preparation

My mother always reminds me when it's been too long since I've blogged, and this time was no exception. Until the last two days, though, there hasn't been much to say. Silence truly was golden. Silence was the ten days spent in blissful rest at Deeper Still, rediscovering the reason God told us all to stop working on that seventh day.

Mama J has a point when she says that we've totally lost the concept of Sabbath rest. I think it's especially true for us as missionaries. We're meant to be these unbreakable powerhouses who just keep going day after day, month after month, with no regard to ourselves. Because, after all, there are needy people who, well, need us. Right?

But what we were forced to do during our time in Chiang Rai was to put all that aside. To be 'useless' for ten whole days, except for a couple of odd jobs around the place. To stop measuring ourselves by how much we could accomplish in a day or by how many days in a row we could keep on going. And it felt strange, a little wrong, even, to be in a place where nothing was expected of me. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was somewhere I should be, something I should be doing, and all of a sudden it became so clear to me that Mama J is right; I don't know how to rest.

I don't have any earth-shattering realizations to add to that. I didn't all-of-a-sudden learn to lay down my need to be useful. I think, if anything, I just learned that I need to. Deeper Still was a starting, a place to begin. Now I just need to find out how I can do that in real life, something that promises to be slightly tricky because of the next piece of news I have to share with you.

We're going to South America!

That, I know, seems incongruous for the author of a blog entitled Ali's African Adventures. And Africa is still the biggest piece of my heart; be sure of that. However, for six months next year, starting on the 28th of February, the HoJ and I are going to be living in South America instead; in Peru, to be exact. We're going to be taking part in something called a Discipleship Training School (DTS for short, which is how I'll refer to it from now on) with Youth With a Mission, (YWAM). We'll take part in four months of class and then go on outreach for two months, to places not yet determined. (Potentially, though, we could end up in Ecuador, where a good chunk of my heart was left in the sandy ground of a camp on the beach there.)

The course will be in Spanish and then translated into English, so I'll be learning another language on top of everything else going on. We will be living in the city but going on outreaches to Amazon river villages, and the packing list includes jungle hammocks, so I'm pretty sure it's going to be an incredible six months. We're going to use the time to seek God's heart for us for the coming years and to grow in our love for God, the world and each other. I get the feeling it's going to be intense.

So that's the news up to the minute. We've spent the last two days in Bangkok, wending our way through crowded markets, climbing temples and riding boats on dirty canals, but I can't upload pictures, so it seems hard to write about for some reason. We're about to say goodbye to Elliot and Julle, our companions for the last two months, and board a plane for the next leg of our trip, where we'll spend six weeks just hanging out with Mercy Ships friends and family in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

In some ways, I'm looking forward to the first world. It will be nice to pay a set price rather than having to barter for everything I want. For the first time in seven weeks I won't have to carry toilet paper with me everywhere I go, and I'm going to be able to go out alone with no fear for my own safety.

But standing on a crowded bus last night, sweat tricking down my back even as my hair was being pulled into the fan above my head (because I am taller than 99% of the Thai population), I had this sudden, blinding realization that, in some strange way, I belong in the third world. I might long for the first, for its clean bathrooms and safe streets, but there will always be something in me that pulls me back to the chaos and the open markets and the people staring at my white skin. I revel in the crush of people and the swirl of colours and I don't think I want to stay forever in a place where no one stares at me.

Ask me again after I've had a dose of clean streets and first-world supermarket selection; I might be singing a different tune, but something tells me I'll be missing all this.