Greeting

Karibuni! The Lord is good! My name is Brandon and the Lord has done mighty things in my life. I am a missionary in Moshi, Tanzania and God is doing good things for us here at Treasures of Africa Children's Home. This website was created to share that story with friends, family and supporters in the states. I also from time to time will share some thoughts on other stuff as well. Each of the entries are a story of what the Lord is up to and to Him be all glory. Please feel free to send comments and questions to me at bmstiver@gmail.com. Thanks for visiting the site and I hope the Lord blesses you as you poke around.

Peace and Grace,
Brandon Stiver

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Flesh and Blood

Over two years ago, I moved to Tanzania with all the answers. People asked me what I would be doing, I replied with confidence. They asked my long-term vision, I told them the plan unabashed.


As I sit in my living room this afternoon, after time to reflect over all that the Lord’s done, not during my time in Tanzania, but the nearly five years since He first called me, I have to say that I have way more questions than answers. In fact, I daresay, that I don’t know a whole lot at all. 


I used to have a few regular readers for my weekly blogs on this site, but as I prepare to send this piece out to get lost in the vast inter-web, I have to ask myself what I’ve been doing the last four months that I couldn’t afford the time to write even one blog, one story, to share with folks back in the states. 


I suppose the best answer to that is that life has happened. In my attempts to be a good husband to Melissa and a good father and educator to the treasures, the whole being a good writer (or a writer at all, more accurately) has been pushed aside. Time spent on dirty dishes, teaching the preschoolers, balancing TOA’s books, feeding the dog, managing the home and just trying to be a good husband have each individually eclipsed, even dwarfed, my time spent writing for this blog.


In the midst of life happening, something profoundly significant and important has happened, a joyous event. Melissa and I got pregnant. Our lives are forever changed by this little one that we are anticipating seven months from now and already, the child’s arrival is changing our plans and we’re being forced to re-shape that which we call life.


Over the last couple weeks since we’ve told people, I’ve had a couple people congratulate us saying, “now, you’ll be parents to your own flesh and blood.” Rita said this herself as we met with her a couple days ago. Its an interesting point, one that we’re undoubtedly excited for, but there’s a reason that they say that.


If you were to go back to that time when I had all the answers a couple years ago and you asked my friends and family, “who is the one person that Brandon is excited to be with when he gets to Tanzania?” Ten out of ten people would say the same name, Awadhi. People without a second thought referred to him as my son, both American friends in the states and Tanzanian friends here.  His picture is up in my parents house in Wisconsin. When people talk about me, they talk about him. He has been indelibly placed in my story and my life. And yet, he’s the one that is more chalk full of questions in my life than anyone else.


When I first got here, I struggled with the new reality in his life that I stepped into. The reality of him being HIV+ and deaf was something that I was already aware of and walking through. I had prayed for him, fasted for his healing out of a deep love that was new and revolutionary to me. As I moved to Moshi, I was happy to be with him now and fully prepared to continue to battle for him and love him with all that I’ve got. I was and still am assured of his coming healing. But the new reality was that he was going to start out at a new school in Kiboroloni, a school for the deaf. I, and the rest of his family at TOA, would only see him on the weekends. I wasn’t as prepared for that. And that went on for a year, until I then left him for six months at the start of 2011. That time in the states was right in step with what God had for me as I did the best thing since I gave my heart to the Lord, I married my best friend. Nonetheless, I didn’t see Awadhi for a long time. On coming back in July, he had come off another poor performing semester at school and the school asked to keep him on the weekends, so he now only comes home to TOA once a month on the week he has to go to the hospital for his HIV appointment. 


And now, as Melissa and I joyfully look forward to the birth of our baby, I, now we, once again are forced to leave Awadhi for a time longer than the previous six months last year. 


Questions. Where to start? 


Why hasn’t he been healed yet? Why haven’t we adopted him? With the restrictive Tanzanian law in mind, is adoption even possible? Why is he performing so poorly in school? What does he think of when he’s with me? What does he think of me and Melissa when he’s at school? What did he think about the six months that he didn’t see me and I came back with Melissa? What will he think when we leave and come back a while later with a baby? How does he see us? What are we to him truly? What does he believe about God? 


I don’t know.


It’s a humbling confession to make. I can come up with something eloquent about how being born of the spirit is more important than being born in flesh and blood, which is true. I can say something about trusting God with Awadhi, which I do. I can talk about the bright side of being in the states for a while instead of being home in Tanzania. I could say a lot cheerful things. I, indeed, have so much to be thankful for and I am. I’m thankful for my wife, she’s amazing. I’m incredibly excited for the birth of our child and look forward to sharing that experience with friends and family in California. All of this is true and I’d be remiss to not mention it.


But, I believe I have something to learn here in the midst of the questions. Not only about Awadhi, not only about the precious little one that’s going to show up in September, but about life and why things go the way things go. 


I recently read “Erasing Hell” by Francis Chan and the number one thing that I walked away with from that book is that God is higher. The way that He does things is higher than I can imagine, I can’t understand it. I’m the pot. Compare the knowledge of the pot to the knowledge of the Potter who made it. He does things in a way that I wouldn’t do them. This isn’t to demean our existence or the image in which He created us, but its rather to exalt Him as Creator.


“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, 
Nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher that your ways, 
And My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9 


God is good. We thank Him for this coming season of life and for the gift of this little one, as well for the gift of having Awadhi in our life. 


At the same time, life is tough to make sense of sometimes, increasingly so I’m finding in my own life. There are questions, so many stinking questions. Questions that I don’t have the foggiest answer to, other than to say that God is God. His ways and His thoughts are higher, for this we give praise.
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