How Do You Measure 3 Months?

This coming Tuesday, December 8^th, will be my third monthiversary here in Wau. It really hit me today as I was taking my daily anti-malarial pill and I realized there were only a few left in my first 90 day bottle. One bottle down out of four, only three more bottles of antimalarial pills to go. It made me think of the Seasons of Love song from Rent. I’m sure most of you are familiar with it. It goes through the different ways that you can measure a year. While it hasn’t been 525,600 minutes yet, I have spent approximately 129,600 minutes in Africa and there are many other ways I could measure my time here as well.

Just like in Rent, it could be measured in daylights, sunsets, midnights (although I’ve only actually seen a couple), or cups of coffee (or lack thereof). It could be measured in inches (usually trying to convert from centimeters), or miles (from kilometers). There are many, less conventional, ways to measure my three months here as well. It could be measured in the times traffic was stopped because there was a herd of cows on the road, the times someone thought I was speaking English when I was actually attempting Arabic, or the times I thought the noises from a goat were coming from a human. I could measure my time by my work, how many patients I have seen, how many malaria diagnoses I have given or how many prescriptions I have written. I could measure it in the times that I have been called Kawaija (white person), been told “I am fine” without having even asked how are you, or been pointed at by little children.

It could be measured through all the negatives, how many holidays or weddings I have missed back home, how many times I’ve had to refer a patient to the hospital, or how many mosquito bites I have gotten. It could even be measured through the number of daily masses I’ve attended, rosaries I have prayed or churches I have been to. But even measuring in these, would not be pleasing to God. There are things that are so much more important and these things cannot be measured.

The reason that God placed me on this mission was not to achieve anything that can be counted or measured. My time here is about so much more than all of the things that I listed here. It’s about loving God with such fervor that it overflows into every move that I make. It’s about having the deepest desire to share that love with every single person I encounter. Seeing patients is an important part of my mission here, but the medicine that I give them isn’t the priority, I must first love them, every single one of them. It doesn’t matter if I’ve already seen 63 patients and one more comes in after all of the others have finished and gone. It doesn’t matter if I’m exhausted or feeling incompetent. It doesn’t matter if there seems to be nothing I can do for them. It doesn’t matter that I can’t speak their language. I must love.

I could not possibly measure the love that Christ has poured into my heart these three months. I could count the number of my sins that He has forgiven, the number of times He humbled Himself to enter my body in the form of bread or the number of nails that held His body to the cross for my sake. I could count these things and contemplate them every second of every day and still not be able to fully comprehend the love that my lord has for me.

The things that are important on this mission, in this life, cannot be counted or measured. It’s not important to count the days, the minutes or the anti-malarial pills. It’s important to be present. Everything is in loving Jesus and loving His people as He does. A day’s success isn’t based on the number of patients that I treated, but in the joy that I was able to bring into someone’s difficult day. God delights more in the moments when I’m making a scene in the waiting area trying to teach some toddlers how to high-five and say “good job!” than He does in me writing a correct prescription.

As I enter this next month here, my prayer is simply that I am so consumed by Christ’s love that everything I do is an extension of the love that I receive from Him.

“Love God, serve God; everything is in that.”

            -St. Clare of Assisi

Happy Thanksgiving!

Before committing to a mission year in Africa, I obviously spent time thinking about the things that I would be missing back home. Holidays definitely came to mind. I realized, though, that I wouldn’t be “missing” the holidays, they would just be celebrated differently.  I knew that Christmas and Easter would still be amazing celebrations here in Wau. One that I was worried about was Thanksgiving. Since it’s an American holiday, it would be treated like any other day here in South Sudan. I was very excited when Sr. Dolores announced about a month ago that we would be having our Community Thanksgiving Day in November. So, I did end up celebrating Thanksgiving, just a little bit early!

Our Thanksgiving day was this past Saturday, the 14^th, but we had three weeks of preparation for it. Our overall theme was “Becoming Missionaries of Hope and Joy.” We had a focus for each week: Think Positive, Speak Positive and Act Positive. We had a prayer intention for each day that we prayed for as a community. For the first half, our intentions were for those who help our mission-benefactors, house staff, our friends and families back home (shout out to you people reading this blog!), etc- and for our mission sites-the two schools and the dispensary. For the second half our intentions were for our community members, so we each had a day when everyone was praying for us.

