Growth in Classrooms & Gardens: Service Projects in Kenya with IWIL Part I

Growth happens all around us, and if we're lucky and intentional about it, we can seek out ways to be a part of it, too.

Our Illinois Women in Leadership (IWIL) group partnered with the Outreach Foundation in Kikuyu, Kenya, which in turn partners with PCEA (Presbyterian Church of East Africa) to build infrastructure there. With your donations added to more from around the world, the Outreach Foundation builds churches, schools, and hospitals. They employ Kenyan workers for every step of the building process, and they are gracious enough to let donors like us participate in some of the more cosmetic tasks when we arrive for a visit. 

Stu Ross, the Outreach volunteer living in Kikuyu for the last 27 years, organized projects for us that correlated with our interests as an all-female leadership organization. 

Our first stop was a girls' rescue center about an hour and a half drive from Kikuyu into Maasai tribal land. The rescue center serves as a safe haven for girls, between the ages of 7 and 14 by my observations, who are in danger of forced childhood marriage and/or female genital mutilation (FGM). Some girls are brought to the center by their mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, or neighbors; others walk on their own to seek safety there. They are then adopted in the rescue center's community, boarding there while taking classes at the local primary school (also built by Outreach). The rescue center began with a few families nearby taking girls in this situation in, but the need became too great for a few households to welcome them all. Thus the rescue center was born -- and they've been helping hundreds of young girls ever since. 

Upon arriving at the center, we met Beatrice, the dorm mother who lives on-site with 97 girls and raises them as her own, as well as Samson, the chair of the school. 

After living and studying with the rescue center community for three months, the girl is always accompanied home over the school break by the principal, dorm mother, pastor, Maasai chief, and Stu. Together they reconcile the girl with her family and her tribe, ensuring she isn't exiled from her community, and educate the family and tribe on why both childhood marriage and FGM are illegal. While Beatrice and Samson gave us a tour of the dormitories, lined with bunk beds and trunks filled with school uniforms, they both repeatedly said, "We teach the girls their rights. Their rights are human rights." They do not take their job of bringing positive change to each individual and to the Kenyan community lightly. Beatrice added, "We build their confidence to be leaders in our world. We teach them that their no's mean no, and their yeses mean yes." On the wall of each dorm, a beautiful tapestry read, "You are beautiful." 

Your generous donations built a new classroom building and filled it with tables, and chairs for the girls at the rescue center to use while they study. Eventually, it will also serve as a classroom for preschool-aged children who reside at the rescue center, many of whom are orphans. 

For two days, our job was to help with the finishing touches of the building so that we might feel connected to the structure beyond the finances that built it. We were the first all-female service team to work with Stu in his entire time in Kenya -- and it didn't go unnoticed. When Samson met us at the building, his first comment was, "But there is no balance in the genders in your team." We assured him we were able to rise to the tasks! Along with laborers hired by Stu and from the nearby village, we painted the metal doors and window frames and drilled tin sheets around the building as exterior walls. It was good to work alongside our Kenyan friends as they told us about life there. Later on, we were careful in our reflections to realize they did not need our team to finish that work on the building for them; in fact, Samson said they postponed the last steps and dedication so that we could be there with them. Instead, they generously allowed us to be a part of the building process as we build our relationships with the community there as well.

Nearby community members, including the chair of the church, prepared delicious lunches for us -- naan bread, rice, chicken with seasoning and peppers and tomatoes, watermelon, and beans. Before leaving each day, we were able to talk with some of the girls, too, and my teacher-heart just overflowed with joy. I asked them what they like to study and what they want to do after high school. Their eyes lit up as they shared their passions and their dreams, and I was so blessed to share my enthusiasm with them. They wrapped up our days by singing to us, and my heart sang right along with them.

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.

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Prologue

          Some journeys begin long before you leave. 

