May 21st 2012

It's been 2 years in Africa!  It hasn't been easy, and has in many ways been a trial by fire.  But it has been good, I have grown as a person and been blessed to see a wonderful work grow too. 

I came here to do four things:  Love. Serve. Encourage. Learn.  On my 2 year Africaversay I think I want to revisit these words as a way of seeing how far all of this has come.

Love:  Is the answer.  Is the Key.  Is the only way to truly live.

Some people tell me I am good at loving.  Personally, I know I still need to seriously grow in this.  But I can say, without hesitation, that I do deeply love the Africans around me.  I just need to get better at remembering that all the time, and extending that love to ALL of them, even the ones trying to charge me too much money for things.

In terms of how has this goal played out over the last few years?  I think I’ve been able to be an instrument of love in a lot of crazy places.  Being white, people expect you to keep your distance from the average African.  I try hard to work against that.  Hugging people, laughing, dancing, celebrating, crying, praying, and working with Africans has been how I’ve tried hard to show and receive love. 

I love the love that we share at Cornerstone Veritas.  We have truly succeeded in creating a loving community.  My team is amazing, and has really embraced the family of friends model among us.  There is a lot of love between all of us, and that has been amazing and transformational!

 How do I want to improve over the next year?   Be more generous.  I think for me the way to opening my heart more to others is by giving more of myself to others.  This means my time, my space, my energy, my resources, and my abilities…create space where I can truly show love to people, come up with creative ideas for expressing appreciation and love! 

Serve:  I can say without any doubt that I have served during these two years.  Anything from dish washing and toilet cleaning, to teaching, training and mentoring, (and everything in between) I have tried my best to be at the service of those around me. 

Service has been a joy over the last few years.  I actually don’t mind too much not getting paid, it allows you to be more flexible somehow.  Yet, sadly, because of not being paid, I am starting to have to say no to some chances to work with different groups.  I am finding that my schedule is full of unpaid service work, and that I have to create time for fundraising or working connections that will pay.  This is frustrating.  I don’t mind saying no to service work, but some of these groups I would love to say yes to! 

I think an important part of service has been to empower the Ugandans I work with to do the work that we are doing with excellence.  This is taking time, but is worth the effort.  I hope that one day they are able to do this work without me, so I can serve elsewhere!

How do I want to improve over the next year?   I want to work hard to secure more personal and organizational funding, so that we can say “yes” to the groups that need us, but can’t afford to pay us.  Also, I want to see my team come up in a way that they can run what we are doing without me.  I also help my team to cultivate their ideas of how they want to serve their local communities and see those happen!  (Service multiplier effect!)

Encourage:  In a new cultural context is can be difficult to find ways to encourage people.  But I have tried.  I spend a lot of time talking and working with groups that just need to be inspired and encouraged in the work that they are doing.  This is something which I see as a big part of my role here in Africa, to help and encourage Africans to make their dreams for development come to pass. 

How do I want to improve over the next year?  In the little things.  I want to make a point to do little, encouraging things, especially for my coworkers.  Writing notes of encouragement, offering a kind word, and speaking into their lives with truth and love.  I think that this will continue to encourage those around me, and also encourage more community and love!

Learn:  These days I say “I’ve been here long enough to know something, but short enough to realize I know nothing at all.”   I think that is true.  Just as I think I understand something about life here, I realize that there are a billion other things I still don’t understand or know.  The learning curve is steep.  I’ve enjoyed learning many things:  how to dance, how to eat sauce with me hands, how to sing and greet in different African languages, how to get from one place to another without getting lost, how to get the price I need on something… but there is still so much I don’t know about life here.  I think I should probably be a lot more humble then I am about that too.

How do I want to improve over the next year?   Through focused, purposeful learning. Because I was not able to start my master’s degree this year, I have decided to focus on learning a lot of other things during this next year.  I want to focus my mind more on actual learning… about personalities, about leadership, about cross cultural communication and relationships, about development, about photo editing and document design.  Hopefully I’ll be able to discipline myself to do more reading and focused study during this time, in prep for getting my brain ready to do a master’s degree, and do it well!     

Love. Serve. Encourage. Learn.  Those were the 4 things I set out to do when I first came to Africa.  After 2 years of living here, it is refreshing to revisit these ideals and see where I stand. 

I could not have done any of this without all of you! 

Thank you for the years of support, encouragement and love!  I appreciate all of you very much, and hope that we can continue this journey together.