at the property across the street from us. her husband worked for the family that lived there. a new family had moved in and told them that they didn't want them to work for them anymore, gave them 50,000 kwachas ($15) and told them they needed to leave the next day. the husband had gone out to a compound and found a SHACK for them for a month with the the 50,000 kwachas (a typical compound home w/o electricity, plumbing, etc. is 200,000 kwachas, so this is literally a dirt floor and maybe walls...) so this woman came to dorothy as her husband was putting their meager belongings in plastic bags to ask if we might have "piecework" (an odd job or two) that her husband could do so he could buy food for them for the week. dorothy was basically translating all of this to me with this family standing there. i was totally overwhelmed. i asked george to come and help me discern if there might be work to do alongside him. george (he is amazing) was wonderful. helped me to figure out on the spot how to walk into this. the man left to take his wife and 2 children to this shack and came back to work. i had an amazing conversation with george and mike (the husband) as we talked about a good job, fair wage, etc. for a week's worth of work. in the meantime, while mike was taking his family to their new "home" i explained to the kids (the girls) what was going on. they immediatly went into action and put a note together for him and 60,000 kwachas for food for them for the week. when i was talking to mike and george about what would be a good job, i explained that the girls had raised some money and wanted to share it with his family and this wouldn't be a part of the money he earned, that it was a gift from them so that he could get food on friday for his family, that this was a part of their faith in God growing from KNOWING to ACTING and it blessed us/them to do it...oh, how i wish everyone could've seen those moments. jeff witnessed the girls actually giving him the note and the smile on his face and the life breathed back into him....so...mike is here now, working as hard as i have ever seen someone work weeding in our backyard. i talked with him yesterday (through dorothy) and asked how his wife and children are doing-- very well, thank you, he said. and i told him that he has been a great example to our kids of working VERY hard. he just beamed. jeff talked to george this morning about asking him to continue working next week, but to spend 2 of the days looking for a permanent job. he is thrilled...i am amazed...

that was katie's 3rd day here and it was only the beginning...

as all of that was happening, jeff had come home from work for an early lunch and after i filled him in on what was going on/what had been decided/introduced him to mike, he said, "there's more. dorothy just got a call from her sister. her brother is dying." so, i went back through the house to the laundry room and there was dorothy, bawling at the sink, scrubbing bennett's dirty socks - we had been talking/praying all week about her brother jimmy (who is 22 who she has basically raised b/c their mom died when jimmy was 6) who wasn't eating/was constipated, etc. he had started vomitting and going diarrhea and by the time she got the call from her sister, was totally out of control. (george explained that when they get a hard call like that at work, whoever is calling usually downplays what is really going on b/c they don't want to give you the real news at work; so there is this wild dynamic of extrapolating on what you've been told b/c you know it's worse than what you're hearing.) dorothy was just heaving, sobbing, this is her last brother of 5. all the others have died. the last one died a year ago and she was standing in that very place when she got a similar call. dorothy is a very vibrant, joyful, full of life kind of person, and she was just heaving with anguish. katie and i held her and hugged her and talked very practically about what she needed to get him to the clinic and got her together enough to leave and go be with him...

she left and i thought i would crumble of emotional exhaustion. meanwhile, the kids were all home. they're bouncing off the walls b/c they've been home/with each other and me exclusively for about 2 months... i am a train wreck, katie's right there with me...we got through lunch and she gave me some space and we continued walking through the day. oh yes, one of jeff's collegues from work was coming for dinner! our first time having "company" and i couldn't even think straight!!!!!

it turned out, of course, to be a wonderful time with davison and his wife dorothy. she is an angel, a mother theresa in her little corner of the world. she and her husband are from zambia, have 5 children of their own and have dedicated themselves to serving "in the midst". one of their children has special needs and instead of spending her life (which wouldn't be unreasonable, in my book!) managing her high need family, they have always embraced and folded in others around them. all sorts of cool stories, katie was able to draw one thing after another out of her. we sat with someone who is so LITERALLY being Jesus' hands and feet. and she was just telling us her story. it was a delight, and an inspiration...

amazingly, we had a fairly "normal" weekend. hung around and had a big yummy breakfast on saturday, went a ways out of town to a reptile farm (note: katie and i hated it. you know how when you go to the reptile exhibit at the zoo they have those little signs by the snakes cages with a world map with the place where that snake lives highlighted, well, we were ON THAT PART OF THE MAP! the signs said things like, "avoid sidewalks after dark as this snake likes to warm themselves on the hot cement in the cool of the evening"... and nile crocodiles, that you CANNOT see when they are in the water, but when they come out are 12 feet long and happen to live in rivers like...the ZAMBEZI! where we spent the saturday before in a tippy boat!!!!!!!!! but jeff and bennett...they were in their GLORY!) sunday morning we tried a church that had wonderul worship, but we probably won't go to, went to a little market, had latte's, played soccer after rest time, etc....

