On the Move!

I’m so thankful for the life that God has given me and the places where he has me right now.  To bring you up to speed…I’ve been back in the U.S. for two weeks now and it’s been a wonderful time of rest, re-acclamation, and rich times with family and friends!  Over the past few weeks I’ve been bouncing between Jacksonville, Gainesville, and Orlando Florida.  In the words of my boys the Avett Brothers…

“A lot of movin', A lot of rollin'
A lot of drivin', A lot of strollin'
A lot of leavin' here
A lot of arrivin' there
Trying to go just about everywhere
A lot of thinking about where I'm going next.”

I have indeed been doing a lot of moving and driving lately!  The beginning of this week I spent in Orlando for our Water is Life staff…ummm what we’re calling “conference”.  Water is Life is an organization that is based in the U.S., operates in Ethiopia, has staff in the U.S. and Canada, as well as staff in different cities in those countries, so you can imagine that it is a rare occasion that all of our staff (mind you there’s a grand total of about 5 of us officially) is in one place at one time!  Well the past three days was one of those rare opportunities for all of us to gather together to cast long-term vision, to discuss logistics and budgets for our on-going projects, and most importantly to study God’s word and come together as a team in prayer.

The past few days we spent a good bit of time discussing our organization’s strategy and the way we operate.  David, our Executive Director, cited somebody famous (sorry I don’t remember who!) who first described in international development “the addiction of helpfulness”.  Water is Life’s basic purpose is to serve, love, and “help” impoverished people in Ethiopia and one of the core values that we discussed together this past week was that of simplicity and love.  Helping can sometimes be simple, but often it can become complicated and requires thoughtful and careful approaches.  We can’t just throw money at problems, we don’t want to foster a culture of dependence in our projects, and we also don’t want to undermine individual’s agency by what we do.  At Water is Life we are committed to taking simple approaches motivated by love in order to invest in local capacities, promote individual transformation, and extract our western influence as much as possible.

Where I’m going next is back to Ethiopia :)  On Sunday I depart to return to Ethiopia for another 5 weeks.  I’m excited to have the opportunity to get back to Ethiopia so soon, to jump right back into the rhythm and to continue building relationships and furthering the projects that are ongoing.  The past two weeks have been a great opportunity to research, connect with Water is Life partners in the U.S., and reflect and prepare for the future…but for the work that we are doing there truly is no replacement for being on the ground in Ethiopia.  So much of the work that we do is contingent upon face to face meetings and hands-on work in country in Ethiopia, and those things simply can’t be replaced by emails or Skype calls.  Your prayers would be much appreciated as David and I travel.  Next update will be coming from across the pond!