My Liberian God-Adventure: The Gbarnga Tranining & Final Thoughts

Over the weekend, we spent time with our United Methodist hosts – having meals together and seeing the city together. I got to know Dehkontee, Sam, and Rose the most. Dehkontee and Sam showed us Monrovia – we saw the beach that was just on the other side of our compound wall – we could hear the waves crashing on the beach at night. We went shopping for fabric to make clothes, and then we went out to eat at a fancy hotel restaurant. They welcomed artisans into the compound to sell us their crafts – crosses made out of bullets, dolls, purses, jewelry, wood carvings. Our friends took us to important Liberian historical sites, like the National History Museum, a ceremonial government building, First United Methodist Church, and the monument to their first president, JJ Roberts. We got a feel for the city on these trips out – we could see people just doing their daily routine and the effects of their history still impacting them today. We saw the Ducor Palace, once a five-star resort hotel looking over the ocean, but that was all but destroyed during their fourteen year civil war. That war ended in 2003, the year I graduated high school, and the ruins of the Ducor Palace still stand there, a physical reminder of the tragedy they endured. We heard their stories of survival – through the civil war and then through the Ebola crisis – and our hearts broke for the tragedies they endured. More importantly, our hearts rejoiced that they survived, that God was still telling a story of love and hope through their lives.  

            On Sunday we worshiped at a United Methodist church in the city – the congregation welcomed us like old friends. Worshipping with them, like worshiping with our teacher colleagues throughout the week, was incredibly powerful. That afternoon, we visited West Point, a neighborhood located on a peninsula on the edge of the city. Over 70,000 people live there, in a one square mile area. Sam is closely tied to the community – and so are we. In 2012, the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference paid to build a school there, their first high school. This year they graduated their first senior class. The school is furnished with desks made at the Midwest Mission Distribution Center, and our Annual Conference is still active in supporting the teachers and the students at West Point.

            On Monday, we traveled to Gbarnga, a city 120 miles east of Monrovia. People here in Illinois had described it to me as, “going to the country,” even though it’s the fourth largest city in Liberia. It took a record-breaking two and a half hours to drive there – we had planned for four hours, which is down from ten hours that a friend of mine took six years ago when he went. You see, back then, the beautiful highway wasn’t there – instead, they traveled on dirt roads between cities…so this highway was a really big deal.

            We passed small villages, rice patties, rubber tree plantations, mountains and valleys full of jungle forest. And then we drove into the Gbarnga Mission Station, 300 acres of land that house a school of theology, St. John’s United Methodist Church, Tubman Gray K-12 School, farmland, and the homes of the people who work there.

            When we pulled up, I could already hear the sounds of the country – birds and bugs and puppies and chickens and children playing. And yet it was so quiet compared to Monrovia. And then we met Dr. Anna – the principal of Tubman Gray School.

            I didn’t realize at first how influential Anna would be to me. Upon arriving at the Mission Station, Anna introduced herself to us, we met her husband James, and they helped their cooks serve us lunch. I learned about Anna’s background in education, ministry, and leadership. After a few hours, she took us on a tour of her school – and as we stood in her high school library, full of books and visual aids donated by US schools – she told us about her teachers. How she hoped we would teach them about learning styles (one of my most favorite topics in the whole world) and engagement strategies. She said she often taught them about lessons that are more than just taking notes…which is literally a discussion I had with my department in Jacksonville last May. She said that it was possible her teachers would be more likely to believe us, since we were seen as the experts from outside…which is, again, something I’ve had to deal with many times in my career. I stood there in awe – this woman who is living a half a world away was telling me she faces the very same leadership difficulties I do. Over the course of the next four days, Anna and I had several conversations about teaching and leadership, particularly as a woman. We talked about having high expectations for the people we work with and for our students, and how difficult it can be to support them while they reach those expectations. She and I have struck up a friendship that I hope flourishes in the future. In fact, I’ve already had lunch with her in Peoria, when she was here in August visiting churches who help support her school.

