Harvesters Oasis

There are so many reasons why I love this place, but the primary reason is that it's such a true and beautiful representation of what Jesus did while he was on earth.  He was a carpenter, a teacher, a preacher, and a healer who sought out and loved the outcasts of society.  Some 2000 years later, in the countryside of Sudan, his example lives on.

Every morning people from the village wait to see nurse Brenda at the Harvesters clinic.

The incomplete house for Dr. Perry, who will oversee the new maternity and children's clinic at Harvesters.

Lawrence, the agriculture engineer, tends to the garden with some local workers.

If only we had some mozzarella, balsamic, and basil to go with these tomatoes. 

Fresh cucumbers and okra. 

The pineapple garden, with Harvesters church in the background.

A new mahogany dresser in the workshop. 

Some of the 500 students who attend Harvesters school.

Dinner time for 150 orphans: rice, beans and fresh watermelon. 

If you'd like more information about Harvesters please visit www.hrtn.org.

Goodnight from the future.  

The Next 365

The last few days have been wonderful and overwhelming.  I’ve settled into a little studio apartment, gotten reacquainted with the staff, made myself dizzy too many times from spinning around the kids during play time, and begun outlining how I’m going to spend the next year.

I'll be teaching an english class, helping with the child sponsorship program, writing content for newsletters and the Harvesters blog, meeting with other NGOs to develop partnerships, and mentoring the teenage girls.

The more I learn and plan the heavier this begins to feel.

On Wednesday I spent some time reading some of the kids’ official profiles.  After I’d finished the “J” folder I had to walk away for fear of ending up crumpled on the floor.   Child D found alone in the bush at the age of four.  Babies E and H who were triplets, except that their brother and mother died during childbirth and their father could not afford to feed them without their mother’s milk. Child A, left orphaned after his mother died of a snake bite and his father during a car accident. Child J, whose father was killed by LRA rebels and who then witnessed his mother and siblings shot to death by “angry soldiers” during the night.

During the next year I’ll be meeting weekly with all the teenage girls from the orphanage and the village, mentoring them, teaching them, loving them.  They’re between the ages of 11 and 20 and span all grades: a 14 year old in a preschool class, and a 20 year old in 6^th grade.   I met with the girls, all 82 of them (I’m going to need nametags stat!) and asked them to write a list of things they’d like to discuss and learn.  Any expectations I had about fun, light-hearted meetings quickly vanished

On their list (verbatim):

Sex

How to wash your underwear

Period (how to care for it)

Parents hating girls

Pregnancy cases

Child abuse

Early marriage

How to handle your family when you marry

Lack of school fees

Learning the responsibility to become a good mother

I feel inadequate, unqualified and completely unworthy to be entrusted with such responsibility.  But I’m grateful that God will not give me anything beyond what I can bear and I trust the words of Psalm 32:8, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.”  

In the enduring words of Lloyd Christmas: "We're There"

Highlights from 2.5 days of travel from Washington, DC to Yei, Sudan:

1.  My last meal on American soil for the foreseeable future at Dulles Airport: sushi and gummi bears.

2.  The KLM movie selection.  I recommend “A Good Year” with Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard.  The plot is predictable but the acting and scenery are worth it.

3.  My teammates / friends / traveling companions singing a very hearty Happy Birthday to me at the Amsterdam airport.  Nothing like maintaining the stereotype of loud Americans.

4.  Successfully avoiding the ugly cry while reading birthday cards my parents had given to me.  Noone wants to be the weird girl crying into a plane window.

5.  Surviving morning rush hour in Nairobi.

6.  Arriving at the orphanage to the kids singing “thank you for coming, we are so glad you’re here.”  Melt. My. Heart.

7.  Seeing old friends who are new neighbors.

8.  Being woken up at 1:45 in the morning by loud, raucous African music to find out the next morning that it came from a “disco” ¾  mile away.   Loud neighbors exist even in Africa.  Next time I’m calling the homeowners association.

How did I get here?: The Long Version

As I gazed out the window onto the barren land of North Africa on a flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi on my 28th birthday I found myself thinking, "how did I get here??" and was immediately reminded of a moment that happened more than a decade ago.  

