Building relationships

We are entering into our last full week here in White River, South Africa. As we look into our final days, our last events and final goodbyes, things seem hazy and unclear to me. My head is almost always full of thoughts, questions and reflections and I have to make an effort to pull myself out of that mist and engage what's going on around me.

As you can imagine, knowing us and the things we enjoy and are passionate about, relationships that we've developed here are going to be a challenging thing to leave behind. It's funny now to think back to our first week here, and how we felt so "on the outside" and longed for community. It's been many weeks now since we've had regular dinners and movie nights with friends here, and enjoyed so many conversations and community events with the team on base. In fact, this last week, Mikey and I had some intentional relationship-building time with two couples in particular. We took them out to dinner and enjoyed hearing more of their stories and sharing with them more of our own. I have to chalk some of those moments up as my favorite here in Africa. One night in particular, we sat at a dimly-lit table eating steak with Carla and John Shaw, engrossed as they openly shared about their lives. My heart was so moved to hear John express how God called him into relationship with Him and to listen to Carla express the first scary and exciting moments of being called into something new--moving to Africa this year.

In some ways, the people here have become voluntary orphans of the world--they have chosen to separate themselves from the "parent" that the world, that culture, can become. They have intentionally become "homeless" and left not only material possessions behind, but also meaningful relationships with others. All for what? To step into something new and scary, something that doesn't always have a visible reward, something that has no promise of physical safety. The more I am here, the more I see how attached I have become to the physical comforts of life. I have perhaps convinced myself that those things don't matter to me that much, that they wouldn't really factor into making life decisions. The more I think about what it would take to make that commitment to live here, the more I realize how heavy a weight they have in my life.

That's one of the biggest reasons Mikey and I came here. We wanted a break from living a life to work and buy things. We wanted to come to a place where, for many reasons, those material "blinders" had no place--so that we could see just a little more clearly. Now I'm sitting back and trying to articulate to myself what it is that I have seen. One thing that I know I see is that relationships, that people, mean more to me than anything. It has been so refreshing to be in a place where enjoying others (maybe sometimes because there's nothing else to do :D !) has been able to be at the top of our to-do list. In the end, though, it is going to make it that much harder to say goodbye than if our goal had been to accomplish a physical task. I am bracing myself for that moment and am not looking forward to its impact.

Throughout the post, Mikey has included pictures of people we have met and built relationships with...