My day was last Friday. I had an absolutely amazing day at the clinic, for no particular reason at all. I felt really good about all of the patients that I saw and I got to play with some really adorable little children while they were waiting for their lab results. After I got back home, I realized that it was the day that everyone was praying for me. I definitely think that was why my day was so blessed. God is showing me a lot about the power of prayer here.

           

The prayerful preparation we were doing as a community with the sisters was very fruitful. It was really good to focus on staying positive especially when things go wrong. A week and a half ago, we had about 3 days without running water. Our pump for our well was broken and things really weren’t looking good. The sisters were worried that it was going to be a difficult and costly fix, possibly even involving starting a whole new well. With the help of some lovely engineers and a LOT of prayers, it was all fixed. Through all of this though, everyone was very calm and no one was complaining. It honestly was not a problem at all to go a few days without running water (we still had water it just had to be carried from another place) and it helped all of us be thankful for a shower when it came back!

We were also reflecting on gratitude as a volunteer community. The four of us have started having weekly prayer meetings each Tuesday evening, rotating who leads it each week. Taylor was leading it the first week of November and she deemed this month “gratitude month.” We each decorated a piece of paper to put up in our community room and every day we write down what we are thankful for. It is good to take time every single day to reflect on the gifts that God has given me. I realize that there are so many and I have to choose just a few to write down!

Although we still have a couple more weeks for our Gratitude Month, our Community Thanksgiving all accumulated to the big day on Saturday. It’s a super legit celebration though so we had to start on our Thanksgiving Eve on Friday. We had a special evening prayer focusing on giving thanks. We all got paper leaves and wrote down what we are thankful for and taped them to our Thanksgiving Tree. After prayer, we all had dinner together. The table was completely decorated and we even had little gifts. Saturday morning, we had another special time of prayer and then breakfast together. We each got chocolate bars and had cake for Sr. Ninet’s birthday so it was a pretty good start to the day. After finishing the final food preparations, we left for our picnic adventure. We had such a good time together. We played games, laughed, sang songs, explored, played Frisbee, ate food and enjoyed each other’s company. We concluded the day with evening prayer and dinner together.

There was no turkey or pumpkin pie and the date was a little off, but this Thanksgiving was such a blessing. It focused on what Thanksgiving is actually about, thanking God for the gifts that he places in our lives every day. The celebration was so joyful because I had spent time prayerfully considering these blessings in my life. Yes, it will probably still be weird going to work at the dispensary on the 26^th when I know everyone back home is preparing for Thanksgiving, but I’ll be spending the day thanking God for all of you back home and for the love and support that you continue to show me.

Here are some of the things that I wrote down on my Gratitude List for this month:

• ·      The joy in the children as they run to oratory
• ·      Harry Potter movie nights
• ·      Babies in the Dispensary
• ·      Fresh fruit
• ·      Late night talks with Taylor
• ·      Running water
• ·      Teaching kids how to play Ninja
• ·      Mary Help nursing students
• ·      Peanut butter
• ·      Jesus in the Eucharist
• ·      Hot tea
• ·      Ukulele jam sessions
• ·      300+ kids at oratory praying the Rosary

Headlines

When I first started telling people that I would be doing a year of mission work in South Sudan, the reaction was almost always the same. “Don’t you know it’s not safe there?” “Wow. Are you sure you want to go there?” “Why do you want to go somewhere so unstable?” It was an understandable reaction based on the portrayal of this country in the news in America. Everything shown is war and distress and horrible people mercilessly killing others. These things are happening in this country and they are awful. I don’t want to belittle them in any way, but I also want people to know that there is so much more to this country than the violence. There are so many things that you would never see in the news.

CNN won’t write a report on the city of Wau and how it has been rebuilding itself since the war. It won’t talk about the parish of St. Joseph, its full church services and the children that literally run into mass to sit in the front row, its participation in Mission Sunday and how the parishioners gave out of heir poverty to raise over 12,000 South Sudanese Pounds to give to those less fortunate than themselves, and its Salesian priests and their preachings on living and leading joyful lives. It won’t talk about the students of Mary Help Nursing School, how they attend clinicals every morning and then have class until 5:30 PM, how they go to school every day except Sundays and have a total of 6 weeks off from school a year, and how they work this hard because they want to help people and improve the healthcare system of South Sudan.

