Adventure

My alarm goes off at 8:00 AM, this is sleeping in for me now. Get up, shower, make breakfast. My Saturday morning church service of worship music and listening to The Garden’s pod cast, Pastor Bill teaching on sloth. Church takes place as I do all the dishes from the previous week. So much silverware. My first day with this new deodorant, it smells very manly. I hop on the piki and head to TOA. Go into my office, check Facebook, email and change blog interface (do you like it?). I go outside to play with the kids. Sam smells my armpit while sitting next to me and says “Baba, you are wearing perfume.” I teach the English word ‘cologne’ and explain its my new deodorant. Chapati and beans for lunch. Show Benny some things on the guitar. Let the older kids on the computers while I work in my office. Lyd comes up and we go to balance the books for March. Expected time to do so, 20-30 minutes. After two hours, my new deodorant is adding to my headache. After a few hours, Jodie comes in with a problem. Awadhi is out of his meds and we might have to go to his school and it is already turning into dusk. If they go, I go, because its not the best place to go after dark and its been raining. I wait. Turns out they don’t go and I don’t leave TOA till 6:40. I take my laundry home in my basket and it blocks my headlight. Too dark to wear my shaded sunglasses while I drive. Bug flies in my eye. Try not to eat it in the mud. Get home. The new tenants’ dog won’t stop barking at me. I pray this big German Shepherd doesn’t get to brave and bite me. He settles for disrespectfully peeing on my piki. I come inside, turn on Amos Lee, cut the mold off the last of my cheese and fry up another salami quesadilla. Resign to writing for the night. Adventure?

A couple days ago, I was IMing with a friend from Long Beach. He asked me if I had anything exciting to share. I told him that things that used to seem exciting to me were now just normal. A response also known as ‘no.’ He asked me if we’d been dealing with any persecution. As an aside, I know where my friend’s question came from as he was a part a prayer meeting for me where that was spoken of. I won’t get into it right now, but I’m quite certain that in my walk I will come into considerable persecution. His question came from that mindset, but the truth is I haven’t really been experiencing any yet. Boy, that’d make for a riveting blog.

Adventure is important to me. Anyone whose ever read this blog since I started it can see that the same tag line has been on it the whole time “tracking Brandon and all his adventures throughout Moshi, Tanzania with his Treasures of Africa.” Is that accurate? Have you been reading my blogs and thinking “wow, look at the adventures Brandon is having with his Treasures of Africa!”? Probably not. I wish that I could chalk it up to my self-effacing writing style, but the truth is, this “adventure” looks different than I would have thought.

What is adventure? When I think of adventure, I get this mental picture of Indiana Jones running away from this huge stone ball and narrowly escaping yet again. Is that the standard for adventure? I’m not a tomb raider. I’ve never even met one. There has to be some other standard to say that this is living adventurously and this is living domicile. I don’t know what it is though. When you think about all the ways that people live its hard to discern what is true adventure and what isn’t. What about a person that is always climbing mountains, hang gliding and skydiving, but he’s never been in love and is insecure, is he living an adventure? What about a guy who used to have these aspirations of changing the world and now is working a normal job married with a couple kids, is he living an adventure? Better yet, how about a guy that will be 24 on Thursday, who just followed God to Africa, but his experience is different than he expected? Adventure? Sijui.

Bill Dogterom was preaching on sloth and he talked about how we are made for adventure and to sail the seas of life. I agree, both from experience and from knowing that disagreeing with Bill is second to disagreeing with the Lord. By the grace of the Spirit, sloth seems so unattractive to me, because I want to experience life that is really life. Even if that means I fall on my piki in the mud or get a broken heart every now and then.

So is this adventure? I daresay that I think it is. Everything else aside, I say it is for one reason. I may not be riding rhinos to work or getting beat up by Masai warriors everyday. I may not be taking the gospel into some remote South American tribe or hiding out with my underground church in the Bhutan. But there is this critical factor of risk. Adventure is completely dependent on risk. There is nothing more valuable to risk than love. I can objectively say that I risked love to be here. I loved my friends and family in the states. I still do love them, of course. However, in a normal pattern of thinking, you might gather that me moving to the other side of the earth will severely limit the growth of love in every single relationship. Not that love won’t grow still, but it won’t be as much or as quick if I’d been sitting down with you and experiencing life at your side. I risked that true love. Even more so I risked not having the truest form of human love that I’ve ever experienced as being here meant not being with a person that I loved in the most unique fashion.

So there’s the risk. Praise God that my risk was not out of foolhardiness and thrill chasing in East Africa, but rather it was based in His calling me here. Since it is in His will, I have a 100% chance of reaping greater benefits (love) than I risked. I’ve always loved the kids that I worked with in California. I risked and gave them up and have experienced a hundred-fold (no exaggeration) in the love that I have for the Treasures. That takes nothing away from my love for those kids in the states, but the Lord has taken me to a new level. I risked my love for the relationships with friends and family. Praise God that those are still maintainable from here, though more limited. My friend base here is…developing, nonetheless there are certainly a handful of people that I am developing deep relationship with. And that risk of being with that special woman, I honestly believe that the Lord hasn’t forgotten that and when I’m with whoever I’m supposed to be with, it too will be an immeasurable increase because of His faithfulness.

The greatest adventure is abiding in the Spirit and allowing Him to lead you. Don’t fear, He is with you and will uphold you. Let go of what control you think you have and dive in expecting the unexpected. It’ll be beautiful, pinky promise.

--------------------------------------------------------

The Rundown: The first week of the kids’ break went very well. We’ve had time for all the things that I mentioned last week. They are big fans of English Verb Bingo for the ESL time. I’ve taught them a couple songs as well which is my favorite thing. On Friday, I took the fourth graders and up for a nice long walk to the grocery market and treated them to ice cream. That was a lot of fun. I have really been able to make some deep connections with the boys especially. We have some great conversations and laugh together a lot. The books have been a serious headache. Pray that Lydia and I can figure stuff out before a bunch of transactions are made on Monday. Its Easter and that’s crazy how fast its come up. He is risen! I didn’t bring any pastel shirts. We’ll be eating a nice tall goat. My birthday is this week. I will be 24. Does 23 start my mid-twenties or is it 24? One way or another I’ll certainly be in my mid-twenties on Thursday. Haya, inatosha.