WHM South Sudan Video

Check out the new WHM South Sudan video.  It is only a little over 5 minutes long.  Enjoy!

WHM South Sudan Video

It was great seeing lots of familiar faces throughout the video including these friends from the local water office! 

Pumpkin Oat Scones

I LOVE this recipe, so I thought I would share it with my blog readers.  I have made these scones in S. Sudan which means you can be flexible with the ingredients.  I made them for breakfast before a trip to NYC with my roommates last weekend (pictured above).  They are a perfect traveling day breakfast whether you have a MAF flight to Uganda or a train ride to NYC. 

I adapted the recipe from this website:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-oat-scones/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=pumpkin%20oat%20scones&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page

I usually add 1/4 cup sugar to the dry ingredients and also increase all the dry spices to 1 Tbs. each.

ENJOY!

A New Semester Brings Disasters

A new semester means new classes and new (used) books.  With titles like "The Road to Hell", "Condemned to Repeat?", "Famine Crimes", and "Despite Good Intentions", I decided to switch out the verses I have written on my mirror.  I added key phrases from Romans 8:18-21.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

I'm excited about my classes for this semester which are listed below.

Program Planning, Management and Marketing
Applied Research and Evaluation
Relief and Mitigation for Disasters and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Living in South Sudan, I saw suffering, but the WHM team entered in the development phase.  Mundri town was years past the relief phase.  This semester I will study relief and disasters.  I am thankful that last semester I had the opportunity to take Theology of Poverty where we discussed suffering and evil, but that does not mean I have it all figured out and will never need a reminder of the promises of God.  Even missionaries need to reminded of the gospel. 

This is the interactive part of this post.  Do YOU have any suggestions of verses to add to my mirror for this semester? My closet has two giant sliding mirrored doors, so there is plenty of room!

Order of Magnitude

I had a college chemistry professor who used to always say "What's an order of magnitude between friends?" when discussing extremely large or small numbers.  I like the concept of orders of magnitude.  I don't like it as much as I like fractals, but it is up there. 

Because I like the idea of considering the same object at different orders of magnitude, I have always loved this poster that hangs in my aunt and uncle's home in São Paulo.  I also like tomatoes, preferably at 0 mph. 

Tomato at 0 mph

Tomato at 4 mph

Tomato at 40 mph

Tomato at 400 mph

Lately I have been thinking about orders of magnitude when it comes to poverty.  Is there poverty, disease, and a lack of access to safe drinking water in the US?  Yes.  Is there poverty, disease, and a lack of access to safe drinking water in South Sudan?  Yes.  The difference is in the order of magnitude.

Home

When I landed in Sao Paulo, the Brazilian immigration officer welcomed me home.  When I landed back in Miami, the US immigration officer also welcomed me home.  Neither is completely true. 

At Jennifer's recommendation I read Love at the Speed of Email on my flight from Miami to Sao Paulo. It is a quick read, and the author, Lisa McKay, talks a lot about the idea of home. 

Lisa writes about "home" saying, "...nowhere I’ve ever lived looks fully like home to me. It has less to do with whether that place felt like a home during the time I lived there than with there being about a dozen such places."

There are so many places that a part of "home" for me including Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Brazil, and South Sudan. 

And I must admit that sometimes I feel like Lisa did when she wrote, "I was overwhelmed with the sense that my life was fracturing so irrevocably into a thousand disconnected people, places, and sensations that I would never stand a hope of feeling fully integrated."

For the global nomad, there are many sections of this book that put in to words the questions that tend to come with this lifestyle. 

My idea of "home" isn't simple, but is uniquely mine.  I am thankful that Brazil and South Sudan are important elements of "home" for me.