I don’t want to forget Africa. I can’t. I need to remember, I need to remember the simplicity of living. The endless skies. Friends to chill with when you come home to. Sarah living a couple hundred feet away. Waking up with a vibrant passion and singular purpose.

Here, things are different. If life in Africa was a comfortable stroll, life in the States is doing 90MPH on the freeway. I suppose I’m having lane-merge problems.

So it’s time to do taxes. And it’s time to start work. And don’t forget to take care of the yard. Oh, friends aren’t as accessible as they once were. And I still haven’t put roots down in a church community. And your family’s spread out across a couple of continents.

I feel like my mind and my heart are scattered over a million different people and places, and it’s frustrating. I need to focus. I need to hear. In many ways, I still haven’t felt like I’ve come back home–I’m somewhere between departing and arriving.

We meet Douglas, Nelisha, Faith, and friends to share some coffee on our final evening.

One morning, I woke to a revelation that I fear a life wasted.

I realized that one of my biggest fears was that if I were to totally surrender my life to follow Jesus anywhere, I’d become irrelevant. My skills and talents and education and training would be wasted. I wouldn’t reach my potential as a Web developer, a designer, an entrepreneur, a musician, or a writer.

Would I follow Christ if it meant being:

• a laughingstock?
• mocked and despised?
• alone?
• wasted potential?
• poor?

Do I believe that having Christ is worth far more than:

• a career?
• familiar friends?
• a relationship?
• a comfortable life?

Morning after morning, I’d stare these questions in the face and wrestle with the voices in my head. Could I really “deny [myself], take up [my] cross” and follow him? (Mk. 8:34) Even if it meant a life wasted in the world’s eyes?

I was reminded that God is my Treasure, and he is worth far more than anything I can lay claim to.

No matter how I wrestled with it, I realize that none of my fears held any water in the grand scheme of it all. I couldn’t make it work out in such a way where I could justify a life that was surrendered to God with one half and still held onto the other half.

I couldn’t deny the richness of the Gospel diamond. I couldn’t feel content with a lukewarm existence.

Ultimately, I was reminded that the my greatest desire was to enjoy God, and I couldn’t do it unless Jesus really was my Treasure.

About halfway through this trip, I started feeling peace. It was a simple, quiet contentment in living: I have really cool friends here and my skills are useful and the mosquitos have stopped biting, gosh I’m almost comfortable. 

I’m realizing that I was happy not because my conditions for my life were met–that my potential would be realized, or what I had to offer would be utilized–but that I could trust a God who would provide for me, where ultimately he himself was my great reward.

Collin Tomikawa once told us, “you don’t know how strong the altar is until you put the weight of your entire life on it.” 

That’s what I’ve been learning: that to know the will of God in my life, I must stake my life on the altar and trust.

Trust–that as I give it all, my good Father lavishes gifts on me: a solid community, fulfillment in using my skills,  and the ultimate gift of Jesus himself. Not to use these benefits as preconditions for surrender, but to hunger for the treasure of Christ so much that these benefits are “count[ed] as rubbish” in the ultimate calculus of this new life.

I’ve got a lot to learn, and a lot of listening to do as I return home. I don’t have concrete answers about the future just yet, but I trust that I’ll hear them in the right timing. I’ve told God that I’m open to wherever he’s going to lead me, be it in ministry, in the workforce or in something completely unforeseen and different. I know he’s my good Father, my Treasure, and I can follow Him.

Mmm, Rusk…

Originally uploaded by andrewhao

Allow me to introduce you to the rusk. Think of a biscotti, but chunkier. Perfect in coffee or tea for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or midnight snack. Awesome.

Zhie heads a womens’ empowerment project in Maun.
Zhie harvests maize and peanuts and guavas in her backyard.
Zhie has provided foster care for a local child.
Zhie singlehandedly raises at least three kids at home, at least one of whom is an adopted relative.
Zhie is a community organizer, visiting folks, making connections, informing them of local events.
Zhie is the cool mom all the kids wish they had.
Zhie has the coolest backyard in the neighborhood.
Zhie goes four-wheeling to get to houses out in the remote boroughs.
Zhie does most of the construction in her home by herself.
Zhie knows everybody in Maun (or at least seems to).
Zhie dreams of starting a business of her own.
Zhie is a social worker, getting families the food they need, doing counseling and advising with folks in the community that need it.
Zhie probably needs a vacation.