            Our team spent the next three days following the same schedule in the trainings as we did in Monrovia. Like before, we started and ended each day with devotions with our teachers – and it always ended with us holding hands in a big circle, singing to God about the great things He has done in our lives. Carol and I even covered a few more lessons on how to teach writing because the teachers there had a stronger foundation of training to begin with – Anna is building up her faculty with highly qualified teachers.

            Our afternoons in Gbarnga were different than they’d been in Monrovia, though. The guest house where we stayed was just a ten minute walk from the school, so we didn’t have the long commute to fill our afternoon. So we just sat on the porch of the guest house – and in those hours on the porch, I felt God’s peace like I had never felt it before. The sounds of the country, the butterflies floating by, the neighborhood children playing with the baseball and bat we brought, the 4 o’clock flowers opening slowly before us, the rainbow fading away as quickly as it had come. I spent hours just being in that very moment. Being still, knowing God is in control. Being still has never been so easy before.

During those hours, I talked with Bunny about other missions she’s been on, and I talked to her and Rose about becoming a better prayer warrior and how to fast. As we sat there one afternoon, we heard our cooks singing, “How Great Thou Art,” at the top of their lungs – it left me speechless. I nearly cried, but let’s be honest, that was a common occurrence by that time. Praising God in Liberia showed me what it means to really praise God – like we hear in Psalm 86. In versus 11-13, it says, “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.” Our friends helped me praise God with all my heart because they showed me how they did; they showed what it was like to rely on His faithfulness when they had nothing else, when He had literally delivered them from the realm of the dead – first during their civil war, and then during the Ebola crisis. They taught me how to praise God in a way that shows that I know He is truly God.

We ended our training in Gbarnga like in Monrovia – with a closing ceremony complete with gifts for our colleagues and friends. And again, their gratitude was so immense, so magnificent – they spoke of the things they learned in the training, of how they had grown during our time together. One teacher said that their hunger for learning was more than satisfied. James reminded us that we cannot fully measure the impact of the seeds we planted during our training, that God will grow those seeds. Anna spoke, holding back tears and thanking us for coming, thanking God for providing even in the most unlikely times. I did not hold back my tears – yet again I was overcome with the love they felt for us. Then one by one they gave us each a gift, again chosen specifically for each of us. Anna and her teachers gave me this dress, and she said it was just a small token of the immense gratitude she felt for us coming.

We left Gbarnga the next day, eyes full of tears but hearts full of peace, love, and gratitude, and we headed back to Monrovia for two short days before returning home. That leg of the trip was full of adventures, including a flat tire and seeing someone drive by with a goat on top their car. On our way, we made a short stop in the Weala District, another United Methodist Mission Station. Since 2008, Springfield First has built a strong relationship with the Weala District. Bunny made sure we stopped there during our travels since my church is so closely tied to it, so that I could see firsthand what our generosity has provided – a high school wing to the school, a church, a parsonage, a well, an operation theater. Just standing there, where we have sent so many prayers and so much support, brought me to tears.

            We arrived back at the guest house in Monrovia on Friday afternoon and started packing and preparing to go home. Something in the day’s travels left me feeling a bit off, you know there’s nothing worse than feeling a bit off when you’re away from home. Bunny seized the opportunity to teach me even more about prayer – she prayed for me, and she asked her friend Cynthia, whom we had met a few days before, to pray for me. The next morning, I felt just fine – wonderful, in fact. Before breakfast, Rose asked me how I was, and I told her I felt great. She looked at me and calmly replied, “Because when you’re about God’s business, God’s about your business.” She said it twice; she knew I needed to hear it twice. I was speechless, again. God doesn’t promise living out His call will be easy, but He does promise He will be with us. “Do not fear, for I am with you,” he says to us in Joshua, and again in Isaiah. Always. And that’s enough, if we learn to look to Him, rely on Him. That’s not easy, either, but God remains constant.

            In Matthew 28:19, Jesus charges us in the Great Commission to go to the ends of the earth for Him, sharing His love with everyone. I did actually travel half way around the world to share the best way I could – through teaching and education – because that’s who God made me to be, so that’s how He asked me to show His love. That was God’s business that He wanted me to be about. The more I followed, the more He paved the way for it to all work out. Our friends in Liberia, they don’t have the means to travel, so they show God’s love to the ends of the earth who come to them. The teachers we trained, the United Methodist staff who hosted us, the cooks who fed us, the drivers and guards who took care of us – they loved us unconditionally. They don’t love me because they know me all that well. They love me because God loves me and because we are in this crazy, amazing, pain-stricken, and beauty-filled life together.

