May 2, 2011 | An Expat, South Africa, Stories
Let me start this wee (or probably not so wee…) post by saying there are no less than thirty-seven of you folks that I wanted to share this news with individually, one on one, preferably over a cup of coffee or at least on a phone call where we each had a cup of coffee and maybe even a cookie. But then I started doing the math on how long it would take to make all thirty-seven of those phone calls to share the news, even if they only lasted for ten minutes, based on how many minutes I have free over the course of the day, considering there’s in some cases a six hour time difference, taking into account the fact that I can seldom speak for only ten minutes to anyone — and that sometimes includes telemarketers and UPS delivery persons. Let’s save that story for another day.
Now where was I?
After coming to the conclusion that I couldn’t break the news to everybody this year if I tried to individually contact all the folks I would’ve like to have shared said news with personally, I decided that you are an awfully gracious bunch of folks and you’d understand.
So don’t prove me wrong! I love you.
Now on to the news.
The name of this blog is probably going to be changing pretty soon. And that’s because my address is going to be changing pretty soon. And that’s because the continent we call home is going to be changing pretty soon. And that’s because HH’s job is going to be changing pretty soon (and mine, too).
And for those who feel brevity is the soul of wit, in a nutshell, that’s the news. But if you’d like more details, do read on, dear.
After lots of a-thinking and lots of a-praying, it is clear that the Lord is a-closing one door, and opening another. Our time with Samaritan’s Feet is coming to its conclusion, which we really have mixed emotions about. Although the evidence surrounding the conclusion we’ve come to could fill another blog post or eight, for now I think it’s sufficient to say we’ve begun to recognise the ways that we’ve been wired and gifted and the type of ministry that we’re best suited for is different from our present work. Plus, we need to pay our bills.
So what’s next?
Not long after we made the decision to give notice with Samaritan’s Feet and begin to hand off the work we’ve begun to new leadership, HH got a couple of job offers in the US of A…and none anywhere else. The first was in Seattle and we would’ve been working under an amazing pastoral couple, and we would’ve learned so much, and it would’ve been a wonderful setting to enjoy for a while…but Seattle feels about like Edinburgh in terms of its distance from North Carolina, and we’d like to at least be close to some family, if possible. (And travelling from there to SA would be a heckuva journey.)
While we were umming and ahhing {did you like that? I’m not sure transliterating onomatopoeia is my strong suit. But isn’t that a fun word to say? Try using it in a sentence today.} about the Seattle decision, another job offer was extended to us. Exactly thirty minutes away from my super-duper little hometown in Greenville, North Carolina.
Boo-yow.
The church I attended while at university there, Greenville Christian Fellowship, has a missions-sending agency they’re hoping to grow. It’s called Global Impact Resources, and it’s actually the agency that first sent me out when I moved to Scotland.
As the director of Global Impact, the Hubs (and I, to some extent) will be providing a pastoral covering for missionaries on the field, as well as overseeing the administration of their ministry support. Opening the honesty box, there have been some times, when being on the mission field has made me feel like I was on an island of my own. Care packages have made me cry because it didn’t even matter what was inside — it just mattered that someone cared enough to make the effort. With a small heap of experience in our back pockets, we feel equipped — and passionate about — being a blessing to other missionaries on the field. We’ll continue to raise support for part of our salary, and we’ll also be ministering in the local church part time.
Now on to the specifics:
We’re either leaving our place here in Gordon’s Bay at the end of June or the end of July. We were originally thinking July, but since the honesty box is open, I’ll explain that we’ve pretty much been going into debt to try to finish off what we started here. We’re planning to spend several weeks in wonderful Bloemfontein with HH’s folks before adventuring across the pond. If possible, we’d like to spend a week or so in the UK, visiting our previous mission field and all the wonderful people there we’ve been missing these past two years — we might even get to attend one very special wedding!
We’ll then be heading to North Carolina, staying with my folks in the Original Washington, while we look for a place to live in the wonderful Greenville. Dates and departures to be confirmed.
