100 Paper hearts, answering emails, and other ordinary amazing things

So, I thought I should tell you what I do with my life, when all the awesome people I work with are in Sweetwaters teaching Life Skills and being, well, awesome. (Read about the Life Skills program over at the iThemba blog).

Networking and Program support means I write a lot, I plan a lot, I sit at a desk a lot, and sometimes I get to go into Sweetwaters and have fun with kids. 🙂 Here’s an example of what a Tuesday might look like for me ( I have taken out the number of times a day I check my email, since that would get boring):

• Get to the office and greet everyone personally before making tea. (It’s rude to just sit down and start working in this culture).
•  Check emails. Correspond with upcoming teams and volunteers.
• Write up a blog post for the iThemba blog (yes, the one I just told you to go read).
• Design creative thank you letters for Running Club sponsors
• Research articles and blogs on good development for our new up and coming interactive website.
• Cut out 100 red paper hearts, print out 8 huge mazes, laminate 80 name tags for camp.
• Laugh my head off at the funny things people in the office say.
• Go to Mountain Home school in Sweetwaters to meet with the principal about our team coming in July from the UK. Judge the school’s 4th grade art competition to determine what mural will be painted by the team at their school. Visit Sbukisezwe creche to talk about the team’s visit with that teacher.
•  Help with Thulani’s (huge!) Life Group in Sweetwaters: Play singing games with the kids, arm wrestle the tweens, then help with the review game as they go over all of the previous term’s lessons. Pour juice. Hand out chips.
• Head home! 🙂

Some people have this idea that doing cross-cultural work overseas is some HUGELY amazing thing they could never do.They think people who end up working cross-culturally in a foreign country are some kind of sparkely angelic super-spiritual person they could never be like.

Well.

I’d love to say that’s true. But I think that pretty much everything on that list you’d probably be okay at. (Maybe cutting out paper hearts is a little tough for some of you). I will tell you it’s the BEST JOB IN THE WORLD, and I also work with the most inspiring, fun, crazy people (and sometimes I feel like I’m cheating or something because what I do is so fun, and my JOB is to be a part of this amazing organization, and aren’t people supposed to get stuck into boring desk jobs or something?) … but don’t put cross-cultural mission work on a pedistal and then claim you could never do it because you don’t have what it takes.

You probably do.

On the flip side, you may have noticed that every moment of my life is not holding hands with little children and playing in the rain and singing. A lot of it is pretty ordinary stuff that can get boring. Sometimes I don’t feel like answering a bajillion emails, or cutting ribbons or going shopping for food for visiting teams (my worst) or a bunch of other stuff that’s not my favorite. And this doesn’t cancel out what I just said about having the best job ever– it just one more reason that explains why I am normal, just like you.

And I am guessing that as much as I love iThemba there are probably other organizations and groups where you are that are caring for the poor, the widow and the orphan, and they are probably just as ordinary and just as amazing. So why are you sitting here reading this? You, too, could have an amazing, crazy, wonderful life serving God and doing life-changing things like cutting out 100 paper hearts…right where you live.