I had just written an email to a friend saying that the
honeymoon was over here in Cameroon and we had settled in to the mundane.
Within minutes of that email, God began to reveal to me that nothing is mundane
to Him.
My kids came racing in and had just played several
Cameroonian games with the young sixteen year old “helper” to the nuns next
door. They laughed and laughed about the fun they had had and I knew that it
had been even more so for sweet Rosecart who works seven days a week and is not
able to finish her schooling “just yet.” I know that God is at work through her
to us and us to her, though I'm not sure exactly how God is working.
My volunteer teaching at the local Catholic school has not
been all I had hoped, but today I was in our car driving to pickup my kids when
I drove by St Joseph's and heard “Madame Joy, Madame Joy!” It was one of my
students on a motor cycle going home with her father. When I first used to walk
or drive by the school, I would hear “WHITE MAN, WHITE MAN.” No longer am I
“white man,” but Madame Joy, and Auntie Joy to the younger ones. I may be a
mediocre computer teacher, but it is clear to them how much I love them and I
can share God's love with them. I am somehow making “white people” into real
people to them.
Nestor, our worker, came by to pick up a shirt. He does his
laundry too when he does ours. I offered him some leftovers to eat. He had a
huge smile and I realized he might not have had dinner otherwise. He is going
to school now in the evenings, which he gave up as a child to allow his
siblings to go (one will be ordained a priest this year—Pete is teaching him).
Were it not for this job, he would not be in school. Who knows the small
miracles that are happening because of that.
I taught my HIV group a sweet prayer/song and they sounded
like angels. I feel like I do so little there, but sometimes when my eyes meet
another woman and we smile, I feel God bridging the distance across the room,
across the cultural differences, racial differences, and economic differences.
We are both just Beloved Children of God.
I pray that God will never let life become mundane for me
here or anywhere, because He is ever present and ever working even when I am
oblivious.
-Joy
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