Fundraising Complete!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that you have helped me raise the complete amount for all the funds that I need for my trip to Sierra Leone. Thank you all so very much; it really means a lot to me that you would give so generously to my trip's fund.
In the meantime, if there is any extra money that you may have just sent in five minutes ago don't worry. My fellow team members may not have as wonderful friends as I do and they may need more financial help and so you will still be contributing to them (and indirectly still to me as we're all in the team gig together). But it is all for the Lord's work which is why I hope you gave originally and so thank you so much again.

Now. That was the easy part.

I'm gonna need you to be even more generous and thoughtful in the coming months. No, I'm not asking for more money, but prayer. That's mostly what this blog is about (otherwise had one of those fundraiser thermometors and nothing more). As I've said before I'm going to need lots of prayer before, during, and after this trip. I'll try to keep that prayer requests box on the left updated well enough so you don't always have to read my ramblings.

But really. Please continue to pray with me; it's what matters most.

The Plane Tickets

It's official. I am actually going to Sierra Leone this time. The flight info is in and I'm flying from Indy-Washington-London-Freetown on August 15-16 and back again December 15-16. Gonne be a long couple of days. But! I get to meet my team in London so we can hang out and bond and all that good stuff before hitching a ride to SL.

In other good news, I've posted a prayer request list off to the side there. All I really need is lots of prayer and while I will continue to blog stories and fun stuff, please check tat section at least and pray for me, then if you have time, you can read on to the stories that may have precipitated such prayer requests. But I know how hard it is to actually keep up with a blog from somone who is have a grand adventure overseas... they always write sooo much and it's hard ot keep track of. So at the very least, promise me you'll check the prayer request section.

Also, I'm heading off to camp tomorrow so my internet access will be much less. My deadline for raising the last $500 or so is approaching in that time, so please! If you are procrastinating, procrastinate no more! We're so close. It's been wonderful thus far, so thank you! :-)

The Latest

First, an update on my summer and pre-trip prep. I had been planning on a relatively relaxing summer with plenty of time for planning, and thinking ahead about this trip. Working at Taylor with a summer high school honors program called CRAM has taken up the past two weeks and four days. That was supposed to be it. But I received a call from Lutheran Hills, the camp that I worked at last year and one of the current directors is unable to stay at camp this summer so I'm filling in for the rest of the summer. This puts a bit of pressure on the pre-trip prep, but I'll have a week between camp and leaving for SL.

Needless to say I'm going to need lots of prayer even before I get to Africa that I can be well rested and ready for this adventure.

Second, the latest on funds. $4925! Only $475 to go (and that needs to be in by July 15)! Thank you for helping me meet the deadline for the plane tickets earler this month and I know we can make this one in the next two weeks. Thank you so much! :-)

A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

This book made me think about the source of Sierra Leone's problems and the evil that has wrecked the nation for the past decades. Once again, it was a very useful micro-history that helped me learn first hand the history of a nation through the story of one boy. As I read the last book on blood diamonds and the issues behind the civil war, I laid the blame squarely on the RUF, the corrupt government, the greed of the people, and most of all the individual soldiers who would violently destroy the lives of their countrymen. Ishamel Beah's book however, gave me a unique insight into the lives of the people involved in this war.

The reader saw from the first two-thirds of the book that Ishmael was really a very gentle and good boy. I followed his story as he naturally ran from disaster to disaster looking for protection and when he found it in the hands of the army that offered him respect, responsibility, and a cohesive nature, it was obvious why he would join. But I was soon reminded that it was not only the RUF that committed heinous acts against the Sierra Leoneans but also the government army with which Ishmael had joined. They attacked out of need for more supplies, but I was sickened how dependent they were on their drugs and violence to continue their cycle. I knew that the junior lieutenant that he became was a wholly different person from the boy who had journeyed away from the war when I read how he would relish the loss of hope in people's eyes as he murdered them.

Stories like that were rampant in Campbell's book and I felt nothing but hatred for those who committed those crimes. Here, I found myself longing for the innocent little boy to return and I could still see him behind the mask that the army had put on him. I was proven right when months after being turned into a rehabilitation facility, Ishmael comes around and finds himself renouncing his deeds and his life in the army and embracing peace and love for one's neighbors. This complete turnaround in eight short months shows that such things are possible not only for child soldiers, but even for the commanders and political leaders higher up in the conflict. Esther, the nurse at the rehab center who showed Ishmael incredible love, was an inspiration to me as I realized that my job would soon be hers, only on a different level. Instead of seeing the pain in the country and speaking badly of those who had caused it, I must follow the hard path that Esther took and recognize that even the most evil men are still worthy of love and worthy of our willingness to forgive.

As I work with the people of Freetown, people whose families may have been killed by Ishmael or child soldiers like him, I can help them see what I have seen in this book: that the ones who hurt them are people like them who were driven to their circumstances and while they may be faulted for giving into temptation (are we not all?) we must still have the capacity to forgive them so that they may begin to grow that capacity to forgive themselves. There is still a great deal of hurt in Sierra Leone. I will meet people who have lost limbs to men with machetes who deep down, also have a story like Ishmael's that recounts lost love and innocence and maintain a deep seated desire to return to that, but the amputees may harbor little but hate for their mutilators. Knowing Ishmael's story will help me to humanize even the “bad guys” of the story that I will find myself in this fall.

