Amanda Does Things

I got one to be connected. I suppose that’s what facebook is for, to connect with people, even if they’re far away.

But lately every time I go on facebook I don’t feel connected, I just feel left out and cut off.

Thinking about deleting my account, at least for a while.  hmmm…

While I was in Africa, I learned a little bit about biology: if an average male eats rice and beans every day for two and a half months, he will lose weight. If a female eats the same, she will probably gain weight.

Since I’ve been home I’ve been exercising some, and I was starting to feel healthier for a while, trying not to fret. Gaining a small amount of weight on a mission trip is not the end of the world, nobody else notices, stop thinking about it. But I do think about it, and then I’ve been sick with an awful cold for two weeks. No exercise when you’re blowing your nose every five minutes and feel achy.
The cold is mostly over now, but I feel all behind in my attempts to try to control what I look like. I fret about how my jeans fit and which clothes will disguise flaws that are obvious to me even if nobody else sees. Even though appearance seems like such a silly, trivial thing, I worry about it. 

Then today I was going about feeding my cat, who likes to sprawl herself across the dining room like a rug. I was observing her funny self and realized she’s kinda fat. She’s fluffy and fuzzy with whispy fur sticking in every which way, and she’s fat, and I think she’s so beautiful, even when she’s being sassy and cranky. I try to feed her less and play with her more, because I want her to live a long time and be healthy. But even if she was that fat for the rest of her life, I wouldn’t care, and I doubt she would care either. It’s silly to even consider whether my cat has ever had a negative thought about her body. I don’t think she’s ever worried about her tummy being to big. Likewise I don’t think my dogs have ever wished they had a different fur color or longer legs. They’re just happy about life, and they seem to know their masters love them exactly how they are.

Hmm… Maybe that’s what God thinks about us and our bodies?

Matthew 6, MSG:
25-26”If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

 27-29”Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

 30-33”If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

 34”Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

I absolutely hate it when kids sing at the end of songs. Or really any part of songs. In a bunch of worship songs, people seem to think it’s cute to have a bunch of kids singing the chorus at the end with their little cutesy out of tune voices, or sometimes they’ll even say a bible verse or something.

And on the christian radio station (another confession: I can barely stand christian radio stations) every morning they have the kids say the pledge of allegiance.

I like kids, I really do. But for some reason when I hear a bunch of them get together because someone wants to make a song sound more sentimental or whatever, it fills my brain with snobbish rage.

I hope this doesn’t make me seem mean, because I don’t dislike kids, or dislike people who coo and think it’s just the greatest thing when kids sing at the end of songs. It’s just a weird personal quirk I’ve heard from a couple other people before and I felt like sharing.

So as everybody probably knows, I was in Mozambique co-leading a YWAM team. I’ve been home about a month now.  I didn’t really blog in Africa because I was so busy. :) Now I haven’t been blogging because gosh, I have no idea what to write. I don’t really know how to process all this stuff, I don’t know how to organize my thoughts so they’ll settle down. I used to think it was best to blog when I know how just what to say, how to say it, and darnit make it all happy/funny/encouraging/bubbly and stuff. And wrap it up with a nice conclusion, like a little bow tied around a sweet present.

But recently I’ve been noticing, I only really like reading stuff that’s real.  So here it goes. How life has been in a nutshell for the past few months.

Mozambique.

Mozambique was really hot.
If the fan stopped working in the middle of the night, or the electricity went out, that meant I just didn’t really sleep that night. It meant my skin was never clean, there was always a layer of sweat and dust. The amazing thing is sometimes it was kinda fun, almost a thrill, to be that uncomfortable. But sometimes it made me want to punch a duck. (Some people say punch a kitten, but I don’t think I could everpunch a kitten.)

