So here we are, in the morning of our last Sunday. Waiting here to head on over to the 10 AM Mass with Auntie Kassie and Auntie Jeanette. It's Palm Sunday and I am anxious to see just how it is celebrated here in Arandis; albeit in the Damara and Afrikaans languages.
Today we also need to make sure we finish getting photographs of the children and families for the website and deliver the tubs of Marshmallow Fluff that I brought down for them. If there is one thing that is consistent about this trip, as all of the others, it is the feeling I get towards the end; the feeling of so much to do and so little time.
Yesterday we had a great time at Moon City. It is sort of a private park where you can go and have a braai (cookout) and swim in a large brackish-water pool. The children had a wonderful time, as did the adults. A chance to simply unwind, laugh, talk and watch the children be children.
We topped the day off by making popcorn for the kids and heading to the edge of the desert and watching the sun set; something I had not yet done despite having been here 3 weeks.
I've begun to try to process how this trip has been for me. A trip in which the only thing I feel I planned or had a hand in was physically purchasing the plane tickets.
But the countdown has begun.
On Friday, April 2nd, as I am lifted off Namibian soil, how will I feel? How will I perceive this 5th trip here? As mission accomplished? But whose mission? Certainly not mine for I never could have planned this mission.
But is it ever really completed? When it comes to caring for children, how can it be? No, it's not mission complete, but chapter complete.
So what about this chapter? Only time will tell. No doubt it will be long after I have left, not just Namibia, but maybe this world, that the ripples I may have had a hand in creating will reach their outermost edges.
I can only hope that they've created other ripples... along the way.
I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being
mistaken in believing it to be true. (Pascal)
We all want to get to heaven but nobody wants to die. (Unknown...still looking)
God hasn't given you the events of your life to hold in your own hands. He is allowing you to watch them
unfold in His. (Shannon Kubiak, "God Called a Girl")
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