Reality

Man, first off…can I just say that I love how Liz writes!!!  I’m so excited about doing this trip with her, and seeing how her words will depict the experiences we have…  Yeah, I am in no way as great a writer as she is…but I figured I should post at least SOME of my thoughts, other than just links to various articles. 

…

There are often events that occur in our lives that force us to think about things we don’t normally think about…things that we probably should think about, but we just don’t for whatever reason…

Ever since Liz and I first started planning this trip, I’ve had this overwhelming feeling of excitement.  I was finally going to fulfill a dream I’ve had for so long…I was going to be living out the very thing that led me to pursue a degree in photojournalism.  I would be traveling the world and documenting the lives and cultures of people and places I had never seen.  And THAT was exciting!  As we began sharing our plans with friends, we got a mixture of reactions…  Mostly, though, people were very supportive and excited for us, while still expressing that we were crazy…whether it be through words, or a startled look as we listed the countries we’d be visiting.  I, however, never really felt scared.  When Liz first mentioned her desire to go to the Middle East, I was a tiny bit concerned…  But even then, I managed to convince myself that Northern Iraq wasn’t crazy, and we’d be far enough away from Baghdad that surely we’d be safe…

Well, a couple of weeks ago, as I researched and came across the article I posted on South Sudan, reality hit me and for the first time since the beginning of our planning process, I felt scared.  Really scared.  I finally shared the same feelings as my friends – we are crazy.  I think I even somehow wanted to escape.  But I was so far in – and so convinced of my dream to go to Sudan – that I couldn’t turn back.  I had to face the reality, and had to admit to myself for the first time, that we were going into some very dangerous places, and there is, in fact, a chance that we could get hurt and possibly killed.

It was hard to sleep that night…  I stayed up until 2am doing research for our trip, and woke up around 8am (on a Saturday morning), unable to fall back asleep.  So I got up, grabbed my laptop, and just picked up where I left off the night before.

Since then, I feel like this fear has come more to the forefront of my mind.  And has made me think more about the reality and possibility of death.  Thankfully, I am 100% convinced that God wants Liz and I to do this, and it has been pretty easy for me to rest in knowing that His will is going to be done, no matter what happens during our journey.  And, as Christians, we LONG to be with our Creator, and shouldn’t fear death.  But yeah…that’s hard sometimes..  There are things in this world that I LOVE and CARE FOR so much…

Anyway…it’s just weird…   weird to think about doing our wills before we leave, or having thoughts of this being my last holiday season, or my last month to live.  Even as I write it, it sounds crazy.  And a part of me is like, “Blanca…quit being dramatic…you’re not going to die….”  So yeah, I’m still working on finding that balance of not being naive but still facing the truth…  If anything, it’s made me feel more intentional about things.  Like, I feel like it’s really important for me to make it a point to spend time with my friends and family before I leave.  Thankfully, it’s the holiday season, so I will be able to see my family just before Liz and I fly out of Austin.

Sorry to keep rambling…but I feel like I’ve been thinking about this stuff for days now, and it’s nice to just write it out.. 

*sigh*

Also, if you’re around me while I’m talking about this stuff, you’ll quickly see that I tend to joke and smile about it…  I don’t know why, but it’s easier for me to “laugh” at these things…  stick around long enough, and I tend to eventually get serious and share my real thoughts and fears… 

By the way, I’m still VERY excited.  It’s just that currently my excitement is playing back-seat to anxiety and fear…

Love,
B

Twilight

While Blanca is posting all sorts of information on the countries we will be visiting or pertinent information like finally getting our flights booked, the blogs I have been composing in my head all seem to fall under the category of the Liz Embarrassment Hour.  For some reason, I can’t seem to write without sharing the progression of thought that got me there… so, here goes…

Last night I was sitting at home alone reading the teeny bopper bestseller Twilight.  If you don’t hang out with middle schoolers daily like I do, well, let me just quote the book/back cover so you can get a feel for it.