we dove back in on monday...gearing up for the start of school by going out there on monday to get school supplies, tuesday for orientation, and FIRST DAY yesterday! i was thankful for yesterday for the little snatches of time we spent on the campus the last few weeks (going for tennis lessons, dropping off papers, etc.) b/c it felt a bit familiar. it was SO HARD to leave the kids yesterday. they were all very excited, but i felt like i was pushing them off the edge of a cliff. the only grade school experience we have known has been the kids being at the grade school I WENT TO with teachers who we either knew or met and felt like we'd known forever (miss you guys, leslie and dan and patty!) the clincher was that mackenzie's first unit is titled: "chaos creates confusion". their school is VERY MUCH like highlands in it's integrated, thematic, experiential approach, so we dropped mackenzie off with 2 bags of school supplies spilling everywhere in a classroom that looked like the teacher had just unlocked the door at the end of july. nothing on the walls, furniture everywhere, no explanation, construction zone signs all over. kenzie walked in with her eyes hot with tears and i had to leave. as it turns out she had a fabulous day and the teacher quickly explained that organizational systems bring order that we all need and that they are going, as a class, to start from scratch and organize their room. NOW mackenzie was in her ELEMENT!!!! but i'd say jeff and i held our breath for most of the day yesterday, wondering what their responses would be. bennett was the least enthusiastic, but warmed up in his reflections after being home awhile. it certainly isn't comfortable, no berry patch anymore! he had some things he liked doing, but wasn't so sure about the kids. i pick him up in an hour, hoping he had more fun today. but we know that he will settle in. clara was ALL SMILES as she walked down the sidewalk to me...bursting with news. 2 friends-- Poppy and Courtney! loves her teacher, loves her gym teacher, loves her music teacher, got an award for being a risk taker by doing a skit at music, etc. , etc. Mackenzie was super excited too. nice girls, loves her teacher, excited! we are so thankful. that's an understatement...

i spent the morning running with katie and my new friend debbie (who has been my biggest blessing) and then getting a latte and reading/journaling/resting with katie...oh my goodness, was that wonderful. so needed. so good. LOVE writing in my journal...

...came home to dorothy near tears....she took her brother to her sisters three hours away this weekend b/c she needed to work this week and all of the public hospitals are on strike so she couldn't get the scan/test she needed to for him this weekend and her sister called to say that he had taken a turn for the worse and her dad "took the day off from work" to go and get him and...unbelieveable...she waited all day for the call from her other sister here that would tell her what condition he is in....it never came. we had a long talk right before i started this blog and she told me that he is back now and doing o.k. and she talked to jeff this morning and he said that we will give her the money to get him to a private clinic this afternoon...

do you know how much money she needs???? 65,000 kwachas. that's $15. that's what i would spend on paper plates and napkins and cups for a picnic!!!!!!! so...we will continue to walk with her in that. please be praying for jimmy. and for dorothy. and for wisdom in how to love her well...

i have this little friend, john, who comes to my car when ever i stop at the market/gas station near our house. i saw him three times yesterday. the first time we talked a bit and i gave him some money (20 cents) to get some apples. the second two times he was just saying hi to the kids. "bennett, how was school today?" "girls, how was school?" i think he is about mackenzie's age, no shoes, no going to school. hangs around on our little corner (with a lot of other people)...i want to be knowing more of his story...i'll let you know as i do. but he is a bright spot for me. i look for him.

when i said i wanted to KNOW people here i didn't have any idea about george or dorothy or mike and his family or john or dear, sweet debbie, or the families we met the last few days at the kids' school. it's happening. it's a bit more intense than i anticipated! but, i also feel i am able to rest in ways i hadn't anticipated either. so, God is holding me close in all of that.
more will follow. thanks for listening.

p.s. jeff's job is going really well. he is finding a great place for himself. encouraged about getting some things done/going-- contributing. that has been his prayer, it is cool to see it happening. Loves working with an almost all Zambian staff - learning a lot from them.

p.s.s. i forgot to write that we had george and his family (wife, sister in law and three little girls) over for dinner on monday! it was wonderful and difficult. how do you build bridges when the chasm is so wide? of course, the kids led the way, just playing together, enjoying each other, not thinking about it too much before or after! it was a good beginning of time with them, though...