I want a doppelganger

One of the strangest struggles I've had as a missionary is having to be just one person. That's actually pretty classic for missionaries. We struggle with work identity, as we often have many disparate responsibilities on the field and not just one clear role. I struggle with having so many things that need to be done that I can do in the ministry but just not enough time to do them all. Missionaries struggle with culture identity, as we never fully fit into the culture where we serve and yet over time are changed enough by it that we don't quite fit in with our "home" culture either.

I've been especially struggling lately, since I was supposed to leave for Zambia this month but still don't quite have enough support to go, with longing to be in two places at once. I'm longing so badly to be over in Zambia, helping the centers to get started with the CTO and getting channels of transformational curriculum flowing in Africa, instead of just swirling over here. But I've got to acknowledge that God is using this extra time in the States for important things I didn't expect to prepare me; I just still find myself wishing that I could send a doppelganger of myself to Zambia to get started without needing support or other needed issues worked out. And maybe have one learning French for me, since I can never seem to find the time for that lately however I mean to. And have one doing all the little things like indexing one of our courses that still needs it, cleaning up the wiki where I keep track of our curriculum development, one to spend more time with family and friends ... etc. But the fact is that God only meant for me to be one person, who works hard to serve His people in Africa but also loves her family and dance class, who develops her mind as much as she puts it to work, who accommodates both who she is and who her boyfriend is, and yes, still has to eat.

Struck down, but not destroyed

There are so many great things I want to share about the week-long staff meeting we just had in Charlotte. We gathered from all over--from the home our westernmost colleague to our easternmost is nine time zones! But before I share the exciting things, I find it important to share our most grave prayer request.

Sunday afternoon we enjoyed a meal at George and Kathy's house (pictures to come soon, I hope!). Kathy began to ask Christie, my colleague and dear friend, about the situation for Christians in the area of Nigeria where she and her husband minister.

"The situation is very bad," she said. "This dress I am wearing today, I had it made to wear at my cousin's wedding. He was supposed to be married at the end of August. But in July he was killed in an attack. There was one day a blast from a car bomb so close to me that my office shook. Since churches have tried to put up security around their buildings on Sunday, the terrorists now wait in the streets and follow the Christians as they drive home to kill them. So before you go to church, you have to tell your children how much you love them, because you may not make it home alive. They have taken more villages in the north and declared there will be no Christians there. Some villages, they have killed everyone there. There was one village where they killed all the men but left the women. The children had to watch the women dig graves to bury their husbands. The terrorists have weapons our military doesn't even have, and no one knows how they got them."

Please keep the Christians of Nigeria in your frequent and earnest prayers, that the Lord will overcome the evil one and even use his ploys against him, as this violence is causing some to turn away from their religion and to Christ. Pray that our ministry will be used to bring the light and peace of Christ especially here.

Incarnational ministry

One of the most important lessons missionaries can learn is "incarnational ministry," which basically means just doing what Jesus did. Go and live with the people you want to reach, not in some locked-up sterile building, but actually among them, whatever kind of housing they live in, eating their food, wearing their clothing, speaking their language, running on their schedule, giving up rights to yourself you never knew meant so much until you realized they don't exist in this setting. Jesus did not come to preach aloofly what God expects of us, but to humbly BE God with us--amid all the dirt, pain, sickness, bureaucracy and hypocrisy, oppression, racism and messiness of earth, working redemption to make us holy. And that's what missions is all about--being servants of Christ, living His life in their world, that His touch might redeem every part of their lives.

So you might ask what that means for me, ministering for Africa from a laptop in Texas. Well, that's a lot of the reason why I'm needing to move to Zambia--there is a lot that an organization can do just as well at a distance, but to really disciple people to develop transformational education, to see what their needs are and how I can serve them to reach their communities, I need to be there in person. Please continue to pray that my remaining $900/month will come in quickly for that reason.

My last post about making the principles and programs fit in different contexts also ties into incarnational ministry--there's never going to be one package that fits all, yet all these different educators in different countries want to accomplish the same goal, and the same Savior works to bring it about. So please pray for me and Christie as we meet later this week to figure out how best to implement our curriculum the particular situation that the school in Nigeria finds itself. Please pray not only for success for E-ICT, but also that it will help us work with other schools in other countries - that in Nigeria, Zambia, Sierre Leone, Haiti, and many other places we may see students getting a biblical worldview, learning what it means to use technology in Christ, and applying it to more and more areas of their lives.