About three things I was absolutely positive.  First, Edward was a vampire.  Second, there was a part of him–and I didn’t know how dominant that part might be–that thirsted for my blood.  And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

I hate to admit this, but as this 33 year old sat there reading, there stirred within me a longing to be that silly teenage girl.  In my defense, what woman doesn’t want to be rescued by a impossibly beautiful, super-humanly strong, possibly dangerous man?  I tried to refocus, thinking of how Jesus is much like Edward in the book…He’s beyond beautiful…He’s rescued us…He’s all powerful & yet we don’t know what danger He might lead us into.  It’s helpful to write now, but honestly, in the moment it didn’t do much good to recite to myself.  We’re wired to long for a hero as women, aren’t we?

Anyway, I woke up this morning, not thinking about Jesus, but the book.  I made coffee and sat down to read my Bible although I really wanted to read the book.  I opened up to Isaiah wondering why I bothered as God must be fed up with me & my longings for the things of the world above Himself.  I read Isaiah 49:8–I will keep you, and I will appoint you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land, to make them possess the desolate inheritances.

And something broke within me.  I will keep you… to restore

I thought of Psalm 119: 20  My soul breaks with longing

There’s something within me beneath my desire to be happy and comfortable, far above my hopes and dreams for my own future that aches and groans and cries out for the restoration of good and right and justice.  It hurts.  It’s painful because all is not as it should be.  Not in my heart.  Not in our world.  It hurts.  It’s painful because I want things to be different.  I want–that seems such a weak word– my soul breaks with longing to be a part of that restoration.  It hurts.  It’s painful because in those moments, in His mercy, He swallows up my shallow longings in the depths of His.

woo-hoo!

Liz and I have booked our flights!  It feels like we can breathe a little easier now, knowing that the biggest thing is taken care of.  And now we’re moving right along with Visa applications and finalizing hotel/stay information.  While I was in Houston this weekend, I was able to pick up our first Visa (for India).  Man, my little passport is going to have some nice tattoos once this trip is over… Which is good, because for the past several years, it’s just had the same two little stamps in it…  So it’s been itching for some more ink!

I feel like all I can think about is numbers lately…so here are a few trip-related numbers for you to enjoy. 

11 – number of shots I’ve (Blanca) received

10 – number of countries we’ll be staying at

6 – number of organizations we’re teaming up with

50 – numbers of days we’ll be traveling

20 – number of flight segments

89 – number of hours we’ll be on a plane

29 – number of days until we leave!!!

YEAH!!!

-Blanca

Northern Iraq

Update:

A friend of mine recently mentioned to me their thoughts on the post below.  They felt like it wasn’t right to compare the “atrocities of Saddam” to the U.S. involvement in Iraq.  Although I agree that Saddam was crazy and evil, and U.S. is there trying to help rebuild Iraq, I think this article is trying to point out that there have been things stemming from the work that the U.S./U.K./UN are doing that have unfortunately affected the country in a negative way as well.  Anyway…all this to say, I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts, whether you agree or disagree!  Please feel free to leave comments on any of our posts.

Thanks for reading!

-Blanca

There may be democratic freedom, but the atrocities of Saddam, the U.S., U.K., and U.N. are still playing out in the lives of many children dying from heart disease today.

Read more about the area of Iraq we are visiting by clicking the Iraq tab at the top of this blog.

News to us…

 

Even my presence here is a sign of the rising tensions and mistrust. The Sudanese government refuses me visas, but the authorities in the south let me enter from Kenya without a visa because they want the word to get out that war is again looming.

Read more from this article in the Sudan page at the top.

Liz and I just now read about the “looming war” in South Sudan….we knew about Darfur going into our trip…but little did we know that the area we are flying into is fighting to not become the next Darfur…

Pray for South Sudan, and for the safety and lives of the people there.  Pray that the international community will take action to prevent another genocide in Sudan. 

 

Silly travel agent….

Liz and I seem to be glued to our laptops lately, working on stuff for our trip – researching, emailing, making calls, filling out forms…

The other night, while Liz researched stuff on her laptop, I gave United Airlines a call to price out an around-the-world ticket.  The lady was very kind and patient with me, but she also made sure to tell me about all the different restrictions/rules several times…  (which, by now, i think i have all the restrictions memorized…)

Anyway, as I gave her the order of the countries we’d be visiting, she said several times, “Wait, wait, wait…you can’t go up and down like that (referring to traveling from Johannesburg to Istanbul, or Ho Chi Minh to Auckland)…this isn’t “around the world”…you’re just going all over the place.”  I wanted to say, “Um, lady…if this isn’t “around the world”, then I don’t know what is…”  But instead, I said, “Ok…well, can I go to India then?”  :)

$1USD = $7,000,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars

Imagine having to wake up by 3am for four days straight in order to go wait in line at the bank to havea chance at withdrawing the maximum amount of allowed money each time to afford ONE bag of cornmeal….  

