ali's african adventures

Sitting here in the Great White North, watching the NHL All-Star game, full of all-you-can-eat wings, things are good. The only trouble is what's outside. According to my mother (and based on the photo of family dwarfed by a mound of snow over six feet tall at the side of the driveway at home), it's not even that bad here. It's just that, to me, any kind of weather that includes temperatures low enough to allow for freezing isn't really my cup of tea.

It's not helpful that my mind is 8,578 miles away in Durban, South Africa. The crew of the Africa Mercy moved back on board yesterday after living on land for the last five months while the new generators were being installed. Facebook statuses are flying thick and fast, all about unpacking and settling in and being home again.



I might have Canadian blood running through my veins, but given the chance, I'd take the tropical beach over the winter wonderland any day. Especially if it's anywhere near a certain big white ship that's getting ready to set sail for Sierra Leone.

Which would you choose?

I know it's not spring. The biting cold and four inches of fresh snow outside have made that abundantly clear to me. All the more reason for me to stay inside and take care of business.

It's been about three years since I left for the ship, and when I got on that first plane, my mother stayed behind and cleaned up the mess. I mean that literally; she packed away all my things (strewn, if I recall correctly, all over everywhere) into a series of large plastic tubs and stored it all in the attic for me. One of my missions during this time at home is to go through it all and get rid of anything I don't really need.

Now, one might argue that, having lived these past three years without access to these things, I need none of them. You'd be very nearly right, except for the fact that one day in the future, we might live back on North American soil permanently. That being the case, I'm going to hold onto my eclectic mix of hand-crafted pottery and the pile of long-sleeved shirts. I might actually need those one day.

The purge was going well until I opened the biggest box. Heavy enough that I nearly toppled down the attic stairs bringing it to my room, I found it full of spiral-bound notebooks, dated and numbered sequentially, filled with the last ten years of my life.



(That stack is maybe half of the total volume; it's all I could pile before they started sliding to the floor.)

I curled up on my bed and opened the first one, ready to relive my high school days. Memories of cracking open each new book, blank pages spread out like a promise in front of me, drifted back as I started to read.

It wasn't what I expected. Not because I was surprised by the things I'd chronicled in blue pen. Not because I'd forgotten about the things written there; with very few exceptions I recalled every single experience and event and name written on those pages. I was blindsided by a feeling I hadn't expected.

I was ashamed.

Being the word nerd that I am, I looked that one up before I put it in bold. One of the definitions I found made sense of it for me. Ashamed: focuses on the sense of one's own responsibility for an act, whether it is foolish, improper, or immoral: He was ashamed of his dishonesty. She was ashamed of her mistake.

Ashamed of my mistakes, yes. And my dishonesty? Absolutely. I don't think it'll be terribly shocking when I reveal that I spent pretty much my entire teenage career as a bit of a mess. Nothing really unique or ground-breaking; I wasn't inventive enough for that. I couldn't stand my parents and the way they were controlling my life, I felt fat and ugly, I wanted boys to like me and I hated myself when they didn't. I didn't see anything in myself worth loving and in all this I was every girl that's come of age in America.

I was running, that's all, thirsty for healing. For some reason, I couldn't see the promise of life being offered to me by the One who wanted to heal me, and I'm ultimately responsible for those dry years. God never stopped His pursuit, never stopped loving me when I was doing everything I could to tear myself from his inexorable grasp.

I am ashamed of the way I acted.

Which is why I'm throwing out that stack of journals. I combed through them and scanned in the pages that held anything worth saving. (There were very few of those.) And then I got a big, black garbage bag and threw them all out.

This cleaning up of my things is so much more than just organization and downsizing; in some ways, it's a soul cleansing. I have realized that my life is not ruled by what once controlled me. I am no longer subject to the overwhelming fear that I am not good enough or pretty enough or smart enough. All those lies are finally where they belong: in the garbage.

I wear His worth like a crown of stars on my head, His beauty like a royal robe.

I am enough because He is.

New year, new look. Sort of, anyway. Dina has convinced me that blogs with photos are much more fun to read when the photos are bigger. She makes a good point when she says that the little thumbnails I use, trusting you all to click through and see them bigger, often just stay as little thumbnails, which kind of just misses the point.

To that end, I'm going to start posting photos larger. And since she's the one that gave me the idea, I'm going to use her photos first. (Except for the one of the two of us; her son, Jacob, took that one.)





The thing is, I can't think of any photos I'd rather post at the start of this new year than ones showing the start of a new friendship. Or, maybe more accurately, the continuation of an old one. Never has the distinction been so hazy and so right.