         This blog series started as a sermon that told of my recent trip to Liberia. I've adapted it a bit to fit a blog format, but I'm sure some of it still reads more like a sermon. This won't be like the previous blogs -- not the ones about literature, not even the travel entries about China. This one will be different. Everything about this trip has been different, so the way I share it will be, too.

          I’ve been teaching high school math ever since I graduated from college with a BS in Secondary English Education and an endorsement in math. I’ve taught Algebra I, Algebra II, AP Calculus, and behavior interventions for kids who are at risk of dropping out – all while acting as department chair the last four years for our nine-person team. While that timeline was moving forward, I also started attending Springfield First United Methodist Church – the big one on the corner of Koke Mill and Wabash, if you’re familiar with the city. For several years I sat in the back of the traditional service and kinda kept to myself – and then I started taking classes on prayer and served on the Staff Parish Relations Committee and then the Prayer Leadership Team, and then I got involved in the Young Adults ministry and started co-leading that, and then I helped launch a new contemporary service that we treated like a whole new church plant – and now I even preach in that service every couple of months or so. 

            I took a journey earlier this year. I’ve been calling it my God-adventure. On July 10, I flew to Monrovia, Liberia, with a team led by Bunny Wolfe, the mission and outreach coordinator for the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church. We spent two weeks there, and we held two trainings for teachers who work at United Methodist schools – over six days, the five of us American teachers worked with over 60 Liberian teachers on engagement strategies, classroom management, and lesson planning.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself. This journey didn’t start July 10. In fact, the seed was planted in 2012 when a friend of mine who is a United Methodist pastor told me that our conference sends teams of teachers to train Liberian teachers. The idea caught my immediately attention. Then, a few months later I heard a woman from Springfield First talk about her medical mission trip to Liberia, and as I sat there crying in the pew listening to her story, I knew God was calling me to go. But…the conference didn’t send a team that summer, and the next summer I spent every waking moment writing my AP Calculus curriculum…and the next summer I worked on my thesis for my master’s degree at UIS…and then the next summer my school asked me to chaperone a German exchange program….The timing for the trip just wasn't working out. But Liberia always stayed in the back of my mind, tucked away in the corner of my heart. I prayed for the country during the Ebola crisis. I gave scholarship donations for students going to United Methodist schools. Whenever anything came up about Liberia, I responded, “You know, my church conference sends teachers there to train other teachers – and someday I’m gonna go.”

            But life just kept rolling on – and in 2015 I moved from Springfield to Jacksonville, and I found myself in a much quieter, much slower paced chapter in my life. I had finished my master’s degree, I was settled into teaching calculus and leading as department chair, and my social scene had drastically changed with my move to Jacksonville. I had no idea what might be next for me – and that made me worry. I worried a lot – I worried that I didn’t know what goals to pursue next, what direction to take as I moved forward, and I even worried that maybe nothing new would be on the horizon for me. Eventually, I started praying, “What’s next, God? Use me – just point me in the right direction.”

            And in that season, God told me to, “Be still.” Really. Psalm 46:10 started following me around – it says, “Be still and know that I am God!” It showed up in my devotions, in sermons at church, in videos that came to my email, in my newsfeeds on Facebook and Instagram (I kept half a dozen screen shots from my phone during those few months as a reminder), we talked about it in my small group at church, and most importantly, it came up in my quiet time, alone with God – it just kept echoing in my heart. “Be still and know that I am God.” Now, remember the litany of activities and responsibilities that I rattled off earlier? The ones that kept me crazy busy while I lived in Springfield and then all of the sudden all wrapped up at the same time when I moved to Jacksonville? Yeah, I’m not good at being still, guys. I’m terrible at it. It makes me anxious and uncomfortable. But God knows I needed it, that I needed an extended Sabbath to slow down…and so I eventually started focusing more on being still and knowing that God is God, and that I am not. I kept asking God what was next for me, but I stopped trying to figure it out, stopped trying to do it all by myself. I even decided that for 2017, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, I’d focus on the word surrender with God – surrendering to His preferred future for my life instead of desperately trying to be in control when I clearly was not.

