WIRED at Christmas!

For me, being in Burkina at Christmas time does not at all feel like it should.  But the good news is that all the festivities that are happening because it’s Christmas have been fantastic!  We have had Christmas concerts and Christmas parties and movies and singing.  Its all been very fun!  On Wednesday we had the annual Wired Christmas banquet.  I had the whole youth group (38 people came!) head out to the Chinese restaurant downtown for dinner.  It was so great!  They all wore such fancy clothes and we had such a great time all eating together and hanging out.  After dinner we headed to the Nehlsen’s house for dessert and some games, pictures, and the final revealing of who every person’s Christmas angel was.  It was so much fun – and while I was looking around I could see that every kid that was there was having a great time too!  That made me so happy! 

The White Queen

The new Alice and Wonderland is one of my favorite movies.  I honestly could watch it over and over (and sometimes I do).  I love the White Queen, played by Anne Hathaway, who always walks around with a lovely smile on her face and her arms high in the air all proper and such.  This woman cracks me up.  She talks with her little accent while taking care of everyone she sees and leads her kingdom with such elegance and manner, all the while happy and joyous.  I laugh because I am so not like that and yet I can be.  The White Queen is genuine - and so am I.  I love my job.  And I have been known to walk around humming a joyous tune and genuinely happy.  Joyful really.

But some days are just harder than others.  And if I walked with my arms in the air, today would certainly be one where they would be down by my side. Thankfully though, I am not a White Queen who has to be proper and perfect all the time, but rather - a real person who can put her hands down and have a hard day. What's amazing about all of this is that in the hard times I still love my job (well so far!) and I am still joyful (thank you Holy Spirit).

For those of you who are curious today was just...life.  Its hard being the only youth leader for a youth group.  It's hard to be a youth leader during finals week.  Its also hard to learn French. But praise Jesus - tomorrow is a new day, and so is the next one. :)

French

My French teachers have not showed up to teach me in the last 3 days - I hope they haven't given up on me :(

I did get a text message saying one had malaria though.

Encouragement!

Yesterday I got a TON of encouragement cards from Mercer Creek Church - the Ellensburg CMA and my original home church.  It was amazing - reading each one just made my day, week, month!  I am so grateful to have so many people praying for me!  Thank you!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I was sitting at a table celebrating Thanksgiving with 20 people that I didn’t know just 3 months ago I couldn’t help but think about how strange this year has been.  Last year I had no idea I would not be with my family for Thanksgiving this year.  In fact we were making plans for what we would be doing for Christmas next year.  There was talk about doing something different – like Hawaii or Europe!  Of course that was me mostly talking; really I love my family so much and I would be totally and completely happy spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and my cousins.  Which is why this year is so strange.  But yesterday looking at these people at the table I couldn’t help but be so grateful.  God is so good!  He has brought me to a place with people I truly love – already.  Somehow God has changed my heart to be content and okay with this new change.   But it’s more than that too.  I really love it here.  Which is so weird!  So again, God is so good. 

When I was thinking about what I am thankful for this year I couldn’t stop – I am thankful for everything!  I really love my job.  I really love that I get to spend time with the teenagers here and make deep real relationships.  I really love that God is working through me – and there is no denying that because I couldn’t do this without him.  So when thinking about what I was thankful for this year, there was one that stuck out extra.  I am thankful for you who helped me to get here.  So many of you are praying for me and so many of you have sacrificed money so that I can live here.  Thank you so much.  I cannot say it enough – thank you for supporting me and loving me so much.  Your sacrifice means the world to me.  I am so blessed!  God is so good.  

Nerts

One of my favorite games is Nerts - thanks to my friends back at home. Well my friends here know the game!  So last night instead of worship practice, since we cancelled WIRED on account of Thanksgiving (which only a handful of my students celebrate because there are not many Americans), we played!  It was so much fun.

Also - the other night we were just standing around outside of the school and someone said "Lets play Big Booty!"  This is a game we always played with the Redding Young Life kids - I assumed no one here would have ever even heard of it.  But they did and we played!

Its things like this that make me love it here and not feel so homesick.

Sweet Caroline

I randomly watched a video of when I went 80's dancing with my Redding, California Young Life friends.  In the video we were dancing and all out singing to Neil Diamond's song Sweet Caroline and so this entire day I have been singing it.  I think I may have been driving all my frisbee friends crazy but it was a great memory and a great song! :)  Chris Feild, one of my co-workers quoted What About Bob saying "there are only 2 types of people in the world - those who like Neil Diamond and those who dont."