BBC won’t spotlight on the citizens of South Sudan who create a welcoming environment for people visiting from other countries. They wont talk about the man who lends the Americans his phone at the airport and goes out of the way to help them get where they need to be, the woman who offers to show the foreigners around the market and teach them what reasonable prices are, or the student who offers to spend time teaching Arabic so someone can follow the conversations going on around them. You won’t see videos of children running to the roads to wave at the “Cawaijas” (white people), staying after school and decorating their school for a festival, or praying the rosary respectfully.

There are a lot of terrible things happening in this country, but there are a lot of beautiful things happening too. It is easy to focus only on the negative and forget to even acknowledge the positive.  It is easy to see the faults of a group of people and attribute that to a whole nation. It is easy to be fearful of places and cultures that are unknown. I wish everyone could come experience a little bit of what I have experienced here. There has not been a day that I have felt unsafe, that I have not seen joy in the people here, or that I have not found beauty in this country.

South Sudan needs your prayers. It needs prayers for peace, for a strong and just government, for leaders who will serve the country honestly and for an end to the violence. It needs prayers for all of the horrible things that you see in the news, but it also needs prayers for the growth and continuation of the things you would not see in the news. It needs prayers for continual faith formation, for the education of the young, and the funding of programs that provide this education. The news will never show the full picture of a situation, only God knows the extent of what is happening in this country and it is only through Him that things can come to be how they were meant to be.

A Day in the Life

I realized that I have not written anything about what a typical weekday looks like for me here, so I thought I would walk you all through one.

The alarm rings promptly at 6:20, but there is no need to ever use the snooze button because if I don’t get up then, the church bell rings at 6:30 for at least a solid minute. I hope that no one in Wau likes to sleep in because there is no chance of sleeping through that bell. In typical Catherine fashion, I’m ready to go approximately 3 minutes after getting out of bed. I greet our dog, Grigio as Taylor and I leave the compound. We make the 2-minute walk to our local parish, St. Joseph’s as we marvel at the always-beautiful sunrise in the distance. We take our usual spot in the church in the 8^th pew on the left. Mass is celebrated by our Salesian priest neighbors.

After mass, I have my breakfast of two pieces of bread with butter or jam and hot tea or instant coffee. Taylor, Marta and Ania all have to be at their respective schools earlier than I need to be at the clinic, so I enjoy some alone time with Jesus before I have to go to work. I arrive at the clinic by 8:30 and make sure the notebooks are set up to keep records for the day. I then help Nura sign people in. She writes their information on their ticket while I write it in our record book. After helping her for about 30-45 minutes, depending how busy we are, I go into my own consultation room and start seeing patients. I get assigned a nursing student each week to be my translator. The patients come in and I ask about their symptoms and do a quick assessment when necessary and then send them to the lab for whichever test I think that they need. As they get their lab results back, they bring them to me and I diagnose them and write their prescriptions from what we have in our pharmacy and write it all down in my charts. (Yes, nursing friends, paper charting is sometimes still a real thing.) It all happens very quickly because I usually see between 30 and 60 patients each day. If there is ever time without patients because they are waiting for their lab results, I usually get a quick Arabic lesson from the nursing student. I’m talking elementary stuff here, numbers, days of the week, simple greetings etc. Whenever I have seen all of my patients, I help with some record keeping and preparing things for the following day. My co-worker’s 4-year-old daughter normally comes to the clinic after school so we have some bonding time while I finish my work. I usually help her practice writing her English numbers and letters. She is very smart!

After work, my time is filled by different things- practicing ukulele or guitar, reading, attempting to practice Arabic, working out in my room, playing with Grigio, or doing any work that the sisters need me to do. At 6:00 the bell rings for prayer. We join the sisters for rosary and evening prayer and on Wednesdays we have Adoration. After prayer, is dinnertime! We eat together as volunteers in our community room, except on Wednesdays when we eat with the sisters. The night after dinner always slips away accompanied by good talks, jam sessions, and preparations for the next day.