            So last spring, I found myself facing my first totally free summer vacation in six years – no grad classes to take, no curriculum to write, no exchange program to coordinate. And I was actually okay with the idea.   

            And then on March 24, I got an email from a friend of mine – well, she and I went to college together, and she goes to Springfield First, too, and we’re friends on Facebook – that kind of friend, you know? She emailed me because she’d heard about a mission trip our conference was taking to train teachers in Liberia. And even though she doesn’t know me very well and we don’t talk very often, she thought I’d be interested. Me. God put it on her heart to contact me. I read that email before going to work that day, and I remember thinking, “I’m going to Liberia this summer.”

            Over the next few days, I told my sister and a couple friends – and they all agreed right off the bat, too, that it was time for me to finally go. But my old ways of worrying came creeping back…how would I pay for the trip? How would I plan for it in just three and a half months? What if God wasn’t calling me to go on this particular trip? What if, what if, what if? So, I started praying, and I asked my small group at Springfield First to start praying, too. You know, sometimes it’s hard to hear God in the still, small voice…but it’s even harder to ignore God when He talks through your loved ones. “Go,” they said. “You know this is the right time. Get more information. If God opens the doors, you know it’s the right time to go.” It’s also hard to argue with doors that are not only opened but completely blown off their hinges – and that’s exactly what God did. In a matter of three days, I found out it wasn’t too late to sign up for the trip, that the conference offered a grant to cover half the cost, and that the next informational meeting was a just week away in Springfield.

            So I jumped – I took a huge leap of faith, and I went to the meeting, ready to go to Liberia. I sat in the room with the rest of the team who had been planning the trip for months, and I cried as Bunny showed a video of the students and teachers we partner with in Liberia. Bunny flipped on the lights and asked us to share why we wanted to go – and I could barely hold it together long enough to say, “God is calling me to go – to help these people somehow, the best way I can, as a teacher promoting education.”

            And at the end of the meeting, Bunny needed the rest of the payment for the plane ticket that day…and yet again I had to take another leap of faith. I had no doubt about God’s call – but I had planned to do some fundraising first to cover the cost, and instead I had to pay first and trust God would cover the finances, too. We all know that’s one of the hardest areas to surrender to God…but somehow I did. And God showed up in a huge way – He sent generous people my way to help me cover the rest of the trip. He even convinced the insurance company to cover all six vaccines I needed before leaving – and we all know that’s a miracle in and of itself. But that’s not the only way God sent support – so many people prayed for me and emailed me and encouraged me before leaving. That support was so incredibly valuable.

            And 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.

Chinese Adventure! Final Installment: Shanghai

Our last city on our tour of China was Shanghai, and we spent about a day and a half there. Driving into the city was awesome -- even the poorest areas didn't appear very poor at all. Everywhere more skyscrapers were popping up before our eyes, and Yoko told us that wasn't much of an exaggeration; most of the city was built up from rice patties in the last twenty years.

Bottle Opener from the ground

Our first stop was the World Financial Center, also known as the Bottle Opener. It's the second tallest building in the world, measuring an impressive 492 meters high, and we traveled to the 100th floor (out of 101) for a bird's eye view of Shanghai. We began in a room with 5 or 6 feet tall digital numbers on the ceiling, counting down something that we were never informed of.

Next we traveled 435 meters high in a large elevator with a light show that made me wonder if we were being brainwashed.  

 We then took a very steep escalator up to a stark white floor (where I expected to see a mad scientist walk out in an equally-white lab coat) whose only apparent purpose was to hold tourists waiting to take the next elevator, smaller this time, to our final destination. The 100th floor is 474 meters high and is made completely of glass, giving an excellent view of the city and miles (and miles) beyond.

