School Daze

Full swing into school – and ironically, despite our seemingly extreme location, school is school!  Aside from geography, our little African school is strangely familiar.  And yet, the little ways in which it differs distinguish it from my earlier teaching experiences. (This image shows a group of students “mixing” the ingredients for a rocket stove on this weekend’s outreach trip. Check out the finished product below – a kindly widow’s new kitchen stove.)

The demography of my classes is truly extraordinary, for instance.  In any given class, I have a number of students each from America, Kenya, Korea, Iceland, Finland, Sudan, Uganda, Lesotho, South Africa, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada (students, please forgive me if I have omitted your country of preference!) And this list does not even mention those from CANs (Creative Access Nations), where the gospel of Christ is openly hated, necessitating extreme secrecy in communications like these. Ironically, these identities are initially difficult to claim, as many of these students have only lived in the country of their citizenship for short, intermittent periods throughout their lives.  An observer could by no means determine where any given student might call home.  It is only through the developing relationship with my students that I am beginning to truly understand their individual identities.  One student might be Korean by birth, and yet she may have lived in Mombasa her whole life, only visiting family in Korea a few short times. Another, bearing the outer appearance of a Kenyan or Sudanese national, might actually have lived in Minnesota for a good portion of his life.  Any number of students here might be fluent in three or more languages, and capable of code-switching in a single conversation to accommodate her peers’ individual language abilities.

The students here are hybrids – third culture kids – belonging to neither one nor the other culture, or perhaps belonging to each culture into which they have been immersed.  Some might be MKs (Missionary Kids), some are children from nearby Kenyan families, some are station kids – whose parents live and work here at RVA or on “lower station” down the hill at the hospital or Moffett Bible College. They are remarkable young people, and I am overwhelmingly honored and privileged to be here among them.

I began this journey believing that somehow our service at RVA, because of its relatively familiar trappings – electricity, clean well-water, internet – was some kind of “missionary lite” venture.  I am convinced now, however, of the immeasurable impact that this place has on African missions – both with current families in the field who are sharing the gospel with the beautiful, needy people throughout this vast continent, and without whom, they would perish, and also with the kids themselves, whose very hearts are tuned to Jesus’ call to missions, and are in fact the future of African missionary work until the day of Christ’s return. These kids will change the world.

And we get to help them!

A mixture of mud, ash, and sawdust, this “rocket stove” will serve as a Kenyan widow’s new cooking stove.  At her request, we used the extra mud to give her a new floor too – a far cry from travertine – but a great improvement over the rocks, loose dirt, and debris that previously served as her kitchen floor.