A New Year

Today is an exciting day. Today the students at St. Andrews return to class for the start of another school year, oh, it also happens to be my birthday as well. The start of a new school year brings with it so much hope and opportunity. I am excited to think of all the ways the students I was able to interact with last year will excel and grow over the course of another school year.

Although I will not be celebrating my birthday with my friends in Malawi this year, and I will not be starting another school year with the students, I am happy to be home and able to spend time with my friends and family here who I missed celebrating with over the last year. Thinking of all that has occurred between my last birthday and today reminds me again how blessed I am. 

A new school year and a new year a life bring with them a new beginning, new opportunities and new challenges. Just as my students work and learn new material this school year, I will work and learn what is next for me on my path. I will work to listen to where God is calling me next and faithfully answer my next call knowing it is where I am being lead. This is a new year with new beginnings, but more importantly, it is a new year that I will be living with the many new impacts and changes in my heart from the past year. There is hardly a moment that goes by that I don’t think of Malawi, it’s people, it’s beautiful scenery, the rain, the rainbows, the smiles, the warmth. What a year it was, and what an impact it will have on my years to come!

Thank you all so much for following along with me on this adventure. Blogging has been one of the many highlights of the last year. I have so many more amazing stories and pictures to share with all of you that have loved, supported, prayed for me, and read my blogs over the past year, so please feel free to reach out to me (via email, phone, Facebook, etc.) At any point, I would be more than happy to meet you for a meal or for coffee to share stories. The past year will be one I will never forget and I couldn’t have done it without all of you. Tionana from this blog, and Zikomo for following along and supporting, it’s been the adventure of a lifetime! May the Lord richly bless each and every one of you!

Re-Adjusting

I have now been back in the United States for a little over two weeks. Although my transition back up to this point has been smooth; it has also been very eye opening to me. I know that I will continue to see how my past year in Malawi has changed my views of life, but over the past two weeks, here are a few things I noticed right away:

Every Monday the town of Mulanje did not have power due to the scheduled blackouts that the country has due to lack of enough power being produced. Due to this, Lauren and I both became attuned to the sound of the refrigerator coming back on when power returned. Since being back I find myself hearing the familiar sounds of appliances, or the air conditioner shutting off and I look up at the lights to see if we just lost power. Having electricity all day everyday is such a blessing that we often overlook because it is so constant in our lives. For me, every time I hear the sound of something switching on or off I will remember the days in Malawi I went without power, and all of the people this problem still affects daily in Malawi.

Readjusting to driving here, thankfully, has gone smoothly. The first few times that I was driving I turned the windshield wipers on instead of the turn signal, but I spent the past year doing that in Malawi; I’m used to messing those up. (They are on the opposite sides of ours in vehicles designed for British style driving.) The biggest challenged I faced with driving in Malawi was not the steering wheel on the opposite side, it was the hundreds of people and animals walking on the road that I had to carefully navigate around. Not having to navigate around the people, chickens, and goats daily, reminds me just how fortunate a society we have that does not rely on walking as our main source of transportation. As I sit in traffic, or as I hit the windshield wipers instead of the blinker, instead of being upset I find myself being very grateful.

Convenience is not something that is prominent in Malawi. In fact often things in Malawi seem to be very inconvenient. Since I returned I have been overwhelmed with the amount of convenient things that are available to us as Americans. It seems like everything we could possibly, want, need or desire is right at our fingertips. This has been one of the most overwhelming things about being back for me. For the past year nothing has been particularly easy. If we wanted to cook a meal, everything, and I mean everything, had to be made from scratch, with grocery shopping done once a month so planning ahead was extremely important. Now, if Heather and I decide we want something specific for dinner we pop right down to the “small” Giant Eagle two minutes away from our house that has absolutely everything we could possibly need to cook with. The abundance of our convenience is really overwhelming after living so simply for the past year. I look forward to finding a good balance of convenience but still living simply and integrating the things I learned over the past year into my daily life here in Pittsburgh.

Re-adjusting to life here and discovering what is next for me will continue to be a new kind of adventure. I am blessed to be surrounded by my friends and family here during this time of readjusting and am very grateful for all their love and support as I adjust. I know that this process will take time, but if I am being honest I think there are certain things that I may never fully get used to, and I think that is okay.

Home

Greetings from the Steel City! I am happy to report I have returned safely back to the United States. It feels great to be back home with my friends and my family, but I am already missing the Warm Heart of Africa and the people that make it as such.

Although I have hardly had a chance to adjust to the time zone, fight off jet lag or start to unpack, I can already tell the past year has had a significant impact on my life. I will need more time to continue to debrief, reflect and adjust, but I’m so blessed to be surrounded by an amazing support system as I work through everything. Since I only just arrived home, I will keep this blog brief until I can dive deeper into my thoughts and feelings on being back home. For now I will just ask for prayers … prayers for Lauren and me as we continue the transition home and adjust to our “new normal”.

It is also with a heavy heart that I ask for prayers for the entire St. Andrews School family back in Mulanje. We were informed about a week ago that one of the Form 3 students, who Lauren had in Computer class for the last year, died very suddenly after a brief illness. The loss of a student is felt throughout the entire school and the church. Please keep them and the student’s family in your prayers as they come to terms with this devastating loss.

My Year in Pictures

They say that a picture is worth 1,000 words, if that is true, below could be the abstract to a graphic novel describing my year in Malawi. 

Each of these pictures have a story, each of these faces have a name. One of the things I am most excited about being home is being able to share all of my pictures and stories with all of you. Please feel free to reach out to me if you want to hear and see more about my year, I would be more than happy to share more in person!