Mozambique was crazy beautiful.
The dirt there is this burnt red, and when it rains is swirls around and makes these swirly patterns all over of chocolate brown and brick, and it made me think of ice cream every time I looked at it. All the bush-land (what do I call it, all the plants and wilderness stuff?) was bright green. A lively, almost weird green that seemed to glow. The Indean ocean was right across the street. It was bright blue edged by ivory sand and black rocks, and dark black-green seaweed that almost looked wickedly sinister somehow, tangled up in everything. There were rainbow clouds. Not a rainbow like a ribbon across the sky like you see normally, but an actual cloud that had rainbow colors inside it. And there were storms all the time! Armies of dark purple-blue clouds on the horizon would come closer and closer, and you could hear the thunder and it would shake the ground, and the lightning was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was incredible.

The people are strong.
I don’t even know what to say about Mozambicans, there is so much to say. Oh my goodness, they are strong. They have a childlike faith, and pray like warriors. When they worship it feels like the air itself is trembling in holy reverence. I wish I had spent more time getting close to them, knowing their stories, knowing who they are. What I wouldn’t give right now to just sit in one of those villages, on one of those mat-bench things with one of those women, just talking with them. I wish I knew Makua, man I would’ve liked to talk to them.

Leading was really hard.
Leading can be lonely and strange, and I was constantly worried whether I was doing a good job or not, and lots of times worrying probably prevented me from doing a good job, or when I was leading well, recognizing it and feeling pleased about it. Leading forces a person to grow a lot and recognize flaws in ones self, and pushes you to fix them. It’s like suddenly this huge mirror is in front of you that shows you all these things about yourself, good and bad, that you haven’t ever seen before. It’s very overwhelming. I kinda wish I could do it all over again, because now that it’s all done I go back and think of plenty of days where I relied on my own self, and my fear, and was totally MIA in my leadership and even being a part of a team. There are days that I can think of where I look back and go “yeah Amanda, you kicked major butt that day. That was the perfect thing to say! That was the bestest confrontation ever. That was a pretty epic quiet-your-team-down-thingy.” I guess I need to remind myself of those times and not the “ohmygosh if we were on survivor instead of DTS, would my team have votes me off the island?” moments.

God is faithful.
I would’ve had to be blind and deaf to not notice how good he was to me and my team throughout the whole trip. Throughout my life I’ve been reminded that God is good and faithful when I’ve looked for clues, but during this time his faithfulness was almost smacking us across the face, in a good way. Like, how the heck did that obviously crippled person we prayed for end up dancing minutes after we prayed? How did I get through that one extremely crappy day without breaking apart? How did we all find each other immediately after getting separated at the border, and how did we do all that without freaking out? How did we not get sick, even when we accidentally drank water that should’ve made us vomit or get bitten by tons of mosquitoes on that bus ride, way before we got our malaria pills? I could keep going on but man, it just blows my mind how good he is.

Home.
Home is really weird. It’s funny; in Mozambique my friends and I would sit around in these dreamy, nostalgic moods and talk about what type of food we could cook or starbucks drink we could have if only we were home. What cute outfits we could wear if we weren’t so hot and only allowed to wear our same dirty old long skirts. What books we can’t wait to read when we can go to the public library instead of reading the same books you’ve read like three times because you only brought a couple along. But now I’m home and I can cook nice omelets and order chia lates and wear cute scarfs and boots and read everything I want. But it’s so empty. I want to be in my little house in Africa on the roof with my friends, who are all so far away now. I want to be with them and talk about our favorite ice cream flavors and stores at the mall and just stay like that. Because when I can actually eat my french silk chocolate chunk, or shop at forever 21, it just feels empty, because those friends I would’ve liked to experience those simply pleasures with are so far away. I guess I really realize now that friendship is one of the best joys, the highest pleasures. I miss them like crazy.