At approximately 10 PM I turn the lights out, tuck myself into my mosquito net and drift off to sleep to the sounds of unnamed African critters.

Looking back at this post, it’s not the most entertaining, so here is a precious story to liven things up a bit:

Last Thursday, I gave the “Goodmorning” talk at St. Joseph’s school morning assembly. This is Salesian speak for a short talk to give the kids something nice to think about during the day. The next day a girl from the fifth grade class came up to Ania (who works at St. Joseph’s) and asked her if she knew me. After Ania said yes, the girl said, “wow, well she really is beautiful. Can you tell her that she is really beautiful?” It made my day and I thought it was very complimentary to what I was saying in my last blog post!

I have been keeping everyone back home in my prayers and I ask that you do the same for me. I also ask for prayers for peace and growth in South Sudan as this country tries to build itself up. If anyone ever has specific prayer intentions, please message me, so I can pray for them!

True Beauty

I have been reflecting a lot recently on beauty. Where does one find beauty? What does it mean to be beautiful? How is beauty defined? Why is beauty so sought after?

I have been surrounded by beauty for the past month. I see beauty in the green of the garden, in the rust orange of the mud after the rain hits, in the magenta of the flowers and in the yellow of the butterflies. I see beauty in the way the sun engulfs the sky with its color every morning at the sunrise and in the way it quietly slips behind the buildings leaving a pink trail at the sunset. I see beauty in a full church, in a front row full of attentive toddlers, and in a group of preteen boys attending mass daily. I see beauty in my acceptance into the community, in praying with the sisters, in sharing meals and laughs with the other volunteers and in the greetings of our dog, Grigio. I see beauty in the sheepish smiles of small children, in their enthusiastic participation in dancing and in their voices raised to recite the prayers of the rosary in Arabic.  I see beauty in a mothers embrace of her sick child, in a nurse who takes the time to educate her patients, in a child comforted from crying through the simple rotations of the blades on a ceiling fan, and in a clinic that helps hundreds of poor daily.  I see beauty in having water flow at the turn of a knob, in having a full plate of food, in seeing the two bars of wifi that mean my email will send, and in the feeling of my keys in my pocket meaning that I have a comfortable place to rest my head every night. I find beauty in the transformation of simple bread and wine into the body and blood of my Lord and in the daily gift of receiving Jesus into my very own body.

Yes, I have been surrounded by beauty for the past month and the word has begun to take on new meaning. It’s a word that, back home, is so often associated with things of vanity. In order to find beauty, I must wear the latest fashion, I must have my hair and makeup done, and my body must look a certain way. It’s a beauty that seeks its definition through the approval of others. It’s so limited. We have but one small mirror here, a small circle enclosed in pink plastic hanging above the sink in our bathroom. I catch glimpses of myself as a wash my hands or brush my teeth and am surprised by the beauty I see. Every article of clothing I have here can fit on one shelf. I have not worn makeup since I left the states. My hair is most often in a low ponytail or a haphazardly thrown together bun. My blue eyes hide behind my glasses every day. I’ll look down to see the outfit that I’m wearing for the 6^th time in a month that isn’t quite clean enough from my untrained hands washing it, my body perpetually covered in sweat and mosquito bites, and my nails stained from dirt and work. How do I feel beautiful?

I was perplexed and pleased by the beauty I saw and felt. This is not the idea of beauty that society had instilled in me my whole life. I prayed on this for a while and everything seemed so obvious. My whole life, I was the one trying to define what made me or others or the world around me beautiful. In reality, only the creator of this world can define what true beauty is. God made this world to be beautiful so when things are how he intended them to be, there is beauty. God designed the day and the night and it was good.  The beauty in the sunrise and the sunset is apparent because that is how God created days to pass. There is beauty in the joy of children because they most accurately portray our Christian faith. There is beauty in the love of a family because they are following their vocation. I am finding beauty in the simplicities of life because I am thankful to God for blessing me with them.

 I realized that I am seeing beauty in myself because I am being exactly who God created me to be.  Through all of the confusions of life in Africa, spending hours in the clinic having no idea what anyone is saying around me, being continents away from my family and friends, trying to learn my responsibilities in a new environment, living in a community of diverse cultures, and having practically no control over anything around me, there is no doubt. I have no doubt that God created me with the intention of sending me to Wau, South Sudan this year. I was created to love and serve my Lord with every action, every word, and every thought. I would be lying to you if I told you I was doing that perfectly here, but I am striving for it in ways that I never have before.