Needless to say, Zhie’s pretty cool. We got to hang out with her all of today after church. First we made some sandwiches for lunch. Then we got to work, fixing up her dresser drawer that was coming out. Sarah and I put together a heroic effort to get everything together before storm clouds began rolling in.

Here, Mike and me show ‘em what it took to fix up that dresser.

Not long after that, we walked over to a local backpackers’ camp, where we shared some sodas.

Zhie and Sarah on the road.

Finally, we enjoyed a traditional meal under the clouds and stars. We had a blast laughing, swapping stories, talking politics, and watching lightning electrify the whole sky.

Check out more of our Botswana videos!

Mercy Ministries

Last Thursday, I shadowed Zhie, a social worker and community organizer, as we drove on dirt roads from borough to borough and delivered food. It gave me a great perspective on life outside the mission. Zhie really inspires me as somebody who pours her heart out into what she does. She’s running a womens’ empowerment program, mobilizing women to create crafts at home and selling their products on the market. Sarah will keep us updated on more details.

IT Support

 

Sometimes I help Owen out in the IT room. I run around to different peoples’ offices and houses, pinging servers, running antivirus scans, plugging in switches and configuring network adapters.

Studio 7

Sometimes you can find me in Studio 7, the radio station studio of LBOM, working with producer/manager Kelvin Kaonga on a mix. We’re learning some new microphone and mastering techniques, and are applying it to his current projects. I really like how I get a chance to hear African music and be a part of its production. We’re currently working on a politically-minded freedom song by a Zimbabwean reggae artist… way cool.

Magazine Design

I’m starting the gist of my main project: editing and managing a newsletter-ish magazine for the mission. I’ll be working with another missionary intern on this project, which will involve interviewing folks and getting their stories into print. I’ll be doing the production work for the magazine as well, which is cool because I get to relive my Vertigo days, doing writing, design and layout.

Meals

I’ll usually share a meal on the porch with Sarah (either breakfast or lunch), all whilst being eaten alive by mosquitos. Speaking of mosquitos… I’m being feasted upon but things have gotten better. I’m definitely going with the jeans, even if its 90 degrees outside.

Food-wise, I’m glad I weaned myself off of the meal point system my last year of college. I’m getting a decent amount of cooking done, but as you can see from the picture above, I like to stick with the basics.

Hanging out

Sometimes in the afternoon I’ll shoot hoops with the students. They all think I’m really good. They’re all still in puberty.

Chinese people

Walking about town, I realized that many of the shopowners were Chinese, proving that Chinese people really are everywhere. There’s even a Chinese kid at school that I’m getting to know. Because he doesn’t know English (or Setswana) very well, our conversations in Mandarin are really good. How funny that my Chinese identity is still relevant here.

An even cooler note: I’m finding that many African dialects have phonemes very similar to Mandarin which helps me when I think of certain Setswana phrases in their Chinese equivalents. Awesome!

Housemates

I’ll catch a convo here and there with my housemate, Lawrence. He’s currently paying the lobopo, or bride price, so he can marry his fiancee. To do so, he’s started up a local fumigation business which will give him a side income on top of his graveyard shifts as the security manager for LBOM. I’m trying to see if an Internet presence will help his business.

Oh yeah, here’s my buddy and housemate Christiaan. He’s from South Africa and a fellow IT guy in the mission. He’s also an all-around Mac fanatic.

Church

In the evenings, I’ll attend the midweek church service, or the youth group service. Last week I was asked to lead worship for the youth, something I haven’t consistently done in five years. It was fun.

Sundays I’ll be running the sound board in the back. Some things never change

I have never felt so small, standing under the African sky. I wish you could be here to see it; sprawling diamonds falling out of the Milky Way, meteors arcing overhead over staccato lightning beats. Bolts. This moment feels like a memory, déjà vu reversed again. Tomorrow, I will wake early and have coffee. Tonight, I cut circles in the sand as thunder sends me to a heavy sleep.

Listen to the cacophony of animals I wake up to: