This is going to seriously alternate between content and
process, events and feelings, hope and frustration, peace and irritation, and
everything else. It’s scattered, I am scattered. I haven’t had time to really
formulate a good outline or rough draft and I don’t think that would really
even help at this point. I’m just going to go for it.
The players: My supervisor Emilie DeYoung (her sixth trip,
she has been the one heading the partnership between Winning at Home and the
Jubilee Centre which is a non-government organization that supports over 200
churches in Ndola and Lusaka), her husband John (his first time in Zambia),
myself (fourth trip to Zambia), my husband Pierce (also first trip to Zambia),
Jill Nagelkirk (child counselor, first time to Zambia) and Sarah Ingram (child counselor,
previous experience as a missionary, first time to Zambia).
The plan: A group of six (four child counselors and two
spouses) will spend time assisting the Jubilee Centre in Ndola and Lusaka. A
training will be put on in Ndola and Lusaka that will host first-time attendees
and veteran attendees to be trained on trauma and child counseling. In Ndola,
another day will be dedicated to meeting with veteran child counseling trainees
who have come to anywhere between one and five of the trainings Emilie DeYoung
and Catherine Mueller-Bell have put on in previous years. This small cohort will
go on to become trainers of this material and put on other trainings in country
year round to continue to pass along this information and create more child
counselors. There will also be a day set aside for team building for the
Jubilee Centre staff (13 members total). The staff include social workers,
pastors, drivers, financial advisors and many others—we wanted a time for staff
to have fun and grow together as a team and also to learn more about different
ways to show appreciation for one another. The spouses (John and Pierce) will
spend some time in the community and with the youth building a wall around a health
clinic in Kawama community. Spend some other time seeing the other programs Jubilee
is involved in such as feeding programs (churches identify children in the
community who are malnourished and create ways to feed them as a congregation
through donations and volunteers- set scheduled times for children to come and
be fed a meal-sometimes once or three times a week per church), compassion and
justice program (volunteers who do home visits and bring food/medications to
bed ridden patients), visit health clinics, meet young adults from an awesome
program that Jubilee created called Junior Parliament (it is sort of like a
debate/united nations hybrid team that hosts debates on critical topics such as
access to education. They invite a representative to come from the government
and the whole community shows up--- it’s an amazing thing that allows for more
unity and advocacy among communities and their relationship with the government.),
and finish up our time with two days in Livingstone for a safari and to see
Victoria falls.
The impact: This is where it gets messy, bear with me. It
sort of feels like my heart has an infection that has continued to fester, but
I haven’t had time to open it up to do any sort of surgery yet. Last year I had
the luxury of spending a month in Zambia, doing life day-to-day vs cramming
everything into an eight day program. There was a constant hum of activity and
when it would start to die down around 8pm every day I think I unconsciously made
my own external racket so I wouldn’t have to sit in silence and think or feel. My
fear is always that if I feel I will lose it and just give up and will be an
ineffective presenter the rest of the time in country, so I just stuff and wash
it all down with some Cadbury and peanut M&Ms every night until I get home.
We had some absolutely amazing days of training. We had open
dialogue about many hot button topics, had opportunities to present new
information about trauma, the impact on the brain, how our body works in a
fight/flight/freeze response and so much more. And it was SO well received. SO
well that we even had some teachers tell us how passionate they were about this
new information that they would vow to teach all their other teachers and
volunteers this information, especially when we talked about helpful discipline
in a classroom. Schools in Zambia come in three types—private, government, and
community. The private are for the wealth and expats, the government schools
require a uniform, shoes and dues (many can’t afford this and there are way too
few schools to host all the children), and community schools which are
comprised of volunteer teachers with little training, overcrowded classrooms, and
children who struggle to get their daily needs met. As a whole, there are some
struggles with physical punishment/abuse in schools and homes across all realms
as a means to control a classroom/teach a child a lesson. After discussing some
of the harm that comes from this sort of classroom management, we had so many
teachers vow to never again cane a child (hit a child with a cane). When I
think about the multiplication effect of just once nugget of information being
taken into school systems all around Ndola and Lusaka I get chills. They’re
multiplying, it’s electrifying (that’s my joyful song response inspired by the
movie Grease…I tend to sing when I am excited).