Here is Ryan and Danny singing it out! :)  Miss you guys! 

An update on my week.

I have had a fantastic week!  I have never had so many amazing deep conversations in one week – I bet I had more than 15 so far!  And it was just fun and so much of this week was spent with the youth!  It was a week where I felt like I was really doing my job.  Also so many people were so encouraging to me this week - I really feel affirmed - which is always nice.  

It started with school being canceled on Tuesday.  It was a Muslim holiday called Tabaski where they kill all the goats in a sort of sacrifice.  Everyone takes off work and school to celebrate and looks forward to it (maybe like our Thanksgiving with more of a religious purpose).  So I had an impromptu movie night at the Shafto’s house on Monday night since they could stay up late.  Their 2 kids are in the youth group – Robbie is one of my student leaders.  Also on Monday we celebrated Lorinda’s birthday at a nice French restaurant downtown! 

Tuesday was a great day too – the holiday canceled my French so I hung out at the Nehlsen’s house for lunch and stayed there all afternoon.  I also went to the Wolters house and worked on my talk for Thursday’s youth group.

My llama meeting was a ton of fun on Wednesday for two reasons: 1 – I love hanging out with my student leaders, and 2 – I actually made the meal!  I cooked a whole chicken (which means I cut off the neck and took out the insides) in the crock-pot.  This is my first time ever doing it so I was nervous but I didn’t hear too many complaints when the time came to actually eat it.  After the meeting I ended up going to the Nehlsen’s again to hang out with Kari and stayed long enough for dinner.  I am starting to feel bad because of the amount of time I spend there and the amount of times they feed me. 

I was able to go to the girl’s soccer tournament at the international school on Thursday.  Both my girl student leaders – Kari and Liesbeth are on the soccer team as well as several other youth group girls.  It was fun to see them play – I had a great time watching and talking to parents: It felt so American!  (Well besides the fact that the other school was all black and most of them didn’t have shoes)  Youth group was a lot of fun too – we are doing a Christmas angel exchange so everyone brought gifts and was excited to see what they were getting.  I am not a part of it but someone gave me earrings and I have no idea who!  It has been driving me crazy!  My talk on faithfulness went pretty well – I made a huge point of talking about how this series isn’t about being perfect all the time but its about God working in us.  Then I talked about faithfulness in terms of being faithful to God and faithful to each other.  Oh also side note: I woke up to my bathroom flooded and unsure of how to actually turn the water off…

Yesterday after French I took a short break and relaxed in the afternoon.  Kari stopped by and then I went back to her house again – the Nehlsen’s fed me yet another meal! J Amy is working on her masters and wanted me to proofread her paper so I spent most of the evening doing that (it’s a long one on Education of girls in Burkina Faso…very interesting).  After that we watched a movie with Kari, Peter (Kari’s brother) and Robbie.  By the time it was finished Amy had convinced me to stay the night because driving back on my moto that late may not be so wise.  Basically I had a sleep over with my students which was pretty funny and I laughed to myself as I fell asleep on the couch. 

Today no girls showed up for Bible study (if you want you can pray about that…they wanted it but no one comes…) so I am updating you.  This afternoon I am looking forward to teaching my English class and maybe, just maybe going to bed early.

Here is a picture of Micah, Nathan, and Robbie at worship practice last week.  Liesbeth is not pictured but she plays the violin most weeks. 

Elections

Hundreds of moto's, people on horseback, and people singing and throwing out flyers in support of the current president had traffic stopped after church on Sunday.  Elections are coming up soon and so demonstrations and talk in support of Blaise Compaore are becoming quite frequent.  

Night at the LOC

Last weekend I stayed out at the LOC.  My totally, completely, legit, co-workers with Envision - the Feilds - let me come out and stay with them for the night.  (I have a ton of co-workers with the CMA but the only other Envision missionaries with me are the Feilds.)  They live at a church plant, Christian school and Compassion site and they happened to have a short term team visiting from the States.  They have 5 kids and only one is in my youth group - he is a 6th grader.  The rest of the kids are in elementary school or not at all.  They are an awesome family and have helped me a TON in adjusting and living here.  

Because a short term team was visiting, the Feilds had some guys come who knew how to play the jimbay.  They gave us a little concert and taught some of the team how to play.  We also had an authentic African meal and we learned how to dance.