Uphill all the way ... but singing

Just because you've finished your task doesn't mean the work is done. That's what I've been learning this week as we've been trying to help schools that want our Computer Training Outreach. You see, we developed what was requested, an all-inclusive computer training program that teaches godly use of technology and the gospel with culturally relevant, proven successful pedagogical principles. It has minimal hardware and teacher requirements so schools can start it with limited resources. It's all finished and ready to use. And yet we're not done with the struggles to reach African students with transformational education. Because, when something's not working, you have to change things; that's what we did in using the educational principles. But changing things means it takes more work to implement it. There are school programs already running, with accreditation and government requirements that are different in different countries. We developed the program as one lump, but in Africa, you buy things in little pieces, not a big lump. Also, the scheduling and crediting of courses is different in different places. So what Anthony and I are having to work on is how to help schools in Nigeria, Zambia, and soon other countries to offer the CTO and have it fit their scheduling, pricing, and accreditation situations. I find this work rather tiring compared to my normal work, because there are so many "ifs" to deal with. Prayers for wisdom would definitely be appreciated. 

Also working on summaries of the courses that compose the CTO so our consulting and communications people can explain clearly what's in them. Then will need to get back to the filing seminar material, the Mothers & Media Bible Study, the GUI chapter of our programming course ... not to mention needing to raise the remaining $850ish/month I need to head out to Zambia! I am thankful to have so much work that is such a joy, to know that it can bring many to Christ; there's no greater joy than knowing and making Him known, and I consider myself utterly blessed to have this way to do it. But oh, how we need God's grace to see it implemented!

Rolling right along with work, and somehow life still happens too :)

Whenever I have a lot I'm doing that I could write about, I'm so busy doing it that, well, I forget to take the time to write about it! But here's a quick snapshot of life and ministry lately:

There are a lot of materials I'm working on for our partners, especially Christie:

• A manual that guides teachers through a seminar on the principles of transformational education. As Christie calls it, it's training on "how to teach like Jesus," how to make disciples as a teacher of any subject. 
• A seminar on file storage and using the Cloud - both the advantages and the dangers of having your data in someone else's hands. That, incidentally, got me speeding up a look into moving some of our own cloud use to more secure options. 
• A Bible study to accompany the Mothers and Media seminar. This helps African families consider the effect of media on them and consider how to best protect themselves and their children from the financial, emotional, and spiritual threats of media and implement instead godly use of technology.
• A programming course
• I'm also supervising (but not doing a lot of direct work) the development of a networking course, and possibly a computer systems course soon, too.

In addition to that, of course, I'm trying to get that support up to 100% so I can move to Zambia in September. For a refresher, and some new information, I'll do it in Q&A format:
Q: I thought your departure goal was August?
A: Yes, it was. But the TEN3 team realized we could really use an in-person conference of all our staff, and the earliest date we could practically schedule it was September. So I'll be attending that in Charlotte before I go, and am so looking forward to being with my colleagues again. There's just nothing like fellowship with people who share a kindred spirit and vision in the Lord.

Q: Is it September for sure?
A: No, still need another $810/month or so pledged (I'm waiting on a few people to confirm their amounts, so that's why I say, "or so.") I can't buy the plane tickets until I'm at at least 80% (about another $300/month), and can't leave unless I'm fully funded. So still hoping and praying!

Q: What will you be doing in Zambia?
A: At first, it may look a lot just like what I'm already doing, working on the blocks of curriculum with the team in the US, but from Zambia. However, I'll be making contact with educators who share our vision to work together on curriculum that meets what they want to accomplish, uses the transformational educational principles, so that they can not only make their curriculum more effective, but what they develop can be shared with similar schools around Africa and the Caribbean. We've also been looking into the possibility of my teaching a CTO, either to help a school get it started, or to help ministries improve their staff's computer skills.

Q: What about your boyfriend?
A: Yes, in case you, dear reader, didn't know, amidst my crazy life I decided to make it even more complicated by getting into a courtship, when I met Kenneth, a man who is as passionate about knowing and serving God as I am. (Okay, it wasn't right when I met him; it was after about six months of "yes, you're one of the best things ever to happen to me, but we can't date--this is not going to work!" ;) He is planning to move to Zambia too, but we're still working out the "when" and "how." Yes, this is going to be crazy hard if we have to sustain a long-distance relationship, but we're praying and investigating options and trusting God will work it all out.