            Just before I left, a friend of mine told me that my “Be still” verse from Psalm 46:10 had more to it than I’d been reading – the entire verse is, “Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among all the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” To the ends of the earth, Jesus said. I want to leave you today with this -- be still, and ask God where and how He’s calling you. Maybe it’s serving others right here in Nokomis, or far away like Liberia, or anywhere in between. Maybe it’s financial support for people who need your help, or maybe it’s giving your time and energy to serving them. Be still. God is calling you to share His love in some way. What part of God’s business is He calling you to be about?

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Monrovia Training

After three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.

            When we arrived at Roberts Airport, tired and kinda gross from being on airplanes for 16 hours, our United Methodist hosts picked us up. Dehkontee is the volunteer coordinator for the Liberian conference, and Sam is the manager of the United Methodist Missionaries Compound, which is where we stayed while we were in Monrovia. The sign on the door of the compound had our familiar United Methodist cross and flame – one thing that felt like home. The concrete brick wall that surrounded the compound and that was adorned with barbed wire and upside-down broken glass bottles, however, did not feel like home. Sam and Dehkontee helped us settle into our guest house for the night. We brought mosquito nets – tents really – to sleep in, and then we left them for our friends to use after we left. We met more of our friends who work at the compound that night – like Rose, who owns a catering business and is always the resident cook when Bunny brings a team to Liberia. Throughout our trip, she made amazing meals for us – eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, rice and stew of all flavors, fried chicken and plantains, donuts and coconut tarts. And fresh pineapple. Guys, I didn’t know pineapple could be so sweet.

            We hit the ground running – the very next day, we started the teacher training in Monrovia. First we held three days of training for five local schools there in the city. We started each day with a big breakfast and a devotion, and we drove for about an hour to Elaine Chapman United Methodist School and church. The commute was a bumpy one, but our drivers, Roland and Harrison, always delivered us to our destination safely. Our hosts gathered us all in the sanctuary for a moving opening ceremony – one teacher preached, and others led us in several songs. Our friends lifted their praises to God around us, hands clapping, voices singing. And I was in awe.

            We then split up into small groups, each with one American teacher and five Liberian teachers. We asked them about their greatest joys in teaching, about their biggest challenges, and what we needed to know about their situation so that we could best serve them. As we shared in our group, Jenny, Anthony, Benedict, Arkie, and Alvin shared their teacher-hearts with me – they said they love seeing a student finally get it, finally understand something they’ve been struggling with. That moment of success, that moment of breakthrough – that’s what I’ve described as my favorite part of teaching since I was a tutor in middle school. That was the first of many times that I realized, even though we are in such drastically different situations, we are so very similar. And those similarities are, in the end, far more important than our differences.

            They also shared their challenges – not enough funding to buy books and other materials. Not enough funding to pay teachers. Sounds familiar, too, huh? And yet I tried to be very careful to acknowledge the drastic disparity in their lack versus our lack here. The words we use may be the same, but the gravity of the situation is certainly different.

            We spent the rest of the day and the majority of the next two days separated into grade level groups for our training. Two of our teachers, Jeremy and Tanya, led the kindergarten through third grade group; Carol and I led fourth grade and up group. Some of the teachers taught the same class of students all day, like our elementary teachers here; others specialized in math, science, French, or reading like our middle and high school teachers. Their primary teaching method is direct instruction – teachers write on the chalkboard, while students silently copy it all down in their notebooks. I call that “sit and get,” and in my classes, it doesn’t happen much. Less than half my lessons are days when students take notes, and even when we do take notes, I have students collaborating and talking with each other throughout the period. So our training focused on ways they can help their students collaborate more, do more hands-on work, and generally be more engaged than just writing down information. Carol and I read stories that they could read with their students, and then we talked about how to connect lessons in other subjects to those stories. Our first book was about two friends who travel to visit each other, so we talked about social studies lessons on map reading, math lessons on calculating distance, speed, and time traveled, and science lessons on land formations. I taught them about studying four representations of a single math concept – graphs, equations, numbers, and words – and we worked together to adapt the idea of deepening their students’ understanding to English, French, and science classes. We taught how to ask students to graph numbers and functions by standing in different places in the room, and we played card games to foster number sense. I also taught about brain breaks – little exercises that we do with our kids when they get lethargic or overwhelmed or just because they’ve been working too long and they need a break. I love studying how brain research can improve instruction and learning, so this was one of my favorite activities.

