The Romantic View and the Ordinary Life:

When I was in Mexico our leader Tag talked to us about expectations. He warned us to not expect anything when we came to Africa because expectations lead to being disappointed and to miscommunications… trips like this don’t tend to go quite as you might imagine. When he was talking about it I was quite sure that I was expectations free but I look back now and would disagree with myself. Its not that I had expectations of how a day might look or what we might do but I think that I was looking at this trip through a very romantic view. I think that I viewed being a ‘missionary in Africa’ to be this action packed experience of doing doing going going praying building ministering and on and on. But the other day I found myself thinking as I walked home from a new friends house about how or what I would even want to tell people about to explain my experience here in living in Mbita, Kenya. The things that are the most important to me here are the simple and ordinary things.

Sometimes, I look around and almost have to remind myself of how far away from home that I really am. (No joke…I have had a couple of reality checks while looking at maps around here.) I look at the trees and the different buildings and the people here and I think ‘Wow, this is nothing like the world I grew up in”. I feel like I had and many people still do have this romantic view of Africa and what coming here looks like. I thought that living here would be this intense thing but it turns out that living in Africa is just living, I mean for most people here this is just how life always has looked and always will look. I think about the movies I have seen and the different late night infomercials or photographs of peoples travels and how they portray Africa. Living here I have seen the picturesque scenes of sunsets over lake Victoria, children and women carrying water on their heads, amazing trees, I have driven along the muddy roads with the broken down buildings with the children with the protruding bellies standing out front wearing their dirty and tattered clothes, I mean we even have monkeys and hippos right here at the base and yet somehow life is still just life and those things don’t seem to be the things at all that I would use to portray my time spent here.

The things that I miss about home are just the ordinary things, the things that you almost take advantage of because it’s just what you do. Like my dad making his shake first thing in the morning or him stomping his feet as he walks in from the garden trying to get all the dirt off before coming into the kitchen and going to target with mom and waiting for her in the car while she grabs some peanuts and a diet coke for the road. I miss sharing clothes with Tori (even though the pictures I see of her seem to say that she isn’t ‘missing’ that as much as I am) and making really cheesy garlic bread with her when mom wasn’t home to tell us about how bad it is for us. I miss Wednesday lunch at Grandma and visiting with my cousins and being able to just stop by and visit at my aunts houses. I miss painting with Patti and just being with Karen. I miss surfing with Tricia, walking with Lindsay, drinking coffee with my PBFF and day dreaming with Emma, going on adventures with Emily, doing errands with Debs and hanging out at the boys house after getting off of work. I miss Alta and driving places with Andy talking about the summer. It’s the ordinary things that add up to make a place so special and I am just not quite sure how I will be able to explain how all the ordinary things here have added up to make this place so dear to my heart.

I was in Nairobi this past weekend taking a friend to the airport. It was a whirlwind of traveling, night buses, long boats, walking, taxis, bike taxis, motorcycle taxis, ferries, and more buses but we managed to get ourselves all around Kenya and back to where we needed to be, tired but in one piece. In the middle of all this we found ourselves in a city market with prices clearly geared towards tourists. As one guy was trying to sell me something he asked me, “Where are you from?” and my first response as I was just looking around the shop was “I’m from Mbita, its near Kisumu.” He kinda asked me again and I realized what he was really looking for… “Ohh. California in America.”

That moment just about summed it up for me. This whole thing is much more ordinary than any “missions” trip experience that I have ever been on. When you break it down I really am just simply living in Mbita, Kenya and loving God here instead of in Huntington Beach. I eat the things (minus the fish) that everyone else here eats, skumawiki, lots of beans and green grams, chipoti, ugale, lots of rice, and some pineapple and I even like it all. I know which stands in the market are most likely to have a good mango and which lady sells the khanga wraps we wear here at the best prices. The people we interact with here are simply my friends and my neighbors and I recognize the students in their uniforms according to the school they go to and know many of them from spending time in their class rooms. I know how long it takes to walk into town and I know which motorcycle taxi drivers are safe to ride with. I live in Mbita.

I think about Grandma Boyer at home and how she has emailed me several times since I have been here in Africa just telling me about all that God is doing in Huntington Beach. I know this to be very true. Just a reminder: God is a big God and is quite capable to be working here in Africa at the same time as working in Orange County. So what I really want to say is two things:

1. I think that when I come home its going to be hard having people expecting to hear all about this “Missions Trip to Africa” through the lens of this romantic view. Please be patient with me with this and be ready to hear about a lot of ‘ordinary things’. The things happening here are the same things that happen when you allow the Holy Spirit to lead you at home in Huntington Beach. God is moving here in Mbita, he is moving in the life of the man who runs the internet shop, he is moving during the ‘Girls Talk’ where we get to talk to the older girls in school about the real issues going on here, he is speaking during the environmental clubs and when we go and pick up trash in the town, he is moving here at the base revealing areas where He is not currently being glorified and calling for change, he is moving with our host family, he is moving when we go out on outreach, he is moving in the hospital, HE IS MOVING. But just understand that most of my experience is built on the ordinary day to day life of following Jesus… just the same as for you at home.

2. We should all be living with a mission wherever God has us. You don’t need to be in Africa to be a ‘missionary’. God needs people to be living with a mission everywhere that his lost sheep can be found. Befriend the people you rub shoulders with on a day to day and encourage them in any way that you can. Model the life that Jesus calls you to and challenge them to walk in it as well. The people in Africa are dying just to be seen and to know that they matter, and I know that it’s the same thing at home. Your mission can just be as simple as being intentional with the people that God puts within your sight. If you follow Christ you have a mission:

“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

When I come home from Africa my “missions” trip is not going to be ending, I will just be moving to a different field. Living the extraordinary life that Christ has called me to in the midst of the ordinary. I love being here and at the same time look forward to what life looks like after this, the stuff happening here is not limited to one trip to Africa. The first page of the journal I have been writing in for a long time and currently am still using says: God is my Home. I have a prayer written out under it that talks about how I know that God is going to take me many different places but how I know that it will be ok because my home is in him. Whatever adventure I am in or that lies ahead I know that God is with me… and that is what makes an ordinary day to day so much more.