Looking here and ahead: an interview

Someone asked me questions in response to my latest newsletter. Thought they'd make a good content :)

1.  What excites you most about the opportunity of relocating to Zambia?

Really being in touch with the people I've been trying to serve for the last four years, and being able to partner with them to get curriculum written in so many areas we've wanted to see developed: biblical health and life management, different fields like computers, business, and accounting, possibly even primary-level education!
I'm also excited about possibilities that I might have to help ministries offer the program we have already developed.

2.  Beyond your professional life, what are you passionate about?

Well, God is the passion of my life, and that's really why I am so passionate about my work is that it channels my passion for God, knowing and making Him known. Growing up, I loved school because all the areas of learning illustrate God's handiwork and character. Now I get to make disciples sharing that.
But to give an answer that has nothing to do with my professional life, dancing. I've always loved it. Irish set dancing has been an important part of my life for the past four years. Fortunately, I hear tell there is salsa dancing in Lusaka, so I'll have an outlet!

3.  What is one personal challenge you carry with right now?

Figuring out how my ministry and life plans are going to fit with my relationship with Kenneth. Loving my boyfriend and my work so much and not knowing how a long-term commitment to both would work is taking quite a bit of faith! But it will be worth it, I'm sure :)

4.  What are you reading right now?

Hebrews (with rabbit trains into Psalms, Isaiah, and Habakkuk)
Time of Singing (Christian poetry periodical)
Little Russian Philokalia (devotional book; gift from Kenneth)
Basics of Biblical Hebrew
Unhidden by Don Richardson (attempts to unify physics at the molecular and cosmic level with the nature of God with the ideas of values as dimensions and a hierarchy of laws that apply to both the material and moral world)
The Church in God's Program by Robert Saucy
Donal Grant by George MacDonald
The Cosmic Dancers by Amit Goswami (a fun one on the physics of science fiction classics)

5.  Any final thoughts you want to leave with us?

"Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
'For yet in a very little while,
He who is coming will come, and will not delay.
But My righeous one shall live by faith;
And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.'
But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the persevering of the soul."--Hebrews 10:35-39

6.  What would you be doing right now if money and time aren't an issue?

Exactly what I'm doing now. Except, with time not an issue, more of it.

Posted in an SIM periodical recently:

We have a system that placed missionaries into the stratum of Christian superheroes. Forget pastors being one step below God; we’ve all watched pastors fail and fail big. They must be mere human beings. But missionaries are people just short of godly perfection. That interpretation partly comes about from the same problem I have in comparing myself to missionary heroes in books. You can’t compare a partial story (the best and most interesting parts of their lives and ministries) to your entire story––blemishes and failures and all the unpolished pieces of your life.
...
But being a missionary does not make you a rock star. In fact, we’ve found that being a missionary is a surefire way to bring hurt, heartache, and challenges. Becoming a missionary doesn’t make you automatically nearly God-like. Rather, we see that it regularly (and sometimes painfully) highlights failures, shortcomings and areas of sin lodged in our lives. Living as a missionary does not mean that as you walk through the market everyday people will fall at your feet in repentance, begging to know the way to salvation. We find that getting opportunities to fully and powerfully share the gospel takes hard work and a long time, and seeing lives change at these invitations really has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God. --Steven Shepherd

I haven't been too frustrated with the "you're a missionary you must be a super Christian" attitude--probably because I've continued to live in the US all this time, they get to see me in my normal life, and it does seem a bit more, well, normal, than everybody's concept of a missionary. And maybe because I'm still young and new at this, all the excitement I put into my newsletters and blog posts is genuine. But I still resonate with a lot of what Steven said; I've found mission life to be a continual dichotomy of hope and discouragement, vision and drudgery, joy and frustration, all to the superlative. Which suits me well--I think I was made to live in extremes. For instance, I love getting excited about the idea of raising 2000 laptops to be teaching the gospel to 20,000 students a year. And then in real life that means a zillion phone calls and trips to get a few "maybe"s, hours on the floor surrounded by laptops as I take them apart, cleaning and exchanging optical drives trying to get one to boot, while rebooting another for the tenth time in hopes that now I've fixed whatever its problem is--and wearying as that is, I love that part, too.

Thanks for all your prayers as I finished up the material for the ICCM. It was a long two days at the end of last week, but I got it all done! Now back to working on laptops, a programming course, a networking course, and, as usual, support-raising so I can hopefully get to Zambia this August! That is the area in which I am most glowing with excitement, with the idea of living in that beautiful country and working face-to-face with people who are ready to help transform lives by the gospel in education. See my financial needs page to track my progress.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah!