"Being not doing"

I have now been in Kenya for 3 months! Time has sure flown by and I still can’t believe that it is December! As I look back at this past year I can definitely say that I have done many things that has shaped and changed my life forever! At the beginning of the year I was starting my last semester of my undergraduate years with my final internship, then I graduated from university, then spent another amazing summer in Montreat where I met some of my closest friends, and now I am in Kenya for “a year of service for a lifetime of change.” Each decision that I made this year has changed my life completely and I know this is all apart of God’s plan.

            The past 3 months has definitely been some of the hardest 3 months of my life, but I can now say that I am here in Kenya for a reason and God is breaking many barriers that I have put up in my life. Within the past 3 months I have moved to a new country on a different continent across an ocean from home with a completely different culture than mine. I have started a “real” job; meaning that I have a job other than a fast food job, office assistant job, or summer camp job. I have laughed, cried, gotten tons of great memories, and I now understand how it feels to be completely alone. While I was feeling completely alone, it allowed me to see what wall needed to be broken and what I needed to change or open my eyes to. My feeling alone wasn’t because of actually being alone; I certainly had many people around me that cared for me and wanted to help me out; but it was because I had put up a wall that was not allowing me to really be in Kenya.

            One of the reasons why I decided to become a young adult volunteer was the fact that there would be more “being” than “doing”. I thought that this would be a great way to be immersed in a culture and learn some things as well. I didn’t however think how hard it would be to actually embrace this simple concept. Over the past few months I was putting up every wall possible and by putting up those walls I was not able to really see what Kenya has in store for me. I was still embracing my Americanism by always wanting to be busy and “doing” something, and by doing that I was completely missing the reason why I was here in Kenya.

            I am here to learn about a new culture and to become apart of that culture. Yes there will be some “doing” but I am here to learn and to “be”. This has really be a difficult wall to break because I kept on denying the fact that this was the reason that I was having such a hard time adjusting to life in Nairobi. I kept on comparing everything to my life in the US and not really being able to embrace life in Nairobi. I kept on building the wall that I really needed to tear down. Through all of this wall breaking I can now say that I am really becoming use to life in Nairobi and that I am here in Kenya for a reason. Kenya is definitely the place that I am being called to. I now know that I am called to Kenya to not only learn but to grow in every part of my life and to break those walls that I have built up throughout my life.