So, I’ve tried to cover all the bases, but my guess is you might have some questions! Would you like to ask them in the comments and I can come back and edit this post to add in the answers?
Oh, one last thing! How do we feel about all this?:
Bittersweet doesn’t begin to describe this transition for us. Although we were confident this wasn’t our last stop, this move has come much sooner than we expected. On the one hand, I’m stoked about little things like maybe having the same address for more than a year, and putting paint on walls. And I’m stoked about big things like being close to my family and a lot of the friends back home that I really miss. On the other hand, leaving South Africa, and more specifically HH’s folks, is really, really hard. We haven’t left yet and I’ve already cried about it. A lot. Yes, we are definitely planning to come back regularly — our boys are American and South African, and we want them to know both cultures and to know their grandparents (and their aunt up in Joburg, and their Uncky in London!) — but visiting regularly isn’t the same as being a day’s drive away.
It’s true that Mama Africa’s red dirt gets in your blood. I’m not the person I was when we stepped off the plane almost two years ago. And those sentiments deserve a handful of posts, too.
For now, the long and short of it is: Change, She is A-Coming. In every circumstance, To God Be the Glory.
xCC
Apr 28, 2011 | An Expat
We are blessed with the presence of some dear friends way down here in SA this week…helping me overcome missing Agnes!
{This photo was at a bridal shower just before I got hitched!}
Brittany and I were friends at first sight…which was a good thing since I was moving into the house where she lived when we met! What a joy when you get together with an old friend and it feels like no time has passed at all. It’s so good to have her and her husband Chuck around for a wee while! They’re celebrating their one year anniversary while they’re here. How cool is that?
In other news, I have some delightful pictures of our TWO MONTH OLD coming your way soon! And I discovered today that the Bear can’t say freckle, so he says pretzel. And I think that, and some great pictures, are two things worth celebrating.
Woop, woop!
In the meantime, if you have anyone living within a thirty mile radius of you that has known you for more than a year or two, I’d like to suggest you take a moment to give thanks. It’s a privilege to enjoy the presence of an old friend — it’s taken six years as an expat for me to realise just how sweet it is!
It’s like they say in Dassiesfontein…
Hope your week is going great, and full of friends.
xCC
Feb 23, 2011 | An Expat
Wouldn’t tomorrow be a great day to have a baby? Perhaps this wee lad is waiting for tomorrow, so that the Bear and I will each have a birthday on an 18th, and he and his dad will both have birthdays on a 24th. Maybe?!
Anywho.
A little interview of yours truly has popped up at Expat Focus today. What a privilege to get to share a little bit and be introduced to some new folks! I thought you might enjoy the read — it’s a little bit of backstory you may or may not know, with a few thoughts in case you decide to take the leap and live abroad for a while. Did you know I’m thinking about going for a world record?
And bonus, Hero Hubs’ wagtail photo is there, too. Why it’s my favourite, I don’t know, but can I just keep using it until you guys say enough of the wagtail, ya cotton-headed ninnymuggins!?!
Click here if you’d like to skedaddle over to Expat Focus and read the interview. I’d love to know your thoughts! And Mr. Wagtail would, too.
xCC
Feb 17, 2011 | An Expat, Prayers in Poetry & Prose, Stories
We take the same route to church and to the the doctor’s office for my prenatal checkups. Depending on whether it’s a weekend or a weekday, the sights might be slightly different, but it always seems like there’s something to tug at my heartstrings.
Turning out of our neighbourhood, we’re on a fairly busy stretch of highway. Mr. Potato Head grumbles in the direction of the nearby Steenbras mountains, and then we turn and start heading in the direction of the Hottentots Holland mountains, further in the distance. We cross over the busy N2, up a hill and in a moment we’re whisked into Sir Lowry’s Pass village.
