photos of stuff

Hello again, 

for a couple of weeks I have been intending to do a grown up blog entry all about what we're up to with photos and stuff. But then we went to hospital and I got all angsty and needed to vent/process/celebrate with y'all.

However, you are due an update and i'm not due to write a newsletter for a few weeks so:

Here is a bit of what's going on at YWAM Vinnitsa right now.

Our DTS starts in just under two weeks and thus the team have been working incredibly hard preparing for this. We're a new base so it's not just the admin, staffing, planning side of things that's crazy - we also have to build our facilities! Hence, the attic conversion.
It's a huge space because it's the same size as the other floors just without being split up into rooms, so what we thought would take a few weeks has taken a few months.

Obviously the other ministries we do couldn't stop so the team has been working stupid hours getting the framework up, the dry wall up, fitting new flooring, mudding and other such things that I don't understand. I think John is upstairs right now trying to fit a door. The electrician is here installing heating - the guys have been working in a drafty open to the elements -20 environment for weeks. 

This is Dante, she's on staff from Canada and is stomping the mudding. What an odd phrase.

This is the attic. Half of it, anyway. 

Quite a bit more to do, but it's going well...

We haven't been by ourselves in this, a couple of outreach teams have come and done amazing jobs. (John just came down and told me that he spent hours fitting the door, stood back to admire his handiwork and realised that it's upside down. He is now sitting on the couch eating a twix. I think he's had enough for today.) We've been so blessed by the company and kindness and skill of all the teams that have come through.

So what do I do? After having come to terms with the fact that I kind of run a base building (for now, until next year when DTS is over and we start making it a transition home) I am embracing my role! I cook a lot. Seriously, cooking an impromptu meal for 11 people with no ingredients? Easy.

Also, I do a lot of this:

Baby + living in a building site + many guests living in our house = muchos laundry.

So with that glamorous post I shall leave you. Because this is my to do list, 

and onwards I must forge. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

p.s. A few people have asked for photos of orphans and shocking conditions and that kind of thing, but for the moment i'm not going to be doing that kind of thing. It feels voyeuristic and I don't think i'm comfortable telling peoples' stories for them - want to give others a voice not shout over them. So hopefully we'll get some interviews/ guest posts going on but until then i'm afraid it's just us and our story! Enjoy the pictures of washing machines! 

The Difference

Here she is. 

She's doing really well, a bit of a cough but still super-cute and she likes Christmas dinner. 

Soundtrack to this post: Um. Taylor Swift. Don't tell anybody.

So here you go:

This week I am very aware that we are different. On Saturday we walked into the hospital carrying our little bundle of poorly British baby and were told that our medicines were wrong, my techniques were wrong, my perspective was wrong and I felt very out of place indeed as I handed the life of my kid into the hands of people that I don't understand. And who don't understand me.

With no internet, nobody to check with and no British doctors to reassure me it was a case of suspending control and just choosing to trust. No idea what that medicine is. But here you go, fruit of my loins, have something on a spoon. Praypraypray.

I don't want to dishonour the doctors that served us by slagging off their working environment, so i'm not going to write a lot about the hospital. You can skype me if you want details. The care we got was great and my baby is better. And we got home in time for Christmas. We had a lovely Christmas day full of skype and chicken and chocolate and Christmas movies...

But, and this is the point of this post, we do not fit here.

I've got a friend from church, she's called Oksana Kastanda and she translates stuff for me 'cos i'm mono lingual. (Go team England and our terribly arrogant education system.) I've got very used to her raising her eyebrows to the ceiling and seeing her eyes turn into saucers when I do something odd. Which is often. You still breastfeed? You let your baby feed herself with her own hands? Your hospitals don't make people wear plastic bags on their feet? You wear that? You don't wear this? You cook that? You don't eat this? 
(Oksana loves Jesus. A lot. She walks in the Spirit and doesn't even know it half the time, she turns up with exactly what you needed and she gives exactly what you were missing. And she likes hanging out with foreign nutters, and I appreciate her and like her a lot.)

