New Things

We are always learning here. Things are always changing for us, our perspectives, our values, our dreams, our visions, our hopes, our understanding of God. It's quite exciting on many levels. We had a nice and relaxing weekend where we just spent some time together, reading, going for walks, going to church, talking, etc. It was great. We are learning to see the face of God in different ways while we experience different ways of life.

I think that sometimes being in a different culture, where we are clearly different, can be trying. It sometimes feels like we can only get to a certain place in the community. They do community so well here. It's something that we're really learning to value. To share the things we have with others who need is a distant concept from how we are realizing it is normally done, giving our money when we have a cause that WE feel good about and want to give to. Someone may need a bed, if I have an extra room, why can't they have it? Or, maybe they just need to go for a walk and "get away" for a bit. Maybe they need a meal, I can cook one (not here though, we have a wonderful, gracious, and dedicated cook who makes meals for us everyday). Sometimes we feel our impact in the U.S. could be more powerful if we lived more like the Nigerians than trying to live like an American here. As we attempt to acculturate to the Nigerian way of life, we're still Americans and there's no way of getting around it. There is a strange power differential that is alive, even if we try to fight it. We can't change the color of our skin, where we're from, what culture we have as context, what is normal to us and abnormal, or how we talk, but we can try to listen to what others are teaching us through their own lifestyles, and take that with us and we travel on the road of life. People actually take care of people here, they put people over work, productivity and efficiency. The emphasis for us cannot be to accomplish some job or task, because things operate much differently here, and if that were my goal, I would certainly become frustrated and fail. Getting things done here is much more difficult because of various boundaries. My goals here have to be different than my goals are in the U.S.-they cannot be focused on getting things done, producing and meeting goals, but on listening to God, and seeking what He wants me to do in this context here. It's a difficult lesson to learn because in the U.S. we are always working for the bottom line, time deadline, seeing as many people, getting as many things done in as little time possible. It's not the way things work here, it's not how the Nigerians want things to work here, and it's just not possible here. So, I try to focus on learning, which can sometimes seem selfish, but I think I'm here for a reason, and I don't think it's to accomplish any specific task (though I continue to act out my ingrained American mentality of working on accomplishing tasks).

So, things are going well, because we have decided to readjust our new goals, and they are much more exciting, seeking to love God and our neighbor in a new way to us. We don't have much to update you on things that we are doing. We are both working on different projects...grants for the clinic, putting together a magazine, an annual report, a overall manual for the entire clinic, but the most exciting thing we are doing is learning.