            Later, Carol and I discussed another book on music and emphasized having students read dialogue aloud, and I tied it to a fractions scavenger hunt lesson. We finished our training with a book called What Do You Do with an Idea?, and we asked the teachers to use something we had covered to create their own lesson plan. Carol and I gave them time to work and helped them write lesson plans that they could implement in their own classrooms. Some were excellent, and some needed extra help, just like in any classroom.

            Between sessions, the teachers often broke out in spontaneous praise and worship. They’d come back from break or lunch, walk up to the piano and drums, and just start singing. Some songs were from their Liberian tradition – ones with lyrics that said,

“God you are able, you are able, God.”

“Jesus, we just want to say thank you…for our friends, for this day.”

“Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. I know you come from heaven above. The Holy Spirit is in control. Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. In the morning, I will rise and praise the Lord.”

Other songs, though, were familiar to me after singing them here, in this very room – “I Surrender All” struck a particular chord in me. Our friends were passionate – they weren’t just singing to sing along. They were really giving everything over to God – everything.

Singing alongside our friends, praising God with them, helped me realize something – there’s a difference between singing because it’s Sunday morning and praising Jesus because you know He’s God, because you know the Holy Spirit is in control. “Know that I am God,” from the Psalm took on a whole new meaning in Liberia.

            As the trainings wrapped up, Bunny took pictures of students who attend the schools on a scholarship sponsored by the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Dozens of students filed through to have their pictures taken, and even more milled around asking how they could get a scholarship, too. I’ve been giving to this scholarship advance for five years. Right now, $175 sends a single child to school for an entire year – it covers their uniforms, their books, and their tuition. If you’re interested in helping students like these attend school in Liberia, there is a way to give directly to schools through the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Just contact me if you’re interested in supporting that mission financially.  

Each morning with breakfast, and each evening after dinner, Bunny led us in a devotion and prayer. During some of those times, she reminded us that we don’t arrive in Liberia, or anywhere else for that matter, assuming we can change the entire culture or the entire country, much less solve all their problems, fix their entire school system. We can’t do it in the mere three days we held the trainings, and we certainly can’t in a single trip or even multiple trips. We emphasized this idea in our lesson planning session, too – not everything we discussed would be applicable for everyone, but that’s okay. We just gave them the tools to make one change, and we had to trust God would magnify and multiply it as He sees fit.

            Bunny emphasized that idea during our closing ceremony, too. During our last afternoon with the group, we gave another devotion and gave each teacher a bag full of school supplies and a certificate of completion for them. Bunny talked about how we didn’t come with all the answers, but instead we came to be their friends who worked alongside them – not ahead merely leading, not behind just telling them what to do, but alongside collaborating with them.

As we were getting ready to serve them, before we could even give them what we’d brought them, they told us of their gratitude – some teachers stood to tell us how thankful they were for our help, for our sacrifice of traveling so far to join them there. And then, before we could offer our gifts, they gave us gifts – beautiful shirts made there in the city. Each gift was selected specifically for the recipient – and we knew what kind of sacrifice they had made to give us these gifts.

            And in those moments, I know, we were living out God’s intention for the church – in Acts 4:32 it says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had,” and that is what we were doing. We came together as a family of faith, and we shared what we had. I just so happened to have educational background to share with them. They shared finances that were already more limited than I can imagine, and more importantly, they shared their deep understanding of praising God and going to God in prayer honestly and humbly about everything.

***

Interested in how this trip started? Check out the first post in this series.