But that raised eyebrow-ness follows me around, and never more so that in the hospital. I got tutted at a lot for things that in my Britishness I consider to be entirely my business and definately none of yours, mrs nurse lady who comes in without knocking at 6.20am to tell me my room is untidy while my sick baby tries to sleep and I lay in my sleeping bag watching to see if she can breathe ok. Get out.
So the downside of this post is that i'm wrong here. Different. My baby looks different, my pyjamas are different, my shoes and my coat and my scarf and my accent and my attitude are different. My baby's bed is different. Big old foreign wrong person who doesn't fit the mold.

You know what though? Take that wrongness and explode it from our fingertips and see the light spill out. Because damn straight i'm different. I'm God's. I'm saved, rescued, redeemed, crowned, held, blessed, taught, guided and indwelt by the Spirit that raises people from the dead.
I belong to Jesus.
So as we walked those corridors he came and gave me stupid peace, peace that stands out and is reflected in my baby's grin in the face of the doctors who are confused by her happiness.
'You are funny happy people'.
Yep.
Smiling is different.
And I will laugh my way around this ward as you scowl and I will hold your gaze and like you even if you don't like me.
And you will end up liking me and finding excuses to come into my room and play with my gorgeous baby who 'is a missionary baby with so much freedom'.
I will sit and eat your manky food and I will read my Bible by the light of your bulbs and you will look at me and ask my friends why someone would leave their lovely country and come to yours.
You will not believe me when I say I like Ukraine and you will fall backwards when I say I have chosen to live here permanently.
You will be offended by my purpose because 'nobody is that good'
and you will be confused by the presence of my husband who will not abandon his family.
You will laugh with me as we try to catch a wee sample in a jam jar. 'Your baby likes everyone, Ukrainian babies scream when they see a doctor'.
You will giggle with me when I try to speak Ukrainian and you will stare at the mental foreign mum who does really weird things.

Yes, I am different.
And as evidence of this difference? This whole week I have felt fine, sometimes my hands have been shaky as people talk around me about my child's lung 'spasms' and often i've been confused by my own peace but this whole time I haven't cried or freaked out or punched anybody. I've barely prayed because of busyness but I have been contained in that calm that comes from Jesus saying 'I got this'. He's got this. 

And that's funny because two days before Beth went into hospital I said to John 'I don't know if I could handle it if life got any harder than it is right now' (I am indeed one for the melodrama) and then we had to take an emergency late night snowy taxi ride to a hospital. Turns out life wasn't that hard when I was complaining. It got harder. But I'm fine. It makes no sense. I'm actually really happy, and had a good few moments of genuine mirth and joy in the middle of it all. Did I mention catching Beth's wee in a jam jar? Don't try putting a sock into a nappy and then wringing it out. That doesn't work. You end up with an empty jar and wee soaked hands. 

So, the difference.

I'm weird and English.
But with Jesus that weirdness turns into light and love and something beautiful.
And i'm different because i'm ok. Because of him. 

peace. xx

brace

I've been trawling the blogs lately and it turns out that there are a lot of blogs. There's 'I know Jesus better than you so here are my (generally unoriginal)  thoughts' blogs. There's 'I made cookies!' blogs and 'life is what I decide it is, here is my half baked philosophy' blogs. I particularly enjoy 'photos of my face in a variety of shades' blogs. I genuinely waste hours on photography of babies blogs, and I will not be ashamed. Babies are awesome. So is craft, I also like craft blogs. But i'm vexed by the religious type blogs. And i'm vexed that i'm adding to them. It's noisy out there.

So I need to say sorry for when I get preachy - I don't want to fill cyberspace with more BELIEVE MY WORLDVIEW or I AM PERFECT or I AM COOLER THAN YOU.

