It has been four months since I finally arrived back in Raleigh after leaving Joburg some twenty-odd hours earlier...twenty-odd hours of layovers in Frankfurt and Boston; napping on airport floors; plane food; congregating in the back of the plane for one last game of Kemps; all plugging our headphones into the armrests and picking the same music station, thus allowing us to have a silent dance party in our seats and aisles (though the flight attendants weren't quite as thrilled about this); affirmations; and lots of goodbyes and tears.
Anyone who knows me well will be shocked not at all that I was crying since that is pretty much how I process everything - happy things, sad things, scary things, overwhelming things, spiritual things...my heart cries most emotions :) Thinking about those tears reminds me of so many different aspects of the trip because they flowed for so many reasons...
I was crying because I was saying goodbye to this group of people who had become so dear to me. The sense of community that we shared on the trip was very eye-opening and wonderful for me. It was a very diverse group in terms of interests, life experiences, areas of study, etc, but our group formed and was held together with our shared love of Jesus. In our pre-departure meetings we talked specifically about how we were going to love and support one another while we were there and we did. One of the most important things I learned on this trip was about community because of what I was a part of with this group - how to handle conflict well, how to offer advice with grace instead of judgment, how it takes intentional vulnerability to build real community...We were a 33-person family and I couldn't believe my time with them was up.
Along similar lines, I was crying because I wasn't ready to go back home. I was really impacted in South Africa and I felt like I was closer to the woman of God that I desire to be in that place, with those people, doing that work. So I was not excited about coming home, mainly because I knew it would be hard to return to home and especially Rhodes where people already had expectations for me and it would be up to me to adjust them as necessary. Part of that nervousness was the fact that I was going back to Memphis while about 96% of the rest of the group would be back in Boston for school. I was preemptively missing their accountability. [Needless to say, I was immensely grateful to be able to go to Boston for my fall break, so we could have a mini-reunion - so refreshing and life-giving!]
Those things and semi-shock at being back in the States accounted for most of the hug circle tears in the Boston airport. The "arrival crying". The "departure crying" that started literally as soon as I sat down in my seat on the plane to leave Joburg, haha.
Those tears weren't about where I was heading back to, but where I was leaving. I was crying about the students that I was leaving - the eleventh grade class that a friend and I tutored regularly who had opened up to us, shared their lives with us, laughed with us (and at us when it was clear that we were totally lost - who could blame them? we were laughing, too), played games with us, sang for me, and cried and hugged with me on our last day. These students completely captivated my heart with their stories, their passions, their dreams, their hurt. They know where they are and they know where they want to be and, while they respond to their reality differently, the majority of them know that working hard at school is what will give them even a chance. What frustrated me was how the floundering education system in South Africa is in such a state that it will be the lucky ones of those who put everything they have into their studies and do the very best they can that will actually have the chance to continue to university. The combination of shortage of teachers, huge lack of resources (as a school and as individuals), and the attitudes and environment of some of the community seems almost impossible to overcome. But I don't believe that it is.
We spent a lot of time on the University of Pretoria campus talking to students about everything (faith, cultures, the recent events in South Africa politically, prejudices, etc), but especially about the tutoring that we were doing in Mamelodi, looking for students who would be interested in continuing work their after we had returned to America. The response that we got from the school was phenomenal. We had been praying for 33 people - the same number as in our group. We ended up getting the contact information of over 100 students and had the Head of Student Affairs and a few professors very excited about continuing the work. We even had a few students who were coming with us for the last week that we were tutoring. It was a phenomenal answer to our prayers! A group from Boston is going back in January during their J-term break. I will pass on anything that I learn from them after they return.
One of the dangers of short term missions is that one can go to a place and feel superior to the people one is "serving" for whatever reason. Of all of the things that God taught me while I was there, one of the greatest was humility. How I am capable of so little on my own. How I can offer myself, but that isn't very much when it is not given wrapped up in the grace and love of God. How I have so much to learn - about myself, about life, about God, about others, about other cultures and viewpoints.
I wish I was reporting about how my life looks completely different now from how it looked before I went to South Africa. But it's not true. The past four months have been a roller-coaster ride of joys and struggles and wanting to serve and being self-focused...but I am grateful for the fact that I am not stuck where I was before. I have pictures, letters, blogs, and two journals full of prayers and songs and notes and thoughts that remind of me of who I was and who I want to be; of how to say "I love you" in Zulu, Sepedi, and Tsonga (a lesson from my student Kiketsu- I was teaching him some Spanish in exchange); of the majesty of God I was so keenly aware of while hiking in Swaziland; of the importance of grace and honest communication in relationship; of the total transformative power of Jesus in the lives of people...
In some ways, this trip will never be over. And for that I'm grateful.
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