Looking out at the city made me feel like we were playing Monopoly -- huge sections of building, what appeared to me like apartment complexes, looked identical from the sky, and it felt like we should be able to pick them up and move them to Boardwalk to win the whole game. We could see how the city has grown up around the rivers, and how the skyscrapers have taken over a large portion of the riverbank. Because the floor is made of glass, we could also see straight down; the 100th floor sits right on top of the "bottle opener" opening, so we had an excellent view of the streets and buildings right below us.

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Looking through the floor

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My favorite picture from the Bottle Opener

Monopoly Time!

 My favorite picture was one I took as a reflection. The ceiling had an excellent reflection, so I was able to get a picture of me (taking the picture, at the bottom of the frame) and the buildings behind/below us.

A TV Station

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Shanghai seemed much more influenced by Western countries, which makes sense considering its history with both import and export trade. We saw many more signs of home, including 7 Eleven and the YMCA.

 As the daughter of a retired Department of Transportation employee, I was very impressed with their highway system. In some places, there were 5 levels of highway stacked on top of each other.

 

Karaoke!

That afternoon, we spent a bit of time at a local karaoke; it was very different than karaoke here at home. We rented the entire room, complete with the microphones and TV showing the music videos and lyrics. We had quite the time, and my kids were quite surprised by the number of songs I knew, too.
















After another traditional dinner on the lazy susan, we attended the Shanghai Acrobatics Performance. The acrobats were amazing -- some balanced items, others balanced themselves; some threw items, others were thrown. Some were even contortionists, and they were able to create images that none of us could believe were actually happening.

The next day -- our final day in China -- held only a few sites for us but much shopping. First we visited the Jade Buddha Temple, where we took in the beautiful art and witnessed more people practicing their faith.

View from the Temple

One of the Temple buildings

Silkworms

 We then took a tour of a silk factory, where we watched women carefully separating silkworm cocoons and weaving them together to create strands and, in the end, beautiful pillows, blankets, handkerchiefs, and more.

Nan Jing Road

Seafood bowl & "Green" Tea

 We then traveled to Nan Jing Road, which made me think of Chicago's Magnificent Mile. For blocks, expensive brand-name stores lined the streets, and every now and then a cheaper store would fill a nook or cranny. Paul and I chose our lunch restaurant because it offered a seafood bowl, which we sought out since we were on the river's delta. I thought I ordered a milk tea, but something tells me that the green drink that tasted like vegetables (very spinach-like) wasn't really what I had wanted. The seafood, though, was amazing -- excellent flavor and incredibly tender, not like the chewy type we get here in the Midwest.







Our next stop was the Yuyuan Garden, created by a government official for his parents over 450 years ago. The architecture is beautiful; the fish ponds and landscaping are absolutely tranquil. Once inside, one might never guess she is smack dab in the middle of one of the most populated cities in the world.  

Dragon Statue

The Yuyuan Market

Just outside the garden wall is the Yuyuan Bazaar, which is a market with countless shops and an unbelievable spectrum of types of goods for sale. Jackie, our tour guide, made sure that we understood that we would get what we paid for -- if an item's price seemed too good to be true, the item probably had very little value to begin with. He encouraged us to bargain (haggle, if you will) for everything in the market, beginning at no more than half the original price. My students had a ball with this; my two girls especially loved working the price down and bragging about their wonderful skills. I was able to purchase single tea cups from a reputiable tea house for an excellent price because they were extras left over from sets already sold. As our sales clerk wrapped them for me, Paul and I realized the paper she was using had math problems on it, so we stopped her for a moment to see what she was using. We were astonished to see that she was ripping out pages from an American SAT prep book, and she'd simply reached the math section of the text. Paul and I, in true math-teacher fashion, calculated the answers on one page while she finished ringing me up, and thankfully our answers were correct when we checked them with the answer key. The sales clerk thought we were rather humorous, and she gave me an extra sheet from the book as a keepsake. Paul, one of our students, and I then continued to meander throughout the Bazaar, walking within crowds of people and fending off sales clerks who were always ready to convince you that the item you just picked up -- even the item you merely glanced at -- would make all of your dreams come true. I was able to purchase two beautiful bracelets, bargained down to just less than half of their original price simply by repeatedly insisting that I didn't really need or want the piece. While it was true that I didn't need the pieces, I did in fact want them because I'd seen many Chinese women wearing ones just like them, so I apparently have a better poker face than I once thought.

