A Special Day!

There is a very important man in my life. I only started to really get to know him in the last year or so, but he has really changed my life for the better.  He teaches me how to serve with my whole heart, how to truly love the young and how to bring joy into all that I do. He has introduced me to some of the most amazing and selfless people that I have ever met in my life. He helped me accept my calling to do mission work this year and deepened my desire to serve the poor and the young. Today is the feast day of St. Don Bosco and I am so happy to be celebrating with my Salesian family from all around the world.

For those of you who aren’t quite as familiar with the Salesian founder, I will share with you a little bit on the amazing life of this saint. He was born into a poor family in Turin, Italy in 1815. His father died when he was very young and his mother (Mamma Margaret) raised him and his brothers. God revealed to him in a dream at the age of 9 that he was meant to live a holy life. From such a young age, he was able to inspire his peers and teach them more about Jesus. He entertained many crowds with his skills of juggling, story telling and tight rope walking. He would always end his entertainments with a retelling of the gospel or a praying of the rosary.

After becoming a priest, he continued to live a life in poverty. He gave all that he had to serve the young and the poor. He saw many young boys on the street and he wanted to love them and give them a better life. He created the oratory for these boys, a place that acted as home, church, school and playground. Most importantly, he loved these boys and all children that he encountered. He was able to show them their worth in the eyes of God and teach them how to be good Christians and honest citizens.

This is the model that all Salesian communities have. It is his example that first attracted me so deeply to serve with a Salesian organization. His love, especially for the young, is a constant inspiration to me. After serving here for almost 5 months now, it’s so apparent that the children are really the hope for the future of this country. The sisters run two schools, each with 1000 students. These kids are getting an education based on the plan of St. Don Bosco. The sisters are always reminding us volunteers that it is most important for these children to learn Christian values and discipline and that they must know that they are loved.

We use the model of Don Bosco’s oratory every week as we drive to Bilfam to host oratory for 200 local children. We sing, dance and play games, but we also have catechesis and always end the evening praying the rosary. It’s easy to dismiss children or say they are too young to learn or understand the teachings of the church, but they often hold the most hope for a society. It was a young boy at age 9 that knew to follow his calling to the church, was able to bring the gospel message to those much older than himself and who created a family of religious that now serves the young in the poor in almost every country of the world.

Don Bosco, pray for us!

The Joy of Children

I haven't posted a blog in a few weeks. I have a lot of ideas going, but haven't taken the time to put them all into words yet. To tide everyone over, I have a quick story to share.

The other day, Ania, Marta and I were walking to the market. When we were cutting through one of the side streets there was a group of children playing. They were playing some sort of game that involved tossing something back and forth while someone else ran. We had to walk in the middle of their game to get through so we were just awkwardly cutting through saying, "malesh" (sorry) and "kef?" (how are you?) We made it all the way through and then one little boy, who was probably about 5, ran up to us with his hand extended and said "kawaija (white person), how are you?" As soon as we started shaking his hand, all of the other children ran up to us with huge smiles and their little hands extended yelling with glee, "kawaija kwaija!" It was one of those moments that filled me with such pure joy. In that moment, I felt God's love in such a real and intimate way. I was so completely assured that I am exactly were the Lord wants me to be, doing exactly what he wants me to be doing.

I am forever grateful for the lessons I can learn from children, for the smiles they offer me and the simplicity of their love.

Christmas in South Sudan

This was my first time ever being away from home for the holidays. It was such a unique experience to be able to celebrate Christmas in a new environment with new people, but with the same purpose-welcoming our Lord and savior into the world! Advent was a beautiful time of preparation for the birth of Jesus. Our masses and prayers were very focused on the coming of Christmas and the church was always full, even during daily mass. It was inspiring to see the faith of the people. There weren’t Christmas lights and decorations everywhere around town, but the church did play Christmas music every morning at 6:30 to let us know mass was about to start. (It was only slightly ironic that the first time I woke up to the music, they were playing Silent Night.)

The week of Christmas was full of many celebrations. On Sunday, we had our staff Christmas party. The sisters invite all of the employees from both of their schools and the dispensary to have mass and lunch together. At one point, a pretty great dance party started to Feliz Navidad and it was glorious. Monday and Tuesday, we went caroling with some of the girls from the school. On Monday, we went to the United Nations compound to sing to the Kenyan soldiers and to Bilfam, the village where we host oratory. On Tuesday, we went to the prison and two hospitals. It was so encouraging to see these young girls spreading Christmas spirit to many places that otherwise might not experience it.

We celebrated Christmas Eve Polish style! Christmas Eve dinner is the big celebration in Polish culture so Ania and Marta prepared a traditional dinner of dumplings, cabbage soup and beet soup. We invited over our other polish friends Bartek and Kazik (the salesion vounteers that work next door with the priests) and Piotr (our new friend who works for the Red Cross.) We started dinner by reading the gospel of the birth of Jesus. After that we each took a piece of unleavened bread and went around the room giving Christmas greetings and good wishes to each person. After greeting each other, we took a piece of each other’s bread and then went to someone else. It is a beautiful tradition and we then had a great time eating and exchanging small gifts.

At 11:30 PM, we went to mass at our parish. There were so many people there. We even had to come back to the house to get chairs because we didn’t want to stand for all of Arabic mass. They can get pretty lengthy. We got home from mass around 2 AM and we all went into the sisters’ chapel to greet Jesus and sing a few carols. Then the sisters had set up the table to have hot chocolate and cookies before going to bed. After sleeping for about 5 hours, I decided to get up and go to the English mass, so I could actually understand the language and receive Jesus on his birthday. The rest of the morning was spent getting ready for our big lunch. We invited Fr George (our parish priest/Salesian), Kazik and Bartek over for lunch. It was really nice to celebrate all together!

The day after Christmas, we left for a weeklong holiday in a town called Tonj. It’s about a 3 hour drive from Wau (depending on the conditions of the road, during wet season it can take much longer.) All of us (volunteers and sisters) went for the day to have lunch with the community of Salesian sisters there, but Ania, Marta and I got to stay for the week. It was absolutely beautiful there. I’m hoping to have some time later to write a blog post just about Tonj so be on the lookout for that. We rang in the New Year there with the two sisters we were staying with. We got home from mass around 10 PM, had a delicious dinner and then the sisters broke out some nice beverages for us at midnight. I never would have expected that I would be starting the year like this, but I am so grateful for this experience, everything that I’m learning and the people that God has placed in my life.

I had a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope you all did as well!

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!