Until you come face to face with the reality of poverty, it is still just images on a TV screen or website, or in a brochure you received in the mail. But the reality is so much bigger — more complex, more colourful, more hopeful, more distressing.
We grumbled along for a prenatal appointment a couple weeks ago, and my heart rode the up and down roller coaster it usually rides on the journey. We pass the big dumpster where three or four goats are usually grazing on a pile of trash, and we come to the one little roundabout with a small food store on one corner, shacks on another, a freestanding house opposite the store. The rundown wall behind the goats closes out the circle. It’s a school day and the streets are full of life.
Children in uniforms are dispersing in every direction, and one little girl is giggling and scurrying away from an older sibling, or perhaps her mother. They are both laughing and seem so joyful I wish we could stop to ask what’s so funny.
A tall gentleman with a checkered shirt, a baseball cap and nice shoes struts across the street on the other side of the roundabout. A smaller guy with long dreadlocks and a red t-shirt hops up the curb on a little trick bike.
Outside a shack built entirely of what looks like found or recycled pieces of wood, a dog and a cat stand beside one another, staring in, as if something important is happening and they’re waiting to get inside. Children, some with shoes and some barefoot, are walking or sitting in the shade of the occasional, small trees that line the road. They’re eating their lunch and enjoying treats they’ve just gotten at the food store.
Life seems to be joyful for a moment.
A little further along we pass a little boy, gray-sweatered and green-trousered, still in his school uniform. Like children often do, he has taken off his school shoes to preserve them, and is walking barefoot and alone, a backpack on his back and his big black shoes in his arms. He steps normally with his right leg, but with each step he has to drag his left leg around in a circle, as if the leg cannot be bent at the knee. Watching him struggle under the weight of disability and the load he is carrying, my face is flush and I begin forcing back tears.
My mind begins to marvel that my heart hasn’t grown cold. I thought after a year or so these scenes would become familiar…that I’d struggle to find emotion…that I’d eventually begin to feel sorry that I didn’t feel sorry.
We pass a woman who is pregnant, but not as far along as I am. The difference in opportunity for the life growing inside her and the one in me…I almost want to shuck the thought away instead of letting it sink in. Who’s to know, really?
Sometimes Africa feels like a deep ravine set in a distant jungle. People come from miles around to find it, because everyone’s goal is to fill it. We throw in resources. Money. Food. Clothing. Bicycles. Shoes. Then we lean over to look in, and still can’t see the bottom. It’s a struggle to see progress. Hand-ups and Hand-outs start to look similar.
But I’ve seen change. I’ve seen generosity make a difference. And I’ve seen the numbers. And I’ve shared some of them with you here. We could be the generation that makes poverty history. If we grow weary in well-doing, we probably won’t. But if we continue the fight, our chances of success improve considerably.
The car grumbles on to the doctor’s office, my head and my heart like soft serve ice cream, thick with heavy thoughts. Staring down into the ravine, the hope is for something unseen. And who knows how it’s all going to come together.
I hope my part in this journey will end with a “Well done.” Sometimes I’m not sure what else to hope for.
xCC
Jan 3, 2011 | An Expat, Stories
No matter how hard things get out there, how tight our finances, how challenging the stuff of life is, the hardest part always happens right here. In driveways and airport entrances, choking back tears and wiping noses, the goodbyes we say on the day that we take off are always the hardest part of my life and work at the moment.
The last time we said these goodbyes, I had no idea it would be such a long time before we got back. I don’t expect it to be nearly as long before we’re back again this time, but the leaving is nevertheless hard.
We take off this afternoon and will arrive in Cape Town in the morning on the 5th. Please say a prayer for safe travels, peaceful transitions and happy Bears, and especially for my Mom and Dad and our goodbyes.
xCC
P.S. I might be able to catch you during our long layover in London…if not, I’ll catch you on the Southern side!
