I have been in a lot of airports this year. Chicago-Frankfurt-Bucureşti, on our way back to Romania after Christmas. Bucureşti-London-Boston-Miami-Managua-Miami-Port au Prince-New York-London-Bucureşti (whew!), for IMPACT trainings this spring in Nicaragua and Haiti. Bucureşti-Istanbul at Easter. Bucureşti-Vienna-Tirana and back to Bucureşti again on Friday.
(Speaking of which, after that list, I would like to take a moment to thank the Vienna International Airport for having enormous couches around all the gates, for inventing a place called the "relaxing room," for decorating the terminals with World Cup-themed paintings and playing live matches on a giant projector in Terminal E, and for having a make-your-own musli bar. I was really, really grateful.)
Anyway. Moving on from my newfound love for Vienna (and hatred for Miami, but that's another story)...
I am currently in Tirana, Albania, helping facilitate a mini-training on SKYE -- basically, a slightly more "grown up" and condensed version of IMPACT international, focused on meeting the specific learning needs of youth age 18-25, with emphasis on job skills preparation and business creation. It is a little surreal to be part of the process of crafting a program whose target group are me and my peers, but it's also remarkably encouraging. I am really excited and optimistic about this project, and I feel like I'm in my sweet spot in my work here.
Yet, every time I travel for IMPACT International, I feel torn, like there are two versions of myself that aren't quite sure how to coexist. On the one hand, I love this part of my job. I love meeting brilliant people from other countries, listening to their expertise, asking about their context, tasting the insights and wisdom and uniqueness of each country as it applies to this beautiful work of youth development. (And the new food. Tasting that part is pretty great too.) I can even get myself excited for the travel bit, for the weird sterile bustle of airports and the curious fact of so many different people, with so many stories, all passing through the same bit of ground. It makes me feel the same sort of gleeful possibility and opportunity that inspired me for so many years when, as a kid, I dreamed of traveling the world. And I thrive in this space, in this grueling, intense, lots-of-work-and-constant-thinking-and-little-sleep world of work. Training and teaching and discussing and planning. Shutting off my brain and pausing to reflect, in these periods of time, takes effort.
On the other hand, there is this part of me that dreads this. The part of me that thinks, "I moved to Romania to live in Romania. As a missionary. What am I doing here?" The part of me that wants to be settled and simple, that wants time to read novels and plant gardens and invite people over for dinner and go running in the mountains. The part of me that wants time and mental space for reflection and imagination and prayer and music and exercise and peace. The part of me that wonders what my work-loving side means for my future, as a wife and mother and sister and friend -- things that I also want oh so badly, oh so deeply.
I know it's not like the two can't coexist, and I try to live in a balance. I really do. But these airports, these weeks of time away from home, away from Jack, away from the places where I have established rhythms and patterns of work & rest... they make me wonder how far that balancing act can go. Will it ever give? Will the scales ever tip? How will I notice?
I do believe God gives us gifts, that He makes us complex and whole people, that He calls us to different things in different times and different places. Okay, yes. And the balancing of that is hard and beautiful, and probably just as it is supposed to be. It means all of those things are alive in our life, and that they all matter, and that's Good stuff. I just wonder every now and then, when it feels like a paradox. I guess that's why we keep listening. God seems to be a God of paradoxes anyway -- judgment & grace, love & truth, three in one, holy & personal -- so maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Our first IMPACT project.
Last we wrote about our IMPACT club, we were just getting started
with them, and felt like we bit off more than we could handle. A whole
class of fifth graders had just been recruited to a club of
high-schoolers, and Kelly and I had just taken over leading the club.
Twenty fifth-graders in a classroom is crazy enough I'm sure, but when
they're part of a club that's empowering them to be creative and leaders
in their own right, they really take that seriously. The freedom to be
heard and accepted for whatever you say invites a lot of weird things to
be said and done. Especially when it's 12-year-old boys doing it. Oh
well.
Despite their inability to have a civilized debrief discussion for more than 5 minutes and how much they like to hit each other and call each other peasants, we actually implemented a service-learning project last weekend! The great thing about being IMPACT leaders is that we're supposed to kind of step back when it comes to these projects and empower the club members to think through the project and do most of the work. We just try to ask the right questions and point out the things they might have missed and help them get materials. Our kids decided that they wanted to put on an afternoon of various competitions in the park, pretty much just to create an option for fun in a place where kids usually have to make their own fun. It's proper IMPACT project planning to identify a problem and then to creatively plan a project that addresses that problem. When we explained that this is the normal procedure, our kids told us that they knew a lot of kids who simply stay at home and play on the computer, so this "Active Day" in the park could draw them outside and away from the computer.
We had about a month and a half to teach these fifth graders what a service-learning project is and how to implement one, so I admit we had low expectations for this first project. Thanks, however, to three excellent junior leaders, some hard working fifth graders, and a ton of patience, we were on the way to having a killer day in the park planned sometime in July. Unfortunately, we wanted to do it on June 1st since school ends pretty soon after that. Fortunately, we had to push the date back to June 7, and that week before, we all managed to step up our level of focus and helpfulness. Kelly even went with Raluca, Maria and Bumb to gather a bunch of water so we wouldn't die of heatstroke.
