Strike!

After such an amazing Christmas break it is great to be able to honestly say that it is good to be in Nigeria!  It was the most wonderful thing in the world to be back with family, dear friends and the comfortable familiarity of home!  I don’t know if I’ve ever appreciated those things more than I do now! =) Nigeria has been a very interesting place to live these days.  Here are some picture of so police officers going through one of the road blocks, and some of the people staying at home because they couldn't go anywhere.   We took it from the library window, looking just outside of our compound just over a week ago.  

Basically, the government lifted a fuel subsidy, causing gas prices to more than double overnight.  Originally, the government promised that the money would be put toward desperately needed improvements in national infrastructure, but corruption runs so deep in Nigerian politics that there was no chance of that happening.  So, the outraged labor unions organized a nationwide strike and the entire country held its breath and waited for eight days through the negotiations. We were so thankful that the majority of the protests remained peaceful! Moving around was impossible, there was one march that we saw, and they were burning tires in the road to block traffic. We got a front row seat to an event that began as an issue over gas prices and soon turned into a protest against governmental corruption, which was tagged “Occupy Nigeria”.

            For us at ACA, the strike really wasn’t that bad.  We were given enough warning about the strike to get all of the food that we needed, and we locked inside the compound with friends, our house, out classrooms, a tennis court, psych re-runs and the game Settlers of Catan. We were totally fine.  It also gave us a ton of time to catch up and do all of the little projects that we never have time to do during school! I am loving feeling on top of things, and I’m pretty sure this might be the only time that will ever happen in my entire teaching career!  

A week after it all began we were told that they had compromised on gas prices and school would begin the next day.  It was amazing how quickly the world returned to normal and we’ve been back to school since last Tuesday.  Unfortunately, the people that this hurt the most are those that could barely get by before the ripple effect price increases.  It’s just another layer on the picture of Nigerian corruption and politics, widening the gap between rich and poor.  We’re still working on some ideas of how to help, but there sure are a lot of hurting people here.  It’s amazing to live in a place where sin is so out in the open.  I don’t think Americans are any less sinful, but they are much better at hiding it!   

             Since I coming back for the second term, I am beginning to see how short two years really is.  I think my mind was so stuck in the fact that we were living in Nigeria and this was life now, and that my perspective was that I would be here for just short of forever!  I know the Lord is changing my heart because I’m beginning to see what an opportunity it is to be here and how important it is to waste a single second of this time.  It’s probably how we should be living our entire lives, but I’m learning to live with that urgency. He’s growing a love for Nigeria in my heart that better than I ever could have created for myself and I am so grateful.  It’s also been amazing to see my class begin to settle down.  I think I am settling down a little too, settling into teaching and all that that includes.  We have also started a Bible study with some of the high school girls that I am very excited about!

            Here is a picture of the kids in 1st through 3^rd grade, and my kids are the ones in the front row!  Thank you all for being so amazingly kind and encouraging.  I couldn’t do this without you and your thoughtful prayers.  If you think about it could you please pray that I am aware enough to see where God is working around me, and wise enough to join him.  And that He would mold my heart to be more like his! 

Sending my love from Nigeria =)

Settling for Shallow

After three months here in Nigeria I am feeling pretty settled into life here.  The market doesn’t scare me as much.  I have my Nigerian driver’s license, we’ve made a few friends, and I can understand the accent most of the time.  I have squished more cockroaches than I care to recount, survived parent-teacher conferences and I have resigned myself to the fact that attempting to straighten my hair is simply a complete waste of time.  However, the biggest challenge of the last few weeks hasn’t been Nigeria; it has been how easily I always seem to slip into things that are easy, comfortable and shallow.m Just to be clear, it is not that I have any desire for anything more stretching to be added into my life right now.  I feel sufficiently stretched, and my desire for adventure is pretty much at capacity.   Living in Nigeria and learning how to be a teacher have been more than enough entertainment, but I am becoming increasingly aware that faithfulness is proven over time, and that character is developed as we make one decision to honor God at a time, every day, in every moment. 

We have had some amazing experiences and made some great memories.  I took my class on a field trip to the top of a place called Bower Tower; we are starting to get involved with an orphanage and hosted a Luke 14 feast which was pretty amazing.  We also had some short term doctors come and stay with us!   It was great to get to know them and have a little piece of home!  They couldn’t say enough positive things about the Nigerian people.  That they had never experienced better hospitality, stronger families or friendlier people than they had here in Nigeria.  Now, I knew that I was supposed to smile, tell them that they were right and that I was the luckiest girl alive to be living in such a perfect community.  However, that was not the Nigeria that I was experiencing.  My ears were ringing, partly from the fact that I had said things like that after getting back from a short term missions trip.  The other part of me was irritated because after living here for a few months, that was not the general opinion that I had of Nigeria.  I do know a bunch of Godly, wonderful and humble Nigerians, but overall the Nigerian people that I had been getting to know were aggressive and generally fairly unreasonable.  Specifically, the parents of my students had been harsh and demanding. I was buried deeply in resolving behavior issues with several of my students that could mostly be traced back to either poor parenting, or the fact that one or both parents live in another country.  The kindest people that I have met here are either from India or South Africa!  So, friendly? not exactly, and strong families? Well, not the ones that I was seeing.  I was seeing a Nigeria full of hurting, sinful, very real people. 

This is when I realized that I was settling for shallow.  All of the things that I saw in people might have been true, but I was looking at them with a selfish perspective and I was desperately missing a very key component.  “And Jesus looked at them and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Compassion?  He looks at people with all of our insecurities, selfishness and sin and the only thing that he feels for us is compassion because we are lost.  Looking at a bunch of people that are hard to love, His response is unbelievable to me. And the reality that I am one of those people that are extremely hard to love is incredibly humbling.  Now that I’ve been here longer than a short term trip, I am getting to know real people, with real issues, and real expectations.  But I’m learning that I can have two responses.  I can either become bitter because I’m settling for a shallow, selfish perspective, or I can rely more on Christ, and look through his eyes at his people, with his compassion.  I don’t have to deny that there is something wrong, or pretend like everything is perfect, because true, deep compassion is unconditional. 

            I’m completely blown away by how much deeper God’s perspective is than mine.  I think I’m being loving, but I’m settling for being kind.  I do just enough to get by and call it working hard, and I see people from the perspective of how they relate to me.  I complain about suffering, I’m impatient with people, even if only in my heart and I’m counting the days until I’m back in my comfortable home with my wonderful family.   God on the other hand loves us enough to not care about what we think of him.  He uses suffering to bring us to Him, because without it we wouldn’t even be able to see that we have a problem, and he looks at us with compassion. 

Thank you so much for all of you that are praying for me.  It means more than you’ll ever know, and if you pray anything for me will you pray that God molds my heart to be more like his.  I want to have his eyes and see his people with compassion.  I have been given nineteen children to love this year and I know that I can only do it with God’s heart.  Pray that I have the wisdom to love and discipline them well and that I will look at them and their parents with compassion.