Dec 10, 2010 | An Expat, Stories
For the first few days of being back at home, there is often an eerie feeling that seems to float over everything. My brain remembers when just two or three days before the Bear was splashing with Hero Hubs in the swimming pool in our complex, and I had the window open to try to cool off the kitchen while I attended to our dinner. Suddenly after two flights, about thirty hours’ travel, and a good night’s sleep, we’re in Atlanta, in a park down the street from my brother’s house and with the gentle breeze, beautifully coloured leaves are falling rhythmically from the trees, like a gentle and steady rainfall.
My latitude and longitude sink in all over again as I stare in disbelief at the prices of children’s clothing on sale racks in Old Navy. How can this adorable t-shirt be less than four dollars? My head spins as I take my first stroll through the grocery store. The bananas are absolutely perfect. The onions are all exactly the same size. And perfect. Has it always been like this? There are a gabillion choices for coffee creamer. A gabillion. I don’t recognise all the labels at first, and I struggle to decide if something is a good price without converting back to Rand (the South African currency) in my mind.
We find our way to a South African food store for boerewors and biltong, and suddenly things are even more strange. I recognise the label on every product in the store. The cereal the Bear eats for breakfast every morning. The spices by Ina Paarman I have come to love and the packets of soup I sometimes use. There’s grapetizer in the cooler. At a South African food store on the outskirts of Atlanta I find that I feel strangely at home. And there’s not a better word than strange to describe the feeling.
It’s an 8 hour drive from Atlanta to home in Eastern North Carolina. The roads are familiar and the exit signs even more so. As we get closer to home, the signs indicate that places like Biscuitville and Cracker Barrel, and of course Bojangles, are just a wee way off the highway. The cars and SUVs boast familiar stickers, two pairs of big flip flops and two little ones, a cursive script monogram, an orange tiger paw or two. Once we get east of the Triangle, a familiar Pirate with a purple hat appears again and again as cars and SUVs pass by. {Are 9 out of 10 people driving SUVs now?}
Finally we’re past the Pirate town where I earned some important pieces of paper and learned some important life lessons at the same time. Welcome familiarities make me feel like the world is all as it should be and for the next thirty miles, the sites I’ve seen for almost three decades all seem to point in the same direction…you’re almost home.
At last we’re up the driveway and the door has slammed behind us. Everything that’s new is endearing and everything that’s the same has precious new meaning. The newspaper seems smaller and the pillows on the couch seem bigger. The TV now announces who’s calling when the phone rings.
We decorated my Dad’s Christmas tree the other morning, and enjoyed lunch together at a restaurant downtown that I’ve really missed. In the evening the Bear is cuddled up to his G.C. watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer learn to fly.
It seems like words that couldn’t be said on TV a year ago are suddenly allowed. Commercials advertise new drugs for old problems, and others advertise malpractice lawyers for the new problems caused by old drugs.
This evening my Mom’s “bridge girls†were over for dinner, and of course, to play bridge. For the most part the evening was like most others, snacks, dinner, a few rounds of cards, a slice of cake and a few cups of coffee, laughing at the wins and losses, discussing how things would’ve turned out had a different card been played. It’s a tradition that dates back, for my Mom and one of the ladies in the group, to nearly a decade before I was born.
But what made this evening extra special for me was that as each lady came in, the Bear took them by the hand, either asking them to come with him to see the Christmas tree or the piano, or just to ask to be picked up and given another hug. It suddenly seems he’s never met a stranger. We put him down for bed and were on about our business when in the kitchen, around the table, the ladies began reminiscing:
“I remember Caroline being so small!â€
“And hosting little games during our bridge games and giving away prizes!â€
{And my Mom chimes in} “And I never knew what she had wrapped up to give away!â€
In the blink of an eye, I realise a generation has passed, and things are the same and different. Steady like an ocean, swift like a stream, life seems to just keep happening.
And even if sometimes things seem unfamiliar, and I occasionally feel like a foreigner in my hometown, this is the place where my favourite shadows are, and it’s been well put before, there’s no place like home.
xCC
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