We also had an awesome day with the Jubilee Centre staff
doing team building. Sarah Ingram and Jill Nagelkirk led the day, teaching on
the five languages of appreciation and pairing them with some stellar minute to
win-it games. I stinking love each member of the staff- they each have their
own strengths. A few new members joined the team since last year and we are so
excited to see the increase in impact that will be made with more fearless
leaders. We laughed and laughed and laughed. It was a wonderful time together,
especially as things in the last few months have been difficult with the
leaders, Pastor Lawrence and Martha Temfwe, away for medical care. Lawrence is receiving
care in South Africa for stomach cancer; he had surgery earlier this year and
is now alternating between chemotherapy and radiation. Typically when we are in
Zambia we spend hours of time with this incredible couple so it was different for
us as well without Lawrence’s contagious laugh and Martha’s amazing prayers. We
had the blessing on the way back to the states to see them at the Johannesburg
airport for a quick dinner, complete with strawberry milkshakes.
We spent most of our time in Ndola (“large” city but with
much rural surrounding areas and communities), a day and a half in Lusaka
(capital city) and two days in Livingstone to decompress. Even with “fun” time
at the end of the trip, we didn’t really have much time to breathe. Spending
some time today to reflect has been an answer to prayer and just re-energizes
me about how much I love everything going on in this partnership.
The best part of all of the trip for me was sharing the
experience with my husband. I am aware I am a highly emotional and passionate
person and Pierce always has told me his favorite thing about me is my heart
for people. I am so thankful for the way he appreciates me, but it isn’t always
easy when I am more of a dreamer and he is more logical and fact based. I was
so nervous for Pierce to come because I had no idea what he would think or how
he would react. He has had such an open heart to the experience, even to the
hard and heavy stuff, and it has helped him to understand me more than I
thought would be possible. God is sooooo good. I knew this wouldn’t be my last
trip and now I am confident it won’t be his last either. My cup overflows.
There are just no words for how thankful I am to have a husband who is willing
to meet me in hard places and provide constant support, encouragement, and
love. The kids loved him and his muscles and he was called “John Cena” the
whole time.
I loved our team this year, I always do, but this year was
extra awesome. Pierce and John had a great time together and I so enjoyed being
able to go with Jill and Sarah for their first trips- they both bring such
unique light and peace to the whole thing. I can’t imagine not going with Emilie
at this point- again, I never ever would have imagined having a boss and
supervisor who gets me, supports me, and challenges me in all the best ways. I
am inspired by each team member in different ways, the recipe for the team was
spot on.
Another highlight—last year I spend extended time with two
trained counselors, both named Royah. I got to see them again this year and
check in – those ladies and their love for children is incredible. They just
rock. I continue to be amazed by the number of volunteers who are so passionate
about children and spend the majority of their days leaning in and loving them,
without any sort of compensation or recognition. The have such a fire and
desire to learn more about development, trauma, and anything at all that will
help them become even better mentors. These people are Jesus.
Okay. There is still so much more I want to share, but I
think this will suffice for now. It’s much more of a concentration on the hope,
which I am aware of, which highlights where I think I am in the processing
stage. I’ve got a wall protecting some of the hurt publically for now, but that’s
okay. It’s definitely brewing internally and if you see me weepy and cranky or
distant please don’t take it personally and just give me some space. My
introvert needs are dangerously high after almost three weeks without any alone
time.
Thank you, whoever you are and wherever you are, for reading
this. For following and supporting the journey, for leaning in. For hopefully not
judging my terrible grammar, tense usage, and comma/running sentence usage—or you
can judge away, as long as you don’t miss the point of this.
I am so thankful. So glad. So blessed.
Blessings,
Mavis