A Different Focus

As the first semester of this crazy year of remembering calculus and explaining it anew has sped by, I have had very little time to read...and when I have, I often end up falling asleep mid-paragraph. Even so, I have carved out some time to read a few books that have offered different perspectives for me and helped me develop a new focus.  Just a few days ago, NPR also introduced me to a new comic book artist who speaks the honest truth with her interesting images. And aside from actually reading the words I'm absorbing, I've also spent lots of time with the great Sara B. and her latest album The Blessed Unrest, which is a wonderful word-based experience as well.

NPR's article on Yumi Sakugawa was my first brush with her work, and I was intrigued by her own descriptions of her comics. I was particularly drawn to the way she talked about friendships and how they form and develop and, subsequently, influence us in such impressive ways. The article gave excerpts of her story, but you can find the full text of "I Think I am in Friend-love with You" here.  I so enjoy the process of developing a friendship, new or long-lasting, and I undoubtedly connect with the speaker in the story. On bad hair days, perhaps I also identify with the way the speaker looks in the images. Ok, maybe not, but seriously -- the unusual images Sakugawa uses gives a fanciful and albeit eerie tone to the story. Sakugawa's basic and heart-wrenchingly true wording and perfectly-accompanying drawings plays on that connection we feel when we realize someone else agrees with our opinions and the excitement of growing and learning with that person in new experiences. Just as we look forward to hanging out with those people we're in friend-love with, I'm looking forward to reading more of her work and seeing just how much she and I have in common as well.

Because so many days I don't have time to read at all, on my daily commute I have often found myself forgoing my normal habit of putting my iTunes on shuffle and instead playing Sara Barellies's The Blessed Unrest all the way through. I immediately connected with Sara's song "Brave" months ago even before the album came out; there are so many new components to my life that are causing me to show how big my brave is, and I often challenge my students to be brave -- to do something that is outside their comfort zone, to take control of something they're afraid to admit is within their power to change -- so I've been singing along at the top of my lungs many afternoons. Then when "Hercules" comes on, I turn up the radio even louder; nearly every line in this song rings true for me. I can be my own worst enemy, if I let my overactive imagination take a turn for the dark side, or I can keep moving. I'm at once empowered to think that "I'm on the hunt for who I've not yet become," while realizing that some days "I'd settle for a little equilibrium." I wonder who she's calling out to, who can make her a Hercules...by the end, all that matters is that she realizes she's the one who has to keep moving forward. While those two songs resonate the most with me, I also love the compassion in "Satellite Call," the optimism in  "Little Black Dress," the realization that what felt like paradise might seem less so in hindsight in "Eden," the permission and freedom in changing, growing into a new chapter in life in "December," and the confidence to boldly say, "I Wanna Be Like Me." Sara has a new sound on this album, but she cuts right to the heart of the matter every time, as always.

Motivated to read it before seeing the movie, in December I took a short time -- very short, just three and a half pages kind of short -- and read James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," which is found in full text all over the internet. I read the story as a freshmen in high school (and embarrassingly forgot the author's name the very next week in a Scholastic Bowl match) and wanted a recap before seeing the new movie version of it with my family over the Christmas holiday. While I remembered the premise of the story, I had clearly forgotten the details. If I had, I would've written a comparison essay in college on this and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and I'm telling you, that paper would've rocked. I might still write that paper. Anyway, when my sister asked after the movie if it followed the story, I said, "Not at all!" with an awesome grin on my face. For the first time -- and quite possibly the last -- I was completely satisfied and rather thrilled with the completely different movie version. I think it's because it so obviously used the story as a springboard, as a muse, not as a possible script, so there was no possible way to compare the two. Plus, I really liked the film Walter and the way he created his own future far more than the story Walter.

Two-thirds of my prose reading list have been non-fiction and faith-based, so you have now been forewarned of the lack of plot diagram and a very different type of character development before you read on.