 

Read more about one of the top hyperinflations in world history.  It’s just insane…

Father Abraham

I wrote this a few days after returning from our trip to Thailand and Burma this summer.  It was in those moments that God put the idea of traveling with Blanca on my heart though Proverbs 20:12.

Eyes to see and ears to hear, the Lord has given us both.

This is what I saw and heard.

“You’re so dirty!”  Abraham said as he laughed and pointed to my mud splattered and stained clothes.  I laughed as well as I looked at his relatively clean self despite the fact that he’d had to push our Karen “HUMV” out of the mud multiple times on the journey across the Thai-Burmese border in the middle of rainy season.

I’d met Abraham a few days earlier as we’d both stood clean and dry in the common area between the boys and girls dorm at the school where Abraham is both father and teacher to so many children.  I heard part of his story standing there in the midst of a school filled with the hopes and dreams of children built on the ruins of a refugee camp where Karen and Karenni Christians were slaughtered by the Burmese army.  He came to the school from Mae La Refugee Camp, the largest in Thailand officially numbering 40,000 with reality closer to 70,000.

We asked how he got out of the camp knowing that the Thai government does not approve of Burmese refugees working in Thailand.  The school obtained a one-day work pass for him, which he used to leave for the day that has since stretched to years.  He smiled nervously as he explained the anxiety he experiences when he leaves the school in fear of meeting a Thai soldier and being sent back, not to the refugee camp but to Burma where his people are oppressed and persecuted.  My chest involuntarily constricted as I thought of a life of such restriction in contrast to my life of freedom flitting about from one country to another with little more than a desire and a boarding pass.

We now stood at a medical clinic within an IDP camp guarded by KNLA (Karen National Liberation Army) soldiers.  The army numbers some 10,000 total, ever dwindling after a 60-year civil war.  We smiled, took pictures, and handed the men Skittles and instant noodles as the rain and the war persisted.  We prayed with them for the protection and deliverance of their people. They were promised an independent state after their lives were lent to the British and the Allies during World War II.  Their precious homeland is now in the hands of a military dictatorship and they fight alone.

After being pelted with dirt while watching a land mine demonstration and touring the open-air hut used as clinic where even patients in grave condition are not allowed to stay for more than a few days for fear of attack, we were on our way again.  We bumped along balancing precariously on the wooden slats attached to a generator on wheels.  I’d long given up sitting safely on the bed and chose rather to sit on the sides or stand holding a rope water ski style and take my chances of being thrown from the vehicle rather than acquire any more bruises.  I reasoned that the mud landing would be soft.  Wet, cold, muddy and completely illegal… it was thrilling!

Once more, our driver seemingly aimed the tires right for an old rut and we were stuck again.  After pushing/lifting the mud tractor out of the ruts we walked along quickly lifting our feet so as not to have our shoes sucked off by the eager mud. Free of the additional weight of six passengers our driver sought to get the vehicle up the hill without slipping.  I took the opportunity to ask Abraham for more of his story.
“My father was a missionary and a teacher”, he told me as we trekked along, cornfields on either side, misty mountains and rolling green hills that rival the beauty of New Zealand’s scenery used in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in the distance.  As a boy, Abraham traveled with his father to nearby villages bringing news of a Savior who also suffered at the hands of cruel humanity.  Eventually the junta in the area sought to end his father’s ministry and the family was forced to flee.  The men called to Abraham now as his strength was needed to help push the tractor out yet again.

I never heard how the boy fleeing Burma became the man daily serving the persecuted and orphaned boys and girls who’d walked similar paths out of the country now known as Myanmar.  What had become of his parents?  Was his father dragged along behind a truck and then murdered, as was the father of one of the girls in Abraham’s care?  Did his mother succumb to one of the multiple diseases that claim the lives of countless mothers and children as they travel from one IDP camp to another seeking safety?  Or are they some of the “lucky” ones that have survived to live among the boredom and forced containment of the 70,000 at Mae La Refugee camp?