I vividly remember watching t.v. when a commercial aired about giving money to help impoverished children; some old guy with a gray beard wearing khakis was walking through some slums in Africa and on the screen were images that stunned and haunted me.  Children with glaring ribs and protruding bellies, with rags for clothes, sat on the ground covered in dirt and filth.  Their eyes were lifeless and despondent and they didn't even have the energy to swat away the flies that nipped at their noses and mouths.  How was it possible that I lived on the same planet as these children?  There I was in a big, beautiful house with food in the refrigerator, clothes in my closet, toys in the garage, and all the hope and opportunity I could imagine, while half a world away countless children would die from hunger or a treatable disease that same day.  In that moment I knew that one day I wanted to help those children; I didn't know when, or where, or how, but I knew that someone had to, and I was willing.

In the succeeding years I graduated from high school and went to Penn State, where I majored in journalism and political science and minored in French, with grand intentions of moving to Paris and becoming the European correspondent for a major news network. But... well... things didn't exactly happen that way and after graduation I moved to Washington D.C. where I lived for five years.  I liked my life.  A lot.  I lived in a lively neighborhood and walked to and from work every day.  I burned through too many pairs of Asics from running miles along the Potomac River. I had great friends all over the city and we made our way through the best restaurants.  I traveled regularly for my job and visited Puerto Rico and Santa Barbara and everywhere in between.  I joined an amazing church and had a wonderful support system with my parents living an hour away.  Life was everything I thought I wanted.

Then things started to change.  In March of 2009 the Dow Jones dropped below 7,000 and I watched as friends lost their jobs, neighbors lost their homes, and my own investments lost their value.  But I was repeatedly drawn to the verse of Luke 12:48: "to whom much is given, much is expected," and I was continually overwhelmed by how much I had and I realized that I wasn’t given much to keep, but so that I may give to those who have less. 

Around the same time I got a call from my best friend, Molly, who told me that my old church was planning a mission trip to an orphanage in Sudan and I should consider going.  Spurred by the call of adventure, the opportunity to visit Africa, and a desire to help the needy, I filled out my application and sent it in immediately.   Nine months later I stepped off a plane in Yei, Sudan and my world changed.  We stopped to get our visas at a mud hut - a mud hut -  and there they were, the children I’d seen on that commercial more than ten years ago.  Wearing clothes that I wouldn’t use for rags, their stomachs showing the mark of chronic hunger, they starred at me with hopeless eyes and my heart broke. 

Sudan is a place full of pain and suffering beyond anything I will fully understand and during my short time there I met too many hungry, shoeless children in ragged clothes who will never attend school, mothers who lost husbands during the civil war struggling to feed their children, and people crippled by polio because they don’t have access to health care.  Yet amidst such darkness is a place of light and hope.

Founded by Dennis and Lilly Klepp, an American couple from Wisconsin, Harvesters Reaching the Nations is an orphanage and school where hundreds of children have been rescued from the worst of tragedies.  Almost 150 children live at the orphanage and eat three hot meals a day, sleep in beds with mosquito nets, receive health care at the clinic, attend school, are loved and cared for, and learn about the redeeming love of a gracious God.  More than 450 kids from surrounding villages attend school at Harvesters, some walk six miles each way, and they eat lunch at the cafeteria, which may be the only meal they’ll eat for the day.  It only took a few days at Harvesters before I felt a deep desire to return, and after asking Dennis and Lilly if I could come back I started seriously thinking and praying about what it would look like to move to Sudan to volunteer for an extended period of time.  Since that initial meeting everything fell into place and God graciously provided confirmation, encouragement and peace every day as I planned, second-guessed myself, and prepared for the hardest and most exciting adventure of my life.

This blog will chronicle my life throughout the year: the daily happenings at the orphanage, my experiences in a third-world country, personal commentary on the political situation surrounding the upcoming referendum, and musings on faith, poverty, love, sickness and everything in between.

Thank you for joining me.

P.S. Future posts will be much shorter and have more pictures, I know you probably have a real job and don't have time to sit around and read blogs all day :)