Moneys!

Let me just say that you all are great. I know it's been a while since I last told you how much had been raised, but that's because WMF hadn't told me yet either! Anyway, the latest came in today and...

drumroll...

$4595! Only 900ish to go.

Thank you so much... you are amazing.

Blood Diamonds by Greg Campbell

This ranks among the most terrifying books I've ever read. Not only is it graphically violent, really depressing, and very lacking in hope (things I'm accustomed to reading), but it's describing the place I'll be living this fall. I was sickened by the accounts of amputations and killings by ten year olds with AK-47s and it was even more chilling to know that I would be meeting people who had lost their hands to RUF machetes and perhaps the teen or twenty-something versions of those child soldiers. But it is for that very reason why it was very useful for me to read. As a history major and missions minor, I learned the importance of saturating oneself with the history of a nation or people before interacting with them. Much like small talk topics amongst acquaintances, this helps newcomers understand where someone is coming from by knowing what they have dealt with and the motives for their current actions. I was largely unfamiliar with the recent history of Sierra Leone and this book over turned some rocks that much of the world wishes had just been left undisturbed. But the people I will be working with have been more than disturbed by the events that have taken place over the past couple of decades and it will affect them and my interactions with them in the future.

Much of the time, I was overwhelmed by the large scale injustices taking place and I found myself wanting to find solutions for the whole problem of the corrupt government, illicit diamond trade, and other grand problems of Sierra Leone. But as I read (longing for the cozy books about the character of Christ), I thought to myself, "How would this situation be encountered by Christ?" And as I read, I found lots of overarching comparisons between first century Israel and Sierra Leone. A backwater and forgotten country, exploited by powers too large for the locals to handle, greed is rife among the puppets of the powerful regime, and conflict is tearing the people to pieces. What could be better than a champion Messiah (or well to do missionary with a big head?) Catching myself from falling into the trap of Jesus-driving-out-the-Romans type of salvation, I realized that as upset as I may get with the reasons for the situation, it is not my part to fix it all. Jesus was upset with the situation in His land too: He wept for Jerusalem. He simply worked with and loved the people He came in contact with while preaching the truth of God's love.

Just as Christ refused to drive out the Romans and restore Solomon's glory to Israel, I know that missionaries and aid workers must not go to Sierra Leone to fix the system and change the face of government and economy. As members of the aptly named Word Made Flesh, we must simply be Jesus in this modern broken land and do exactly what He did: work with and love the people we come in contact with while preaching the truth of God's love. It's by little efforts like that that the Church drove on through the ages while the Roman Empire crumbled and that the people of Sierra Leone will restore themselves to health and economic independence while the corrupt officials and smuggling that fueled the conflict die away.

The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey

We must get to know the real Jesus if we want to be His hands and His feet. Yancey's books reminds us that Jesus is not some austere figure in a stained glass window, nor is he simply a cuddly lover of puppies and bunnies. He takes us through an honest look at Jesus' life an paints a picture of an Incarnation of God who is actually very human, not the aloof spiritualist we see portrayed in movies. The Jesus we never knew is a man we may not have met in the tame versions of Sunday School, but is the explosively scandalous manifestation of the Creator in the form of the created. He's like Mr. Beaver says of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
However, the most stunning idea proposed in this book is not that Jesus was more human than we sometimes imagine Him, it is that with the Ascension, we (the Church as the Body of Christ) take over His work in being human ambassadors of heaven on earth. Therefore, it is important to learn about the true nature of Christ so that we can best represent Him. If we are like the shadows in Plato's allegorical cave that the world sees, as Yancey proposes and Christ is the light that is beyond the world's direct vision, we must not concern ourselves overmuch with casting the right shadow (that is beging the correct shape and size; doctrine and theology) but we must concern ourselves with becoming more transparent. It is imperative that we remove ourseleves and let others see Christ in us. St. Patrick captures this sentiment well in his famous Breastplate Prayer:

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ every ear that hears me.

In learning more about this honest look at the man Jesus was, the reader can become more self-forgetful and increasingly preoccupied with the person of Christ- His characteristics, His personality, His style, and His love. Setting aside these attributes of our own is difficult; we are taught from a young age that we are important and that our personality makes a difference. And certainly, we are not worthless (God considered us worth the death of His Son) but we are not so great that we have any reason to cloud the limelight of Christ Himself. The very word "Christian" means "little Christ" and therefore we must be imitators of Him. This begins by knowing truly who our subject of imitation was and is, without the cloud and fog of twenty centuries of fallen meddling. To go even deeper than Yancey's book, we do not stop at studying the historical man, but speak with and interview our subject- the Risen Christ we pray to each day. The more time we spend with Him and in His Word, the more we will become saturated with His character and peel away more of our broken layers so that He may be revealed.

In my preparation for my trip to Sierra Leone, I need to put this into real practice so that I can truthfully be called a part of "Word Made Flesh" that seeks to represent the Word (Christ) in the flesh. Yancey's book has helped me greatly in realizing this as well as starting me on a path to understand the full truth of Jesus as a human. My prayer life and continuation and growth in that area will increase my ability to reveal Christ in me more as I delve into Him and forget myself.