First, I read Bill Hybels's Too Busy Not to Pray. As I've mentioned here before, I'm rarely a fan of nonfiction, but saying my life has been crazy the last few months is the understatement of 2013, so I thought that this book I picked up at the 2013 Global Leadership Summit, organized and hosted by Bill Hybels himself, might be a good way for me reconnect, recenter, and refocus my life in way that I desperately needed. If you know me personally, you might know that my faith is of utmost importance to me, but that doesn't mean that I like the idea of blindly following the church. Following God, on the other hand, makes sense to me, and so I focused on what I felt God was pointing out to me in this book far more than reading with the intent of becoming Bill Hybel's latest disciple. I don't think that's what Bill intended when he wrote the book, either. I read it through the lens that, "Authentic Christianity is not learning a set of doctrines and then stepping in cadence with people all marching the same way...It is a walk -- a supernatural walk with the living, dynamic, communicating God" (p. 119). Knowing Bill wrote it with this in mind, and with a mental connection to walking my Camino de Santiago, I was able to pull out ideas that are helping me build a spiritual routine that I've already noticed is slowing down my mind and my heart, helping me reflect on my day and consider how I'm going to create the future with God. This habit is merely a journaling technique that Bill describes at length and similar to what I've been doing the last several years, but mine had become stale and habitual, and certainly not sincere communication with God. With just a few tweaks to the process -- and realizing the purpose of journaling was in fact the process and not the output -- I have found a connection I'd been denying that I'd lost over the last few months.

A handful of Hybels' ideas struck me as unique, too -- a new perspective on the widow and the judge in Luke 18, the challenge to focus on God the Mountain Mover instead of the mountains in my path, to mention a couple -- and some were ideas I'd heard from my pastor (who has clearly read Bill's work as well) -- like the possible answers we receive when we pray and the obstacles that might keep our prayers from fully connecting us to God. Even the reruns, though, were good for me to revisit and reconsider. If you're looking for a way to connect, I highly recommend this book.

Second, I took just around a week to read Bob Goff's Love Does. I simply couldn't put it down. I heard Bob speak at the 2013 Global Leadership Summit as well, and I could hear his energetic and excited voice while I read his words. My take-away from his GLS talk was, "Love God, love people, and do something," which is also a great way to summarize his book. Bob gives us many short stories about his own experiences of love -- not thinking about loving or talking about loving but the kind of love that does -- and how that's shaped his understanding of God and God's character. It seems like a cyclical process to me; the more Bob did things out of love, the better he knew God; the more he knew God, the more he wanted to do things out of love. Bob talks about living a life that is fully engaged and focuses on others, of "moving from developing opinions to developing options" (p. 82). Bob's life has developed into a series of stories so incredible I wondered momentarily if these are memories or allegories, all because he's devoted to living strategically while not letting plans stifle the creative ideas that he can implement with God. From my perspective as a math teacher who thought ten years ago that she'd be an English teacher in a much, much smaller town, I understand how God's ideas can be so far from our own that we can't imagine them until they're happening. If we over plan and make every effort to ensure our detailed agendas and itineraries come to pass, we run a great risk of missing the most rewarding experiences we could never imagine on our own. With that said, Bob talks at length about how God wants to create the future with us, one based on how God's made us. Living a life with God isn't about connecting the dots God's laid out for us ahead of time, and it's not about walking through a maze that God can see from above. Instead, it's about creating a new piece of art with God as we move forward into the future. Sometimes pieces of that artwork are "obscured from view, just around another bend in the road," (just like on the Camino) but that's okay because, "You don't need to know everything when you're with someone you trust" (p. 36, 136).  He also talks about how, "God doesn't want failure to shut us down," (p. 29), which reminds me of the many lessons I've had in learning how to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. I was encouraged in his discussion of how our words can lift up others and shape their lives; it's with that mindset that I walk into my classroom every period, into every meeting, past every student and colleague in the hall. The descriptions of Christians who don't have a love-that-does and how they often turn others off when it comes to God was surprisingly encouraging; living an engaged life of love-that-does isn't just great for us, but it is also a chance for others to see God working through us.

Bob put his phone number in the back of the book and encourages people to call him and talk about love that does. He also has an email address on his website where you can send your stories about love that does. I'm going to contact Bob and let him know that he rocks and that I'm going to focus on having a love that does. I'll let you know where that story leads.