When it came to Saturday the 7th, I was so thankful that we live in a small-ish town in Romania, because we were able to do so much that day. Andrada, Adelina, Raluca, Maria, and Bumb came early to hand out some awesome fliers that they had made to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, and Kelly and I sat at a bench on the park trying to convince all the kids who flocked to us that the event wouldn't start until 1:30, and since it was still 11:45, they needed to go away for now so that we could set things up.
Eventually, we got the obstacle course and the start and finish line for the 150-ish meter dash set up. 70 kids signed up to participate, so we split them into two groups and ran them at the same time. Apart from a few inattentive timers and some argumentative competitors, everything went surprisingly well, mainly thanks to Eliza, one of the junior leaders, who led the competitors in fun large group games in between the events. Halfway through, we switched to the egg-in-a-spoon race (70 kids only broke 5 eggs! What?!?!?) and the race where you put a bottle full of river dirt between your legs and jump over small traffic cones as fast as you can.
In the end, we added up the fastest times and gave the top four kids in each age group (8-10 and 11-14) prizes--a soccer ball, badminton rackets, you know, sporty stuff. Once the competitors left, we rolled the tires from the obstacle course back across the street to the car shop, threw the remaining eggs either in the dumpster or as hard as we could on the ground (it's ok, the dogs ate them), and breathed a large sigh of relief. Our first IMPACT project. And it went well.
Despite their inability to have a civilized debrief discussion for more than 5 minutes and how much they like to hit each other and call each other peasants, we actually implemented a service-learning project last weekend! The great thing about being IMPACT leaders is that we're supposed to kind of step back when it comes to these projects and empower the club members to think through the project and do most of the work. We just try to ask the right questions and point out the things they might have missed and help them get materials. Our kids decided that they wanted to put on an afternoon of various competitions in the park, pretty much just to create an option for fun in a place where kids usually have to make their own fun. It's proper IMPACT project planning to identify a problem and then to creatively plan a project that addresses that problem. When we explained that this is the normal procedure, our kids told us that they knew a lot of kids who simply stay at home and play on the computer, so this "Active Day" in the park could draw them outside and away from the computer.
We had about a month and a half to teach these fifth graders what a service-learning project is and how to implement one, so I admit we had low expectations for this first project. Thanks, however, to three excellent junior leaders, some hard working fifth graders, and a ton of patience, we were on the way to having a killer day in the park planned sometime in July. Unfortunately, we wanted to do it on June 1st since school ends pretty soon after that. Fortunately, we had to push the date back to June 7, and that week before, we all managed to step up our level of focus and helpfulness. Kelly even went with Raluca, Maria and Bumb to gather a bunch of water so we wouldn't die of heatstroke.
When it came to Saturday the 7th, I was so thankful that we live in a small-ish town in Romania, because we were able to do so much that day. Andrada, Adelina, Raluca, Maria, and Bumb came early to hand out some awesome fliers that they had made to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, and Kelly and I sat at a bench on the park trying to convince all the kids who flocked to us that the event wouldn't start until 1:30, and since it was still 11:45, they needed to go away for now so that we could set things up.
Eventually, we got the obstacle course and the start and finish line for the 150-ish meter dash set up. 70 kids signed up to participate, so we split them into two groups and ran them at the same time. Apart from a few inattentive timers and some argumentative competitors, everything went surprisingly well, mainly thanks to Eliza, one of the junior leaders, who led the competitors in fun large group games in between the events. Halfway through, we switched to the egg-in-a-spoon race (70 kids only broke 5 eggs! What?!?!?) and the race where you put a bottle full of river dirt between your legs and jump over small traffic cones as fast as you can.
In the end, we added up the fastest times and gave the top four kids in each age group (8-10 and 11-14) prizes--a soccer ball, badminton rackets, you know, sporty stuff. Once the competitors left, we rolled the tires from the obstacle course back across the street to the car shop, threw the remaining eggs either in the dumpster or as hard as we could on the ground (it's ok, the dogs ate them), and breathed a large sigh of relief. Our first IMPACT project. And it went well.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Another visa update.
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
We went to Deva today and applied for a two-year visa.
And it worked.
(I would write out the whole saga, or use a lot more explanation points to communicate my true excitement about this, if only I wasn't quite so tired.)
It's been well over a month of waiting, calling various Romanian bureaucrats in offices across the country, paying and praying and waiting some more, and crossing our fingers that documents would get shuffled quickly across desks that are notoriously slow. But with the help of some persistent friends and some faithful prayers, yesterday we received our Aviz from the Romanian Ministry of Religious of Affairs, approving us for a two-year stay in Romania to work with our local church here in Lupeni. So today we headed to Deva to apply with the immigration officials. And 11 hours later, we were home again, papers filed, a load lifted off our shoulders, tired and hot and oh-so-relieved.
Yippee!
We went to Deva today and applied for a two-year visa.
And it worked.
(I would write out the whole saga, or use a lot more explanation points to communicate my true excitement about this, if only I wasn't quite so tired.)
It's been well over a month of waiting, calling various Romanian bureaucrats in offices across the country, paying and praying and waiting some more, and crossing our fingers that documents would get shuffled quickly across desks that are notoriously slow. But with the help of some persistent friends and some faithful prayers, yesterday we received our Aviz from the Romanian Ministry of Religious of Affairs, approving us for a two-year stay in Romania to work with our local church here in Lupeni. So today we headed to Deva to apply with the immigration officials. And 11 hours later, we were home again, papers filed, a load lifted off our shoulders, tired and hot and oh-so-relieved.
Yippee!
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