Although, I am cooler than you.
So i'm going to be trying to make this blog a space where i'll just try to tell the truth about  my life. Words like missionary still kind of bring me out in hives. Words like sin and prayer and Bible and freedom and healing need to be dusted off and tried again,
re-communicated,until maybe we can see through them and glimpse something real. Through the veil.

Maybe we could take the veil away.

This is where I reach my meandered point - we're running a Discipleship Training School.
I've always been a bit snobby about YWAM's 'University of the Nations' ('it's not a real university' etc etc) (and it's not) but it doesn't need to be. It's better. It's something else. It's not trying to be the jaded institution where I wrote essays on old books and then someone gave me a bit of paper that reassures potential employers and my mum that I was able to attend at least half my classes and tick the boxes and say the right things and prove myself an independent thinker as long as I was reading the right books.
Disclaimer: Education is wonderful, and as a woman I am only just realizing how privileged I am to have been raised with the expectation that I would get a degree. The opportunities and career options offered by having a degree are still exciting and beautiful, and I loved my time university. Proper, proper loved it.
But the reason I loved it? Apart from the obvious things like thinking I was a grownup because I cooked my own meals and sat in a library dressed like a boho scholar filling my mind full of interesting things? And because I love exams?
I loved it 'cos of Jesus.
I will always treasure the three years where I fell in love with Him and discovered what adventure feels like.

And that's why we're running a DTS, because even though the world scorns Bible College and all the concepts therein, I don't care because DTS saved me from stagnant, selfish, stupid Christianity.

DTS took my lukewarm (ish), constrained faith and blew my brain into a million pieces. God used those 5 months to take this wounded heart and breathe peace, child, into my lungs. Filled my head with stuff that actually matters. I wrote that the teaching felt like a sunrise, and it still does every time I open my notebook. Cheesy. Don't judge me.

And now we're halfway through staff training, tired and brain dribbly and aware that we're not Holy enough to disciple other people, but standing grateful and glad to be trying. So pray for our next month as students ask to come along and we say 'sure!' and then try not to freak out as we look down the barrel of a travelling outreach with small babies. As we start trying to be strong or kind enough to not alienate someone from the process of letting Him in.

It's going to take grace. I think that's ok. But pray? 'Cos we're going to try to take the veil away. 

And here's Beth. Because I know you're all like 'but where's BETH?' and crying and stuff. 

She dribbles a lot. I made some bibs. She dribbled them to death. Now my sewing machine's broken. Wheeeee!

Good night. xxxx

You know you're a (very bad) missionary when...

- You hide Marmite from guests.

- You find 100g of cheddar in a supermarket and it costs three pounds fifty, and you buy it.

- The cheese on toast that results from this is the highlight of your week. 

- Your water comes from a well in the back garden, and turns your kettle orange but that's ok because 'it's only sulphur'.

- Annabel Karmel cannot help you here.

- You have fed your baby jarred rabbit. Once by accident, and a few times on purpose after that.

- You go into clothes shops but leave without buying anything because
a) you're too fat for the clothes
b) you understand nothing
c) the woman guarding the fitting rooms spoke to you but you couldn't work out what she was saying so you ran away

- Your tumble dryer is from the 80's. And it's German. So you spend hours on Google translate and then just have to risk it and set the bed linen to 'lack moisture' or 'completed fail'.

- Your child has never experienced Cbeebies. Instead she is very excited about pirated, low resolution Pingu. In Russian.

- You have only got the money (and will) to decorate one room in your house, and you don't go in it but sometimes hover in the doorway just looking at how beautiful it is. You post pictures of it on the internet.

- And yet you're so busy that this room is somehow strewn with clothes you don't remember wearing.

- Your baby has probably said her first word. You have no idea. She doesn't speak English. 

- If you open the laptop in front of your baby she will get a bit desperate to look inside it, because that's where her Grandparents live.

- Your baby's latest soft toy was stolen out of a bag of beanie babies donated to an orphanage.

- You're terrified. All the time. Of everything. If you could you'd just stay indoors forever.

- You make your own frozen ready meals.

- You forgot to pack toys to help her develop so she's still just licking teddies. And the mop. 

- You try to buy her toys to teach her to count and shiz, but a flashy singy ball costs thirty pounds and you leave the shop in bewildered shame.

- When people ask you what you want for Christmas you don't know what to say because 'everything' isn't acceptable. 

- Your main expenditure is air fares.

- You own the Lada that Jeremy Clarkson reviewed as 'the worst car i've ever driven'. 

- Said Lada fills you with contentment and happiness, and all your missionary friends would also like to own a Lada.

- You drive around for ages getting lost trying to find a baby stuff shop, you finally find the big signs to the baby stuff shop so you park up. You wake the baby. You assemble the buggy. You insert the baby. You follow the signs. You round a corner. It's not a baby stuff shop, it's a car wash. 

- You can buy really nice wine for two pounds! 

Screw it.

This was a hard post to write because it's super personal and also i'm super poorly. So as a form of light relief I shall now choose a fun song for you...
This is 'feel again' by One Republic and it makes me happy. The video is a bit meh but if you turn the song up really loud and jump about it's FUN. I will do that when I can walk and stuff. 

So let the thinkings commence:

So we live in community.

If you're not a Christian or haven't read the same books as me, you might not get what that means to me or what i'm trying to tell you.

In the book called Acts, inside the bigger book called the Bible, there's a bit that talks about what Christianity looked like when it was new. And nobody wanted for anything because everyone shared everything.

Sounds simple
and as a heady newbie to the Jesus following I was passionate about this - about doing relationships intimately and well, about bringing a bit of heaven's joy to the people around us, about living together in big groups and seeing each other all the time and helping each other and learning how to love in the face of the consumerist isolation of the culture I grew up in.

Yep. I'm a big ol' hippie.

The thing is: it's not that simple.
I've experienced Christian community in a few different ways - boiler rooms, church, DTS - and find myself now looking down a road of long term commitment to a small group of people who I don't yet know that well.

If I was perfect, this would be easy.
Every slight would be ignored, all wrongs instantly forgiven and forgotten, all belongings surrendered, no offence taken, no offence meant, no offence caused.
I'd share everything, right?

Instead, this is what me living in community looks like (it's an honesty smack down, people):
I get angry when people break my glasses.
I get angry when people draw on my sofa with biro (seriously, this happened like 3 weeks ago and i'm still writing about it, there is something wrong with that).
I get angry when people wake my baby up.
I get angry when people put things in the wrong place.
I get angry a lot.

But there's more, and it's more sad than a bit of sleep deprived stroppyness. It's actually really sad, and i'm sad when I see how broken my reactions are to things. (Sad.)

It's taken 10 years of Christian community for me to own this fact: I am insecure.
I don't mean about my weight or my ability to apply makeup or any of those other token insecurities that girls apparently must have, and I don't mean about my ability to follow or lead or write or other things we might consider deep.
I mean bone deep, soul deep insecurity, graven in scrubbed through etched insecurity. 
Not sure why - some hurts from life, some lies from the world, mostly just because I am a tiny human person walking small in this big scary world. And sin. 

You know how I see this insecurity in me working itself out? Judging. Judging others before they can judge me. Mouthing off. Slagging off. Justifying myself. Oh, what a messed up person I am. Scared and hateful and pretending. Which makes living in community quite difficult because of all the time and energy spent on building walls, keeping my scared heart safe, being numb, raging at everything, undermining people who should inspire me, coveting stuff, defending myself when nobody's attacked me...
(You're messed up too. Everyone is. Deal with it.)
So that is what I must confess this week, to the weird world of people I don't know who read this blog and trusted friends who read this blog and people i'd probably prefer if they  didn't read this blog...I am insecure.