We were greeting by smiling children dressed in brightly colored traditional Karen garments when we arrived at the next IDP camp.  They danced to the drumbeats provided by their teachers in the now pouring rain, slipping occasionally, giggling and then persevering in the jubilant, buoyant movements.   We then joined them in their school, another leaf-roofed open-air hut.  There they sang “Father Abraham” in Karen and “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” in English.  Tears flooded my eyes as I suspect they filled the eyes of every American there.    In that moment, I wondered if Jesus could receive higher praise than that of those children.

This Scared Little Girl

I spoke to several travel agents this week.  I asked the first one if Sudan counted as Africa or Europe/Middle East as their around the world ticket restrictions do not allow continent backtracking.  As she looked it up she remarked that she was sorry she didn’t know the answer but rarely gets requests for flights to Sudan.  My next question was whether or not they fly into Northern Iraq.  She burst out laughing and asked, “What kind of trip are you planning!?!”  I laughed too and explained our hope of bringing stories and pictures back from places most people don’t vacation in.  By the third agent, I had my end of the conversation down pat.

Is it strange that my heart thrills at the prospect of visiting places like this?  Or that since we started planning this trip, my thoughts will wander to January and thanksgiving naturally springs up to God for the opportunity to go to these somewhat dangerous countries?

When I was a little girl I distinctly remember being terrified of speaking to cashiers at the grocery store, crying on my little Kindergarten mat because I missed my mommy, and being too shy to tell the teacher I had to go to the bathroom (which was quite disastrous especially in white tights!)

When I remember that scared little girl, I can’t help but wonder that God would choose her to live this life.  Can you imagine Him watching on as I peed my tights frightened of sweet Mrs. Gibson thinking, “Yep, I’m definitely sending this one to Burma”?  His ways are beyond searching out.

Honestly, I’m still a scared little girl.  He’s just opened my eyes to see a world full of scared little girls facing horrors much greater than Safeway cashiers and a few hours without their mommies.  Now my biggest fear is knowing and choosing to do nothing.

Zimbabwe Politics

So, Liz and I hope to soon create sections at the top of this blog for each country we visit.  We will post links to videos, articles, stories we hear, stats, etc…  So be on the lookout for that!  :)

In the meantime, I wanted to share this blog post I read recently written by one of the missionaries we will be visiting in South Africa.  This year has been a significant year politically for Zimbabwe…I’ll post some links to good articles once we have our Country Pages up… Basically, the same guy has been in power for the past 28 years, and has caused all this crazy conflict…he’s basically tried to wipe out the country’s population of white farmers.  This year, sometime FINALLY beat him in the March elections, but the president refused to release the election results, and the real winner eventually backed down from the election, so the crazy president ended up still staying in power!  Even though he really lost!!  Conflict continued throughout the year between both political parties, and many people died due to the crazy corrupt government…  In September, the two candidates met together, and with the help of South Africa’s president, they came to an agreement that they would split the country’s power with one another…  but that hasn’t been going so well as you can imagine…

-Blanca

Election Thankfulness – Zimbabwe Still Waiting

I had a long conversation two days ago with a close friend from Zimbabwe. We talked about many topics, but one exchange stood out as we discussed the American election and the Zimbabwean political crisis.

We were talking about the disappointment being voiced on many Christian websites about the Obama victory. He said:

    “All Americans need to be thankful for this election. Not about who won or lost. But about the fact that again and again, one party can be voted out of office and another party can take power. Even when the results are contested like in 2000, the transition takes place peacefully and the losing party accepts defeat and regroups to contest another election in the future.”

Eight months after the Zimbabwean elections, the three main parties are still arguing about who won and what positions they will hold in a new government. Eight months after casting their votes, Zimbabweans do not have a transition. Eight months after going to the polls, no one in Zimbabwe is sure when or if their votes will ever be counted or if the parties will ever agree to lead the country. Eight months after the election, thousands of Zimbabweans are giving up hope that they will ever see family members again who disappeared after being beaten, stoned, and burned alive during the campaign season.

Pray for Zimbabwe. Pray that her leaders will put aside their differences and agree to move forward. Zimbabweans are flooding into neighboring countries and more than 1/2 of those left do not have food on their tables. And as you pray for their politicians, be thankful that in four years’ time, you will have a chance to vote in peace for whomever you choose.