For the first couple weeks I was home, I got scared every time I would up because I didn’t know where I was. Every night I dreamed I was doing normal things in Mozambique, (that sounds funny, normal things. Not quite sure what to say about normality in my life, or rather the lack of it.) and then I would wake up at home, but that felt different too because my room was redone while I was gone, and I would wake up with a bunk bed right above my head and it would scare me silly for two seconds every single morning. Now I can wake up and know where I am immediately, and it’s not so startling. But waking up is still kind of unpleasant, because still every night I dream of doing something exciting, like being on bush-bush or diving in and out of ocean waves or running about with dear friends, and I wake up to my normal life now, and it’s so darn far away from everywhere and everyone else. It’s slow and my days are kinda blah. I’m trying to find a job, haven’t had much success yet, and I don’t really see friends very often because the few that live close are busy finishing up their college year and stuff. Which is totally understandable. I guess it’ll take some adjusting from living a busy life in Africa in a little house full of people to living a “try to find something to busy yourself with” in a big house with few people, people who are very busy. But I’ll get through it, I’ll get a job, I’ll move through this summer just like I’ve moved along through other slow parts in life, I’ll figure out what to do and the next step will come in it’s time.

I ask God to make me nicer, better, stronger, faithful, patient, wiser, more loving, more like Him…  But then when situations come into my life that God can use to help shape me into being more like Him, sometimes I embrace it and sometimes I need to be reminded.

Especially patience.

I remember when a missionary here last month asked if he could pray for something specifically, I asked him to pray that I would be more patient.

He prayed, “Dear Lord, please put situations in Amanda’s life that will test her patience so it will grow!” and I smiled and thanked him but inside I kinda groaned, because I knew God would answer!

God is answering, and I think in the past three months I have become more patient, but OH the stuff that is testing my patience, right now, is driving me crazy!

I’m in Mozambique and have been to tired and busy to blog lately.  But I am well and miss everybody lots.  Washington, I’ll see you in about a month.  It’s been a long time.

This last Friday night me and my Mozambique team left Kona Hawaii.  We were going to fly to San Fransisco, then Frankfurt Germany, then Johannasburg South Africa, then take a train to Maputo, then take a four-day bus ride to Pemba, where we’ll be living for the next two and a half months.

So basically I couldn’t sleep on any of the flights.  I don’t know why but even if I’m super tired, if I’m sitting up I can’t fall asleep.   After I counted the hours from when we left to when our flights were finished, I hadn’t slept in three and a half days not counting the hour I got on an airport bench.  I felt like a zombie and it was weird, because we were landing in South Africa and going about the airport getting good food and stuff but I didn’t even feel excited because I was so out of it.  It was hard to talk.  But I was really surprised at how much I was fine.  Like no headache, stomach ache, I didn’t feel sick, I didn’t feel emotional, none of the stuff that should’ve happened with going that long without sleep.  At the airport I finally got to take about a two hour nap at an airport window-sill but when I got up I felt even more tired then before.  After we got to the airport we took two little vans to get to the train station.  I was on sleeping pills and starting to take my malaria meds, which I heard can mess with your system, so I was a little worried.

Then we were trying to find a cheap ride to pemba.  The bus stop building was kinda creepy and there were a bunch of people staring at us and asking us for money, and it smelled bad.  We all piled our stuff in a corner and took turns staying with our stuff and going to get food.  There were three men who came up to our group and asked us what we were doing and one of them was a pastor, and he found out we were going to Maputo, where he had good friends.  I could barely talk I was so tired, so while some of my team kept talking to them I got out my blanket and slept on the floor, and it seemed like maybe fifteen minutes later my team woke me up and told me we were about to get on the bus.  Apparently I had slept for seven hours and it was all ready evening then, which felt really weird.  So we all prayed with the men we met and all got our stuff and piled on.