What we did this week is meaningful on so many levels. It speaks to the power of technology in this modern age. Back in the day, missionaries went months and months without contact with their loved ones. Maybe the occasional letter would get through, but by then the news would be stale and old. These days, I can sit on a ship in Africa and talk on the phone to my sister in the States. I am instantly connected to a family in Canada when they send me an e-mail, and an enormous box of goodies only takes a few weeks to arrive. Because it's so effortless, we can actually get to know each other from across an ocean, which makes things much less awkward when we show up in real life.

I think, though, more than anything, I'm floored yet again by the reality of the familial ties we have with strangers around the world. It's one thing to say, all hopped up on the Spirit, that we're all brothers and sisters in the Lord. It's something entirely different to put that statement to the test, to knock on a front door and expect a bed for the night. Or three nights, with a hockey game and fort-building and strawberry banana crepes thrown in. All in the name of siblinghood, a word I've clearly just made up.

But this siblinghood becomes sweeter and sweeter to me as I continue on this crazy adventure with God. It meant we had a place to stay in countries around the world. It meant the smiling face of yet another stranger to meet us at an Asian airport, and without fail it means the warm embrace of family who technically aren't related to me at all, every single time I come home. (Home being a term I'll let you define for me; I haven't yet sorted out which side of the ocean it lands me on.)

We left Dina's place just shaking our heads, huge smiles on our faces. To think that there was this family, somewhere in the world, who meshed so perfectly with us. Who mirrored down to the smallest details not only our heart for the world but also our taste in YouTube videos! This kind of easy camaraderie is something I had always thought needed to be carefully cultivated over long years of friendship.

Thank goodness I was wrong.

So here's to many more late nights of shared hearts and shared music videos. To crepes and chapatis and chili. To four kids piled in a heap on top of us in a squeaky bed and forty friends piled into a house to eat pancakes and reach out to the world.

Here's to siblinghood.

Yesterday I walked up to a house and rang the doorbell. Little feet pounded inside, voices shrieked, the door flew open and I was hugged fiercely by four little sets of arms. Behind the kids, their parents smiled widely, waiting their turns for hugs, which, when they came, seemed the most natural thing in the world.

It was the first time we had ever met.

Somehow, it was not the least bit strange.

Dina and I have been e-mailing for more than a year, sharing life in words sent winging their way across the internet, all because a faulty comment box on my blog refused to work one day. I am so grateful for my spam filters, because they're the reason I'm sitting in her kitchen right now, watching football with a cup of hot chocolate on the table next to me.

In case you don't remember, Dina and her kiddos are the ones who sent me the box of love on the ship back in April. We've grown this friendship through e-mail and comments, and since we'd been planning to come to Ottawa to visit my cousin anyway, it made perfect sense to show up on the front steps of this house full of strangers.

Not strangers. A sister and a brother and three new nieces and a nephew. The oldest isn't in these photos, taken shortly after spending a stifling half hour in a fort telling stories by the dim glow of the flashlight, because she was downstairs helping Dina get ready for the big party.

Tonight we feasted on pancakes and got the chance to talk about Mercy Ships to a room full of friends and neighbours, a chance we'd never turn down. I mean, come on; who doesn't like pancakes?! We even got to meet a former Anastasis captain and his wife and kids, something that underscored again so heavily just why we love the ship we call home. We had never met these people and yet we spent probably over an hour trading stories, catching up on mutual friends and just feeling the connection that comes when you're sitting on a couch with someone who completely understands what your life in Africa is like.

I am left feeling so grateful for this blog, for the connections it's allowed us. We have been so warmly welcomed, made to feel so at home, and it just feels like this is the most natural thing in the world. When Eden and I made a drugstore run for some extra forks, the cashier ashed her if she wanted her mom to hold the change. Eden piped up immediately. She's not my mom. She's actually my Auntie. People asked me tonight, so how did you meet Dina? I would just smile and reply that I showed up on her doorstep yesterday morning, and wait for the double-take.

Really, though, it's more than just the blog. We're connected through the words on these pages that she shares with her kids before bedtime prayers, but we're sisters on a much deeper level, too. It's one thing to be part of a blog community, but something entirely different to be a part of the family of God. That's the soul connection that's making this visit so incredibly sweet. Knowing that our hearts, at the deepest level, are tuned to the same frequency made it the easiest thing in the world to ring the doorbell yesterday.

(Although I'm going to be honest with you; I did wonder, just a little as we were driving up their street, whether or not it was all going to turn out to be some elaborate ruse.

I'm really glad they're real.)

Here's to new things, the newest of which in my life right now is a tiny baby named Abigail. I can't think of a better way to start the year, full of promise, than with photos of her.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading to Ottawa to meet, for the first time, a very dear friend and her four kids. Any guesses who it might be?