Life goes on, thank God

Waiting for the internet to return

Chances are that you've never had to play the game I'm playing above, and didn't even know that the dinosaur did anything but stand there.  Lucky you.  Life without reliable internet is like life in the 80's.  You sit around playing silly games on the computer.

Anyway, the internet kicked back in yesterday, carrying sad news.  Our dear friend, Mike Kenney, is entering hospice care after a long battle with esophageal cancer.  Two days ago was my mom's birthday; we lost her to cancer in 2012.  Mark's dad is also fighting metastatic cancer.  And now this news of Mike...  Mike and I (and our partners in crime, Gil Gotiangco and youth minister Seth Philbrick) taught high schoolers in the Sunday School program at our church.  I really wanted to go back and  hear his loud laugh fill that basement youth room again.  That's not going to happen.  I refuse to write any sort of eulogy here, not while he's still living. I know Mike won't mind my talking about this because he has been brave enough to share his journey with everyone in his incredibly thoughtful, well-written, and inspirational blog.

I don't like to think of a world without people I love and who've been critical in my development.  But that's life, isn't it?  We all have to go sometime.  What's tough is that we are so far away from the people who we would naturally turn to in times like these.  I've rarely missed home these past six months, but I'm really missing it these days.  The people I'd naturally want to hug or talk to are in Silver Spring, DC, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Leesburg, and Northern Virginia.  And even if we live far from Mark's parents, it's usually so easy to Skype them, or talk to them on the phone.  Here, when we talk to Mark's mom in Rome, the delay is so significant that our conversation is usually a mess of interrupted comments and "hello?  hello?".  Conversations with Mark's dad in Oregon are rare since the internet is so spotty.  The same goes for my dad, who is holding down the fort in Silver Spring.  As for bros and sis, they're WhatsApp communicators, so again, the spotty internet gets in the way.  We miss our people.

So, because I can't run over and give Mike a hug, I think of him a lot.  I sit outside with our dog Teddy Afro, and say to myself that it's okay to feel disconnected because there's always prayer.  And prayer - if you're thinking about the people you've loved and lost - inspires gratitude.  Yesterday, while I was listing the things I was grateful for about Mike, Teddy licked my ears and toes regularly and eventually forced me to play fetch with him and things were better.  By the time I went to Operation Rescue in the afternoon, I was in thankfulness mode, even though my heart was heavy.  But by the time I left Operation Rescue at 9 pm that night, I'd had maybe the best day I've experienced here so far.  Let me tell you why.

First, someone tried to pick-pocket Eli. Bear with me.  It has a happy ending, if a gross beginning.  So, Daniel, Eli, and Micah were on their way home from making home visits with a social worker (part of a project we'll be telling you about soon).  A guy on a street corner came up out of nowhere and spit on Eli.  He'd been saving up for a while by the look of the glossy white smear on Eli's shirt.  The guy began to apologize profusely, pulled some toilet paper out of his pocket and began to wipe up the spit on Eli's shirt.  Eli, being an American teenager, is uncommonly attached to his phone, and felt the guy's fingers wander into his front pocket.  The theft was thwarted by Eli's calm backing away with his hand firmly in his pocket.  The guy disappeared.

Later, we went to ORE, and I happened to tell this story to a group of people.  First, they mentioned two people who were victims of this exact scheme.  The victims were so shocked by the unexpected expectorant that they had no idea their phones were being lifted.  Second, my listeners warned me, as always, to take good care of my phone.  I made a big show of exactly how careful I was, pointing out a hidden pocket under a flap of my bag where I kept my phone. I told everyone very loudly that the person who tried to steal my phone would receive a thorough butt-kicking, if they were lucky enough to even see where I kept it.  I went on about it for quite a while. There was general laughter.  It was getting late, and sweet little Feven was sitting at my feet.  She asked me what time it was.  I happened to know it was about four, so I told her.  She asked me if I could make sure, so I reached into the hidden Jason Bourne pocket of my bag and felt my hand descend into empty space.  My phone was gone.  Feven, that cheeky monkey, had expertly lifted it even as I was bragging about how awesome I was in the phone safety realm.  This is the face she made after she gave me back my phone.  I nearly died laughing.

Theif!  Theif!