I look back at all of the times I tried on half of my closet trying to find something I felt beautiful in. The times that I angrily tore my eyes away from the mirror upset that the makeup I put on didn’t change the way I felt about myself. The hours I spent in dressing rooms h

oping that I would find the perfect dress for an event. The years of subconsciously seeking the approval of those around me. I look back and realize that I was seeking beauty through things of the world instead of wholeheartedly seeking Jesus. The Lord took all of these worldly things away from me to show me the deepest beauty I will ever see, to give me the gift of seeing beauty in the world as He sees it, and to feel as beautiful as he created me to be.

“How beautiful you are, how pleasing, my love, my delight.”

-Song of Songs 7: 7

My First Weekend in Wau

This weekend was absolutely amazing. It was full of so much joy and excitement. On Saturday, we got to go to the market with Sister Maria Antoinette. Taylor and I stayed with her and went along to all of the places she had to go to buy food for the house. It was quite an experience. There was actually a lot more than I thought there would be. There was obviously a lot of food, but there was plenty of other stuff too- cell phones, random electronics, dishes, clothes, shoes, etc. I didn’t buy anything this time because I haven’t exchanged any of my money yet, but I saw peanut butter so that will definitely be purchased next time I go! It was so fun watching sister Maria Antoinette barter with the people there. She is small, but mighty.

Even though Saturdays are our official day off, I think that Sundays are going to be my favorite. Sunday mass at the parish was beautiful, long, but beautiful. Luckily, the first service is in English so I’m able to fully participate. On Sundays, we have all of our meals with the sisters. They have such joyous hearts so it’s great being able to spend so much time with them. Also, I don’t believe that I have talked about the food here yet, but it’s actually pretty good! There is more variety than I expected. We eat rice, beans, lots of vegetables (egg plant, tomatoes, green beans, and many that I don’t know the names of), meat, pasta, watermelon and a variety of homemade sauces. We have even had some pretty good desserts and yesterday we had boiled peanuts!

After breakfast on Sunday, we went over to the Salesian priests and brother’s compound that is next door. There are two polish guys volunteering with them from the same organization that Marta and Ania are in and they invited us all over for tea!  The 6 of us hung out and talked for a couple of hours. It was great to hear about the work that they are doing here with the street boys and at the vocational training school. We’re hoping that this can become a weekly tradition and I promised them that I would bring over my ukulele next time, which should be fun.

Every Sunday afternoon, we go to oratory with the children. For those of you who don’t know, oratory is something that St. Don Bosco (founder of the Salesians) had for his boys as the foundation of his ministry. It was a place where children could go to find a home, school, church and playground. There were around 170 kids at oratory. It was apparent that most of them came from extremely poor homes, but they were so joyful. We sang and danced to many songs and played games. I am assigned to help with ages 1-5, along with a couple of local volunteers from the school. After we broke out into our age groups, the other volunteers were running out of things to do with the kids so I attempted to teach them Duck, Duck, Goose. I don’t think any of them actually knew what was going on and I had to help every round, but they eventually at least knew that they needed to chase the other person when they heard the word goose. They had a lot of fun, which is really all that matters. At the end of oratory, we all come together and pray the rosary together (in Arabic!). I was very impressed by how quiet and controlled a group of 170 children could be. They were so respectful and prayerful during the rosary. It was a perfect evening, topped off with a beautiful rainbow on the way home.

And now, a super special surprise! It took a lot of patience, but pictures actually uploaded this time! Enjoy:

This is at the market in Cairo. These two guys sang us some great songs.

Giza pyramids: featuring a some camels. 

We couldn't go to the pyramids without getting some nice jumping pictures. 

I told you that our tour guide knew all the best places to take pictures. Here is one of me and my true love. 

This is our dog in the compound, Grigio. It turns out that I get the best wifi on the porch right by where he is tied up during the day. No one knows if I come over here to check my email or just to hang out with him. It's usually a combination of both. 

These are some of the children at oratory. 

This was on the way home from oratory. If you look closely on the bottom left, you can see the rainbow!