another week has flown by and suddenly i have been here for a month. At first i wasn't sure i would last the weekend, but with God consistently beside me i am now feeling at home once again. going from a clean, organized, safe society to something that resembles controlled chaos, can be a little overwhelming, and it just took some time to adjust back. travel is such and awesome thing. it teaches us so much about the world, others, and ourselves. traveling outside of developed countries is especially eye opening, but so important, because this is how the majority of the world lives. it isn't always pretty, safe or easy. I have recently been spending time with a group of women who have AIDS. These women lives are hard, but yet somehow they still see good in life. they work in the fields, do odd jobs and walk many miles, and are sick on top of that. i have suffered in my own way, but not to the physical extent they have. i feel like that makes my struggling somehow not as worthy.
"How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich?
Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves "what is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack
of emotional stability, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of
poverty.That is the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus said
(mat 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty. "
Henri Nouwen
ultimately i think that whatever God allows us to go through is to bring us closer to him. wether that is a physical aliment or something more unseen, we see and understand we are lacking in that area, and that is where God can make himself most know to us. so far in my life i know that learning and school have been my biggest poverty. i didn't read till grade two, and struggled with so many other things. from an early age i realized i was at the bottom of the barrel. there was no where to go but up, and they only way for that to happen was with God. there were so many times that i wanted to give up, and actually did, but i kept on going, and eventually, after many, many years finally graduated from university. and somehow through all of that, learning is one of my favorite things.
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On a lighter note, something really exciting happened this week that i want to share. Two days after i arrived in meru, the grandmother of the people i am staying with came to stay. at first she was sick. she unknowingly had diabetes and malaria. but within a week the diabetes was under control and the malaria was gone. in meru culture only the children of the parent can ask them to leave, and since the son has been really busy with work in nairobi we have been stuck with this old poop for a month. she was quite horrible. i wont go into detail, but she only spoke kimeru, which i don't know, and would get frustrated when i wouldn't understand her demands, and then would occasionally hit me. finally got to saying, "arie kimeru, wewe" which means, "no kimeru, you do it." the rest of the family doesn't want to be responsible for her either, but we finally convinced her to go to her daughter's. we drove her up there, but the daughter wasn't answering her phone, because she didn't want her. but we didn't let that stop us. we just went and parked in front of some relatives shops till they came for her. i sang the Hallelujah chorus all the way home.
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