Heidinafrica’s Blog

We are in Washington state although not yet home, having arrived on Thursday mid-day with barely a glitch in all the arrangements. We have spent wonderful time with many of my family members and our daughters (Adrianne on Thursday, Danielle on Saturday). We are becoming well-rested after all the travel (which sure takes a lot out of you – and dries you all out after all the moist air in TZ!) There are still a few blogs about my time at Tumaini I want to write – the farewell party, a little more info on Lugala Hospital, an evening meal with the students eating their food, and a little bit of an update about the dining hall – all blogs to be written this next week, as time permits in the resettling and unpacking process. I have pictures to share with you all – near and far.

I hope to keep the blog going for months to come, not writing everyday but at least weekly to update you on the events I know about at the school, the building project, and how my own life is resettling and the longer-term affects this trip has had on me and those around me.

Now, truth-be-told, the hard work really begins! How to share the story – how to take the good parts I have learned and embraced and make them a part of my everyday life at home – how to really help find the next person to go to Tumaini and make their experience even better – and how to adjust once again to a “new culture”. There are many books written on the latter subject – readjusting to being home, having returned a different person with eyes opened to new things. These books talk about a second culture shock. The first is when you arrive in your area of service, the second is when you return home. And even when you are a “short-term missionary” there are still adjustments to be made. I think my issues might be about not getting caught up in the hurry-up pace of life in order to have time to relax a bit, read more, spend time really talking to people and sharing our stories, and keeping the important relationships around me flourishing. That in itself has become pretty counter-cultural! We’ll see how it goes.

There is joy in being home again. Certainly in spending time with my family but also in silly little things we take for granted. It is nice to look at the lit computer screen in the dark room and not see myriads of little bugs crawling across the screen like moving letters in your writings. Flushing the toilet with a push of the lever is always nice. A hot shower with good water pressure is pure delight. Foods you really know with no concern for where it came from or how it was cooked. No mosquito net to wrestle with when you get up in the middle of the night. And brushing your teeth from the spigot water instead of a bottle is heavenly!

But as I soaked in the bathtub in the hotel in Amsterdam on our last night out of the country, really scrubbing the last of the dirt off my body, there was also great sadness and a few tears as well. I was washing off the last of a place that has become very much a part of me. How will I ever connect again to those people, that life, and that place? After Dan arrived, I (and I think it is safe to say, WE) could have stayed another month or two. After all the rocky beginnings, I had found my nitch, my rhythm. And I was sitting in the tub and sending it all down the drain. Is there any way to re-capture any of my experience within my everyday life in Kennewick WA? This is the hard work. Can I stay in contact with those who I now hold in my heart? This is the hard work.

On Easter Sunday I return to my congregation. I hope it can be a festive Easter Sunday – careful that it is not a “Heidi is Back” Sunday for it is the Lord’s Day – it is Christ who has risen! I have a week at home to settle in, do chores, do taxes (not a joy there!) spend time with the dogs, learn to cook again and do so for my hubby who must return to work on Monday, and think! And think! And pray that God points me in the right way to do the Hard Work ahead!

As always, thanks for journeying with me. Feel free to debark the plane now. Or, take a short trip now and again to read about a wonderful place in a country on the east coast of Africa called Tumaini Lutheran Seminary.