I booked my flight to Tanzania today! Leaving in 12 days - March 16th! I had another follow-up with the surgeon this week. He said there is a slight complication of some nerve damage, but that it would heal in a few months. He will continue to do follow-up, but overall said I'm healing well and gave me the green light to return to Africa.
It's been an incredibly strange 2 months, from learning I needed to have unexpected surgery and being on the operating table 2 days later, to my mom passing a few weeks ago, when she was fine a few months ago. But I can't express enough my gratitude for all your love, prayers and support. I don't think I've ever felt as lifted up in prayer as I have during these last 2 months. Thank you.
I've been slowly re-entering into work. This week and last, I've been catching, and preparing for upcoming work on my return. I want to briefly share with you 2 highlights from this week: Problem solving with VOH Tanzania and A Training Session about Creating a Sacred Place for Children:
Problem solving with VOH Tanzania
As I think I've mentioned before, VOH Tanzania created a partnership last year with a wonderful mission that is serving children with Albinism. They are ostracized and often tortured simply because of their fair skin. It's a wonderful ministry helping the children feel valued and giving them opportunity and we're excited how God is using VOH Tanzania to enhance the ministry through overseeing the operations and administration.
Have you ever had a situation when you're trying to untangle something and it seems confusing? This week, we were trying to figure out some numbers. It was like that. So we had a call at 12 pm my time to figure it out. I had worked on the untangling in advice so during the call, we went over my excel sheet (people who know me well, know I like excel!) and we figured it out. Problem averted. As I lay my head on the pillow at 1:30 am, I smiled, happy to know I can be part of the solution.
A Training Session about Creating a Sacred Place for Children
Discipleship of children is core to our VOH programming. We have Discipleship clubs where the children learn about God in creative ways. We are in the middle of training the trainers and leaders so they can effectively minister to the children.
As part of that, we did a training session this week with all the leaders who are responsible for Discipleship and Child Welfare in the centers to discuss how to create a Scared space for the children to go to pray, read Scripture and focus on God.
It was inspiring!
We all agreed with the beauty of being quiet before God, where children can come in, focus on God and sense His presence. We talked about the physical space, whether that’s outdoors near nature, or an inside space set aside for the children to go, with calm and silence that points them back to God.
We envisioned how to make it an unique experience, that is both private and engaging, so children would want to come back. Everyone shared their own experiences of quiet times with God, what made it meaningful, and how to incorporate this into this space in a child-friendly way.
And we had tons of practical tips - like having crayons and paper or chalkboard for draw their feelings or write their burdens and then erase them or having a place to destroy it or place it before the Cross, a treasure chest of promises that the child could borrow, gardens, mirrors, tents, and so much more. All to create space that is simple, comfortable, doesn’t look like a classroom or church building but creates a a unique feeling and experience.
We left the session inspired with new ideas, empowered to create space contextualized to each centre and excited to think of the possibilities it would mean in the spiritual journeys of the children.
Here's a few pics: Inspiring quotes, A Creative space (with a tent for private time with God), The Armor of God to put on, a Treasure box of inspiring quotes, A Chalkboard to write out feelings and thoughts. |
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