The three of us ended our trip to the Bazaar with a purchase at the Dairy Queen; I had a chocolate dipped ice cream cone. Now, I've found that telling some people back here at home this detail just produces a look that says, "You went all the way to Shanghai and ate at a DQ?" My response is this: YES! You see, having grown up in SmallTown, USA, Dairy Queen was the only fast food restaurant in my hometown until about the year 2000. To be able to go from that SmallTown and travel to the other side of the world and have the same chocolate dipped cone that I once had as a 7 year old -- it represents so much. On one hand, it was a cheesy connection, a way of saying that some things transcend cultural boundaries and the Pacific. But on the other, it was a sign of how far I've come; the 7-year-old me would have never dreamed of going to China, of standing -- no, hiking -- the Great Wall, had never even heard of the Terra Cotta Warriors, and had no idea fortune cookies were an American construct. But twenty years later, there I stood, eating the same ice cream cone, and doing all those wonderfully not-so-impossible things. I can think of no better way to celebrate our last day in China.

Seeing Pudong

We ended our afternoon with a trip to the Bund to take in the beautiful Shanghai skyline along the river. On the east side, the most recent skyscrapers, including the Bottle Opener, dominated the horizon; on the west stood buildings created by Western foreigners as a result of the Opium Wars in the late nineteenth century. Yet again, an unbelievable juxtaposition -- old versus new, modern versus traditional. We stood on the west side, known as Puxi (literally, "West of the Huangpu River" and pronounced Pooshi), looking across the water to Pudong ("East of the Huangpu River"), next to the Monument to the People's Heroes. (Yes, it's the same name as a monument in Tiananmen Square.)

Monument

The Puxi side -- clear Western influence

After our final dinner in China -- crusted beef, scrambled eggs, noodles, a fish that was wholly in tact, and many other standard dishes of meat in sauce, rice, and veggies -- we prepared for our final excursion: a night cruise along the Huangpu River. While Jackie collected our tickets, we stood on the sidewalk, huddled together as more and more street vendors literally circled around us, shouting not-so-persuasive calls to buy their goods. Paul dubbed these vendors the piranhas, but we were glad to see these piranhas had an attention problem; once they realized none of us were buying, they quickly dispersed. Then it was onto the cruise boat, to see the city all lit up. Jackie told us several times that day that the view would be, "red hot," and it was exactly that. All of the buildings, in both Pudong and Puxi, gave a spectacular lights display of all colors and designs. I stood on the second story of the cruise ship to take pictures as we traveled toward the ocean before moving inside to the sitting room as we traveled back up the river.

Pudong

A bit of home...

Puxi

Puxi

Old Puxi (left) & new Pudong (right)

The Staircase of the Cruise Ship

The ship's sitting room

Click to see full panoramic

 The cruise was a fantastic way to finish the trip -- calm, beautiful, and yet another excellent juxtaposition of all the facets of China, its culture, and its people.

And with that, our tour of China was over. We packed up, left our beautiful hotel early the next morning, and caught our 14 hour flight back to Detroit. The five of us sat in Detroit for over six hours waiting for our flight to Chicago, over two hours longer than we'd originally anticipated. It felt ironic that we were so very close to home compared to where we'd been, and yet we had no way of just going home. We slept off and on at the gate, and our first meal back in the States was a huge cheeseburger at Fudruckers. It seemed apropos at the time. By the time we finally made it to my doorstep at 11:30 that night, we'd had a 36-hour day. The next day I spent hours telling my family all about the trip and showing them the 1300+ pictures, and it took me more days that I'd like to admit to get over the jet lag.

All in all, it was an amazing, fantastic trip, one I will never forget and one that I love telling people about.