Realness 2- Similarity

One of my students asked me for Justin Beiber’s* email address this week.

I told her I’d have it to her tomorrow.

(HELP!)

Also, my kids play football (soccer) here at recess everyday. I was invited to play keeper this past week, and have thoroughly enjoyed myself. However, my kids play with a ball that is flat from a large hole. If anyone that is reading this feels called, I’m sure my kids would LOVE a working soccer ball (with a pump). You can mail it to the address on the screen. Thank you so much!

I love and miss everyone of you daily.

*For those of you who may not know Justin Beiber, he is a teen-pop sensation who has literally swept the world with his catchy, upbeat tunes (I’ve heard his music blared in the USA, the Dominican Republic, and now Tanzania).

Realness 1- Vulnerability

Being thrown into a situation of vulnerability,

of not only being “out of your comfort zone” but literally “into a discomfort zone”,

of the floor/ground/platform that you’ve built all of your support-structures on being taken out from under you,

of so much unfamiliarity,

of the different and the startling sameness,

is beautiful

and

freakin’ tough.

Especially at the beginning.

But totally worth it.

“... Our fullest ‘solidarity with the poor,’ no matter how wealthy or destitute we may be, will be our willingness to enter into the mystery of our own unmanageable humanity.

Every instant of faith or of hope or of love, so fragile and fraught with insecurity, is the embodiment of this poverty of our humanness.

It is when we are most weak, indeed.

And it is when we are most strong, most creative, most stunning in beauty, most empty.”

-         Vulnerability in Faces of Poverty, Faces of Christ John Kavanaugh and Mev Puleo

 My Room!

 A letter from a student :)

 The front of my house!

 My clothes hanging out in our compound. The big black tank in the back is our water tank that is filled by the governement randomly. The door is where our drop-toilet is and where I prefer to take my bucket showers.

This is my Tanzanian Family in our living room when we had them over for dinner a few weeks ago!