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.