We Made it!

Sanibonani! Eli and I have made it and are getting settled down (settled down enough to remember to update our blog at least) in Mpophomeni. We have moved into our house and have been at the Family Centre for the past week. Activities and projects seem to come up spontaneously so there isn’t too much else planned at this moment just being at the Family Centre and hanging out with the children. We will keep you all updated as things come up but we are doing well and very excited to be here and at the Centre. Continue to pray for our relationships with the workers and children (and each other, Eli gets a little cranky when he doesn’t eat), safety, unity, discernment and guidance as well as our Zulu speaking skills. Talk to you all soon!

I would also like to share a quote with you that has been on my heart and mind for the past couple months in preparation for and while I have been here in South Africa. I think it describes beautifully, and in much better words than I could, the attitude one must have in doing work, namely God’s work. It has challenged and convicted me over the past few months and has begun to re-shape what I think even more so how I think.

“Precisely this becomes the contradiction in blessedness and terror: to have an omnipotent one as one’s co-worker. An omnipotent one cannot be your co-worker, a human being’s co-worker, without its signifying that you are able to do nothing at all; and on the other hand, if he is your co-worker, you are able to do everything. The strenuousness is that it is a contradiction or is simultaneous; thus you do not experience the one today and the other tomorrow. Moreover, the strenuousness is that this contradiction is not something you must be aware of once in a while but is something you must be aware of at all times. At the same moment it seems as if you are capable of everything—and a selfish thought will sneak in as if it were you who are capable—at the same moment all can be lost for you; and at the same moment the selfish thought surrenders, you can have everything again. But God is not seen, and therefore, as God uses this instrument into which a human being has made himself in self-denial, it seems as if it were the instrument that is able to do everything, and this tempts the instrument itself to understand it in that way—until he again is able to do nothing. It is hard enough to work with another human being, but to work together with the Omnipotent One! Well, in a certain sense it is quite easy, since what is he not capable of, so I can simply let him do it. The difficulty, therefore, is just that I am to work together with him, if not in any other way, then through the continual understanding that I am able to do nothing at all, something that is not understood once and for all. And it is difficult to understand this, to understand it not at the moment when one actually is unable to do anything, when one is sick, in low spirits, but to understand it at the moment when one seemingly is capable of doing everything.” Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love