Here's something else that brings a smile to my face:

Yeshi, Birhan and their siblings

I took this picture yesterday.  You might notice that two of these girls (the ones in blue) are identical twins.  They grew up at Operation Rescue, in a cell house that serves as a kind of orphanage.  But in fact, they are part of a set of triplets.  The third member of the triplet set is the sister wearing a white sweater.  The other kids are also siblings.  The amazing thing is that Yeshi and Birhan do not know these siblings at all, really, including their triplet.  Back in the day when Ethiopia still permitted international adoptions, a shady agency went to the village where Yeshi and Birhan's parents lived.  Agencies used to make big money on twins, and heard that a family had given birth to triplets.  They convinced this impoverished family to give two of the girls up for adoption, saying they'd never be able to survive otherwise.

The family drew straws to see which two should be given away.  As it happens, the identical twins were chosen, and were given to the care of the agency.  When underhanded dealings like this were finally put to a stop, only two agencies were allowed to remain open, and ORE was one of them.  So the girls were put in ORE's care and raised in the cell house.  They never knew their parents, never knew their siblings, never knew their extended family.

But ORE knew that at some point the girls would need to be reunited with the family, if the family could be found.  And found, it was.  So preparations were made to return these little girls to their family many, many miles away in a rural village where their people were farmers.

But how do you cause such a huge upheaval in the lives of two girls who've grown up in the big town of Mekele, whose education has been steady and good, whose entire world has been shaped by foster parents and siblings who practice a different faith? (Yeshi and Birhan have not been raised in the Orthodox church, but in the Protestant church, which in Ethiopia is sometimes considered to be as far from Orthodoxy as - say - Zoroastrianism).

Guess what?  The unbelievably brave and loving parents of this family decided to pack everything up, leave behind the village where they've had roots from a time before memory, and bring all their children to Mekele.  Rather than cause distress to Yeshi and Birhan, they chose to take on the stress of moving to them, instead.  They arrived last week.

They are at the mercy of charity.  They have no formal education.  They don't speak even one word of English, even the older children who should at least be able to say, "Hello, how are you?".  And they have to learn to be a family in these new circumstances.

I took the picture above with a big smile on my face, even knowing the hurdles the family will have to cross.  As we prepared for Devotion Club's weekly performance (Samson and Delilah, my friends, with Feven starring as Samson!), two of Yeshi and Birhan's sisters joined us, looking at us and our silly antics with wide open eyes, probably wondering what on earth they'd gotten into.

Still, I kept thinking of loss, of Mike, of goodbyes, of wanting to hug my friends and family.  And in spite of the laughter of the day, I just wanted to go home and wallow a bit.  But I had promised that I would attend the weekly cooking club started by a short-term Swiss volunteer at ORE.  She'd invited Yoshi and Akari, two volunteers in Mekele with Japan's version of the Peace Corps, to teach us how to cook Japanese food in ORE's guest house.  So I stayed.  I promised myself that I could sit in a corner and chop some carrots quietly.  I didn't have to be fun, or friendly, or anything.

Alas, video footage taken about an hour into cooking reveals that I left my chopping station to join a small impromptu kitchen dance party, pulling some really unimaginative but enthusiastic moves to Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling", while poor Yoshi and Akari criss-crossed the kitchen, trying to get food made.

Getting ready to cook.  Pre Justin Timberlake

Uno, the international card game of choice.  Some of these
folks grew up at ORE and now work there. Others are volunteers, local and international.

So yesterday, despite the internet tidings, was a good day.  I prayed hard in the morning until Teddy Afro the dog pulled me up and out of myself.  And then God sprinkled these little reminders to me throughout the day that life does go on.  And yes, people we care about will leave.  It brings tears to my eyes even to type that.  But that's the reality, isn't it?  What can you do but be thankful that your paths crossed, if all too briefly?  I guess you open your eyes to the people whose lives you get to be a part of today, and tomorrow, and for however long.

Life does go on, thank God.



PS, more evidence that life goes on.  Today (one day after the events described above) we were invited to experience the wonder of a spelling bee put together by Mark and the Volunteer Service Overseas volunteers in his class.  The competition was fierce, and the kid who won second place, Yohannes, was attacked by his friends in a show of violent support. I can't imagine what would have happened to the poor kid if he won.

Standing, left to right: Semere, Tirhas, Biruk (Tied 3rd), Mahlet (1st), Markos, Yohannes (2nd)
Helen (Tied 3rd), Dyela, Biruk
Squatting:  Zion, new VSO volunteer whose name we don't know

Yohannes goes down

PPS, Hazal was disinherited by her incredibly wealthy family.  This is surely evidence that God does, indeed, hear prayer.