And here's the twin conclusion:
1) This is very sad, but: I have not been left like this.
This insecurity - this sin, this falleness, this hurt, this fear, this unforgiveness - is not what was intended when God created us and we. are. not. abandoned.
I've got God, and he is healing me and urging me on and his kind, kind heart will take this muddled me and there will be a day when I will feel awesome ALL THE TIME. It's called Heaven. It's called Grace.

2) In the meantime, it's also called Grace. It looks like me realising that insecurities are smaller when you call them out of the shadows, that the fear is placed in nothing but lies, that the power of my God blasts through these stupid walls and windows and doors and this cage we accept called sin? Screw it.

Gentle

Here she is.

She has found a visor.

Because she is a super hero. A licky super hero. Her super power is licking everything.

Soundtrack to this post: Bethel's snores in bed next to me.
There's a DTS lecture going on downstairs and she's too poorly to sleep anywhere that i'm not, so we're all three of us holed up in our bedroom. It's quite nice. John is reading Harry Potter and thus is in his happy place. I'm trying to type silently, but it's not going well because of all the thumpy PASSIONATE THOUGHTS.

This post is probably going to suck because i'm a bit poorly too. My head is full of thinkings that are half thought because of headache fog that gets in the way, and I should probably be napping too but that would be to admit defeat. Shan't.

So I think today we (the royal we? my many personalities? Beth is helping me type?) shall write about winning. Because i'm in a nation, and on a planet, that thrives on confrontation and aggression and assertiveness.
On a local level, people are snappy and quick to disapprove - you're doing this wrong, you've got that wrong, you need to hurry up, you need to slow down, you need to be less stupid or hot or cold or busy or lazy...I have grown to expect obvious disapproval whenever I venture out of the house. Should probably just stamp FAIL on my own forehead. Would save time. On a global level, things just seem to suck. Fighting for freedom, fighting for money or for power or for respect or for stuff or for someone else's stuff. This world seems to me - from my tiny vulnerable stranger in a foreign land perspective - to be big and angry and a bit scary. Don't believe me? Watch some news. Google people trafficking. Talk to someone who has been abused. Look at how many children self harm. Look at how many mums and dads have to watch their children die of stupidly treatable illnesses. Find out where your bank invests your money. Try going a night without a home. Try being a woman in a country that considers you less than a dog. Try being a man in a culture that demands you show no weakness and need no love. Try getting off heroin.

I live my life against a backdrop of this knowledge of a broken globe, and I think we all do. Seeking family in a hostile world, relieved by the love and comforts around us, sometimes engaging but generally hiding from the things we can't change. Refuge. It's a beautiful thing and it's of God.

But you know what else is of God? Justice. Compassion. Holy Rage. Action.
I've got a lot of rage.
In all the passion of hating suffering, do I get angry too? Do I get confrontational too? Do I stomp about shouting at the world to change because if it doesn't i'll count to three? Do I pick up a sword to kill a murderer? Do I launch a missile at the bad guys?

What Would Jesus Do? (It was only a matter of time before that got in there, people. I'm a Christian missionary. I can't avoid cheesy Jesus acronyms. I need help.)

They came to kill him, to arrest him illegally and try him with no defence, to torture him to death because he told them God is love and you're not loving. They proved him right with whips and with nails, with wood and with thorns.
So his friends get angry, they get some Holy rage, they take some action and take out their swords and they draw some blood. Yeah! Justice! Defend the weak! Assertiveness!
But he told them to stop that. Put the soldier's ear back on (he can do that kind of stuff y'know) and freaked the guy out a bit. Put his hands in the cuffs, his head in the hood, went with them on purpose. Took it.

So there is a different way to change the world. Stropping out or taking arms may not work out. It hasn't yet. 
Last night we were worshiping and our friend Daniel was holding his tiny baby girl and she is so beautiful and small, and I realized something important. God is the God who invented babies, tiny little bundles of handle-with-care. He sees the planet he made that is tearing itself to pieces, and against that backdrop he is the God who makes life. Tiny life with chubby hands and wondering eyes and licky dribbles. He made that vulnerable, gentle, sweetness that is a baby. That is part of who he is.  