I didn’t really think about how long the bus ride would be but it turned out to be about maybe eight hours?  It was very stuffed but I got to sleep about a half hour until somebody woke me up and I couldn’t fall asleep again.  They were playing Caline Deon videos and gosh they were dorky.  Music videos in the 90s seem to only consist of a video of the person looking really good while singing a song and magically changing outfits in the song like a dozen times.  No story whatsoever.  After that they showed a really violent movie that was freaking me out.  They were gonna stuff a girl’s arm down a food cutter sink thing!  The movie didn’t even have a plot, just killing and screaming and car crashed and I wanted to stop watching it but I couldn’t!  My ipod was dead so I couldn’t block it out.  We stopped at one restroom on the way (how I didn’t need any more stops is another total grace of God!) and after that they started playing another movie, but only the soundtrack.  It was another violent movie so even though the screen didn’t work the next three hours consisted of me trying not to concentrate on the constant killing, shooting, explosion sounds.  Then the sun was starting to rise, and it was so beautiful.  I was able to see Africa outside the city for the first time.  It was vivid green grass and bushes as far as the eye can see and it was so flat.  The dirt is red and it was so gorgeous and strange.  It was funny to see the sun rise over Africa and have such a nice moment while all the gun sounds were still going on the sound.  As morning came the people around me, I think they were a family, started practically having a party and me and my friend Ashley were all in the middle of it.  They were talking really loud and started passing their toddlers all about at like four in the morning but by then I wasn’t that tired anyways so it was just entertaining.  The people here are some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen.  Every women just looks like a super-model or a queen and I have to make myself not stare, they are so pretty.  And the babies have the biggest, most lovely black-brown eyes ever.

The bus was then starting to get really, really hot, especially with out carry-ons and blankets on our laps with nowhere else to put them.  The road was very bumpy and very fast, and I was sitting at the back of the bus, so our bus was bouncing all over the place, which I enjoyed.  Soon we got to the border and all started piling out and getting into this line around the corner to show our passports.  Me, Breno, and a few people on the team were the last ones out of the bus and the rest of the group was up ahead of the line.  When us people in the back had gone through the line, we walked back to the bus and it wasn’t there!  And the first half of our team were nowhere to be found.  So we started hurrying up the road, through the border, hoping the bus had gone up ahead.  After maybe a half-mile or so we got to the bus and piled on, feeling very relieved, until we were told a few of our team that had gotten the bus had run back to find us!  Through all this I felt such a strange peace, and didn’t feel freaked out at all.  We were about to get out and go back to get them, but then they had come back to us and I did a headcount and we were all there, whew!  The bus drove about another hour or more to Maputo, and would randomly stop in places and the bus would get so hot I was sweating from the back of my hands.  I didn’t know the back of hands could sweat, but they can!  We were all dripping so much it looked like we had water poured on us, it was so hot!  In a way although it was really uncomfortable, it was fun.

The next part was all a blur, since I was alseep when the three men were talking to some of my team, but it turns out the men’s friends that lived in Maputo wanted to get us set up with a better bus for the same price and let us stay overnight at their house.  So after we were dropped off we got picked up by their family, who drove us through a bunch of market-like places to get to their house.  Driving here is fast and the road is bumpy and crazy, and it is so much fun.  We got to see so many cool things!  So many people all over, wearing beautiful colorful clothes and blancing crazy big stuff on their head.  I don’t know how they do that!  I saw one smaller woman carrying one baby on her back, another on her hip, while carrying a large load on top of her head.  Multitasking to the max!

We finally get to the house, which is big and beautiful.  They made us a lovely dinner.  It was this amazing rice, roast chicken, and the best salad ever.  They all let us take much needed showers and gave us all a bottle of coca cola, which was probably the most refreshing thing I have ever had!  We have a nice, safe place to stay, and a cozy place to sleep.  Tonight we will all gather with their family and worship together.  And tomorrow morning we’re going to get on a bus they organized for us to Pemba.  We were expecting it to be a four-day bus ride, but they not only got us a bus just for our team, but it’s only expected to be a day-and-a-half or so trip.  I asked God for favor on our trip to Pemba and for his grace on our team, but I didn’t imagine anything like this.  God has so blessed us and His goodness is surpassing anything I could’ve imagined!  After all this I feel so excited and refreshed!  God is soooo good!