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In 10 days I leave for Nairobi and beyond. It is yet another major transition in my life. I am so thankful that I have a few weeks to spend time with my friends and family before I head off. As my departure date gets closer I am more nervous. Lord, do I really have to go? I mean not that I am complaining about traveling East Africa or going home but must I leave Seattle, the city I can finally call my home. Then again, what better time to go than now? It is time. I am reassured. I need to go home to reconcile what I thought I was to who I learned to be in the context of home. I have learned so much …

In this waiting time before I leave this family, [only for a short few months] I will claim His Word. I will cling to this promise:

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

~Genesis 28:15

Where You go I go. Where you stay I stay. Where you move I move. I will follow You.

adventures of ibn battuta

I discovered Ibn Battuta in my Modern Middle East class last quarter. He was a Muslim who traveled the world so much farther than Marco Polo. Born in Morocco in 1304, Ibn Battuta was a traveling scholar who interpreted his journeys in light of the culture and society of Islam.

Then I also discovered Carolyn McIntyre's blog. A woman who traveled by herself in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta.
One day I would love to adventure there too.

view from the hammock

 

 

View of Spring from the hammock

Annika got a hammock for her birthday this week & Melanie, Ani and I took a nap on it this afternoon like three little kittens in the sun. It was glorious.
 

break my heart

Last week I asked the Lord to break my heart for what breaks His. I had just picked up Daughters by Design, a book that my mom sent to me a few months ago.It is a book by Paula Jarot, an elementary school teacher at my school I graduated from: Grace International School. I started reading it thinking I could read it 'for fun' before I went to bed each night. I finished it in two nights and couldn't put it down. It is a breath-taking story about two girls, Sivy & Sopheak, adopted from Cambodia. I remember Melanie TA'ed in Sivy's class when she first came to Chiang Mai. Oh what beautiful girls they are and have grown to be.

 

[Photo Credit: YeongLife]

Break my heart from what breaks yours. Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
~hillsong united

summer 2011

Oh, how blessed I am.

Mel & I get a chance to go home to Thailand via East Africa. Staying with friends around Kenya (3 weeks), epic roadtripping to Rwanda (1 week) via Uganda. Got a few ideas on what to do there.. more to come later...

SEA-IAD-ADD-NBO...KGL-ADD-BKK-CMX

palestinian walks

Favorite book of the year:
Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadah. Beautifully written narrative that depicts a view not many know about. Written by a Palestinian lawyer, this book captures the connection between the land and history of the modern Middle East.

One day I will adventure here

cultural assertions

"These are tense times, but it is better think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satistfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis."

~Edward Said

persuasion

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it... Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

~jane austen

[in context]

“We’re not called to be colorblind at all... At the end of history, we’ll keep our ethnicity and culture. We won’t lose it; it will be redeemed. We’ll no longer fight each other but be reconciled. We’ll speak different languages but understand each other perfectly. We’re not to be colorblind but color-embracing. If it’s in God’s kingdom at the end, can ethnicity and culture be a curse? It can’t be. It must be good and intended.”
~james Choung [True Story]


Truth.

over the sea & far away

Over the sea and far away
She's waiting like an Iceberg
Waiting to change,
But she's cold inside
She wants to be like
the water,

Then the fire fades away
But most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're the other side of the world
to me

On comes the panic light
Holding on with fingers
and feelings alike
But the time has come
To move along

Can you help me?
Can you let me go
And can you still love me
When you can't see me anymore
~KT tunstall