He is at odds with the suffering we see. He is at odds with aggression. He heals the soldiers who come to kill him. 

The world is often violent and angry and hurting. People are often violent and angry and hurting. But there is a weapon we haven't all worked out how to use yet and it is gentleness. 

Taking it.

This is what I need to do here: the Bible says to come at things in the opposite spirit. You yell at me? I'll whisper back. You want to win? I'll step aside. You take my stuff? Here, have some more.
You want to shout at me in the street? I'll say thank you, yes of course my baby needs a snow suit in June, you're so right. Turn some cheeks. Smile.

Is it hard here? Yes, the culture is much more aggressive than i'm used to. But this country is beautiful, these people are worth so much more than I will ever be able to give them in my lifetime, and i'd like to see how British people would behave after centuries of oppression and communism.
So I will try to be gentle.
Because that way things may start to change. Jesus FTW.
xxxxxxxxxxxx







 

A Positive Post! Freakish!

So this is Beth, looking like a fifties bather/ pilot. 

I did arty effects to this photo.
I am regretting this decision.

Soundtrack to this post: Newsboys
Because when one is happy, one should listen to cheesy happy Jesus music. That said, about half the tracks are so annoying that I instantly skip them. Can tolerate so much cheesy happiness before I get irritable and start craving some Beardy Emo Jesus.

So we're in trouble because over the last two weeks I haven't felt able to update the blog because of not having much positive to say about Ukraine, and the tendency to continuously complain can alienate one from people. Not goths, they like it. But I don't know many goths and i'd like to keep my friends please so thought i'd avoid yet more cyber ranting. 
But now we're riding the flip side of my gloom, hovering over stupidly happy, flying a little bit high on the realisation that when my God-dad sent me here, he knew what he was doing.  

When we got back to the Ukraine after two wonderful weeks of family-friends time, diagonal split in John's arm notwithstanding, I was gutted. Walked up the stairs to the house smelling that rural smell that is not much like shopping centres and more like chicken poo, and my heart dropped a bit. The first few weeks here were so very difficult and at that moment I could happily have quit this stupid adventure. So I breathed in and muttered to Him 

'but your Kingdom come, and your will be done'

and I felt like he got it. And that he was pleased. And like he was standing with me as I unlocked that front door and stepped inside. 

So that was my little decision, made again, made often, to do this thing called missionary life. Come what may. (Moulin Rouge re appropriated, people. You are welcome.)

Two nights in, that made again, made often decision has been an easy one because it's been fun! Beth slept through last night, we've been eating and laughing with the team, I haven't had to feed the chickens yet, John is wonderful, the heating works in the house, I get to wear my winter knitwear and my baby is crawling her over excited way about the house. She loves crawling. She loves crawling so much that she hyperventilates and laughs and disco slides across the kitchen. And eats poo from secret dusty poo collection corners.  

Oh, and lots of you prayed for our return journey to be easier. For those of you who I haven't ranted at, journeys home involved night trains in cattle class in beds a foot wide in the corridor six feet up with no railings, on the trains that suffer from an abundance of stinky men who like to snort in their sweaty drink sleep. With a baby.
It was fun.
Because i'm a super mum.
I would like a cape.
Made by Cath Kidston.
This is turning into a poem.
Or an ode.
Stop that now. 

People say I need to do proper updates, not just existential ponderings, so here's what we're up to:

- Getting the house ready for a team of 8 from America who are coming to do short term mission out of our base.
- Hanging out. Buying food and stuff.
- Preparing for a week of teaching on evangelism that John's helping with week after next, when we'll be hosting a DTS of 15 from Kiev. 

- Playing with Bethbaby and her new friend Camilla who is also gorgeous.
- Going to orphanages and all that jazz.

Right, going to go give my lovely handsome fit kind funny clever husband a massive snog. Lucky boy.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx