Kenapa dia mati?

Tuhan Yesus-kan?  Kenapa dia mati?

The question came from our youngest little girl, Vivi.  She has yet to start school due to some serious miscommunication problems with various schools in town.  So instead, she hangs out with us in the morning.  She is pure kid: pure joy, pure curiosity, and pure mayhem.  Its really easy to get frustrated with her – this is her first time out of her rural village and living with 34 siblings who love to pick on her is probably not the easiest.   But as annoying as her constant questions in Malay and constant need to touch me and anything I am doing, she is a breath of fresh air.

She’s not afraid to main bola (play soccer) with the younger boys, and is often found pushing them around.  She is blissfully ignorant, and for a while was convinced that our little town Tuaran was KK.  She still calls town “Tuaran KK”.  Goodness.

The arrival of new brothers and sisters has been a blessing.  With a new, younger headstrong student, Lillyana isn’t constantly being yelled at.  Instead, she is speaking lots of English, and doing things she is supposed to be doing.  And of course fighting with Vivi.  But the improvement in her English and especially her participation in class is incredible. 

That brings us back to Vivi’s question this morning.  “That’s Jesus right?   Why did he die?’  I was at a complete loss to answer in any sort of understandable Malay.  And English wasn’t an option.  So I said he died for everyone, and tried to say something about love, but I don’t know if I used the right word.  As per usual, she laughed loudly at my stammering, and Auntie called her into the kitchen to help.  Kenapa dia mati?  Dia mati untuk manusia kerana kasih.  He died for all humans because of love.    And I can’t get the question out of my mind.  Because Christianity, worship, and fellowship is such a huge part of Jireh Home, I assumed all of the kids already knew the basics.  Jesus died for me because he loves me.  He is God’s son sent to save us. 

In the gust of fresh air that is Vivi, I am reminded that Jesus is more than the basics, more than the answers to seemingly simple questions   That the gospel is confusing and complicated, hard to understand.  And I am reminded that my life is about embracing that mystery and living it out in every possible way.  Learning to understand that sacrificial love from a completely different context. 

Grace

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about grace.  Its been an interesting week, full of changes as the kids start school.  And I’ve been exhausted, trying to process my time in Kampung (rural village) for Christmas and trying to plan a coherent English curriculum.  In the midst of everything going on in my head, I have made some considerable mistakes.   But in all of the moments I feel inadequate, my family here has showed me inordinate amounts of grace, showing me perhaps God’s hardest gift for me to receive.

So many little things go astray on a daily basis, mostly due to miscommunication.  And we’ve learned to laugh and move on, mutually improving our control of each other’s language.  But this week, for some reason, the mishaps on my part seemed unsurpassable.

On Thursday night, after singing pop songs with the kids for an hour and a half in English class, I was feeling mildly ignored during the evening exercise/play break.   So I figured it was probably best to go home and rest, instead of being crabby at Jireh Home.  On my walk home, I sent a text message to what was very obviously the wrong person – one of my friends on staff who had been pretty moody.  As I realized the error, I freaked out, but came up with an honest and polite explanation hoping to pacify things until we could talk Friday morning.  

The next morning, instead of things being strained and awkward as I expected, my friend told me why she was so moody and so many other things in her life she had been thinking about.  Instead of creating unnecessary tension, I received the most incredible grace, complete forgiveness and understanding and a deeper friendship.   And I had done absolutely nothing to deserve that, except make a mistake.

This past Saturday, we had some local visitors scheduled to come around 2 pm.  So the boys drifted over from their house across the street to the patio area where we gather around 2:30.  At maybe 3:15 some of the younger girls were sick of playing cards (speed has been the biggest hit here lately), and started running around the house.  So I decided we were going to play games.  In the midst of playing freeze tag I stepped in some dog poop in the yard from one of the many neighborhood dogs.   If it had been any of the kids who stepped in dog poop, we would still be laughing at them today.  But instead, the small group of boys around me pretended not to notice while I put my gross sandals by the door in the corner.  Realizing my embarrassment, they gracefully pretended the smell wasn’t my fault when we gathered on the patio for the visitors. 

Then, Sunday morning, I missed church.  That may not sound like a huge deal, but here, if you are a Christian, you go to church on Sunday.   And I didn’t wake up in time on Sunday morning, because I set the alarm on my iPod for the wrong day.   To make matters worse, I had talked all of the girls and my good friends on staff into wearing dresses to church, because I really wanted to wear mine.  So here I was, at 8 am on Sunday morning, sitting on my bed in despair as the church service started in town, which would take about 30 minutes to get to.   And I realized I was feeling pretty sick.  As Uncle Pat would say, “Double Whammy.”

So I spent the day in bed, mostly sleeping all afternoon.  I expected to wake up to a couple of unhappy text messages from my friends.   But I didn’t get any passive or sarcastic texts from my friends.  Instead, when Pastor came home to shower, she took me into town to dinner and bought me whatever food I would like.  Then we went to Jireh Home for extra fellowship where everyone was just relieved to see me.  I was preparing to wear my dress on Monday to make up for the absence, or to promise the kids I would wear it next week all by myself.  Or do something to somehow repay my friends for the mistake of setting the wrong alarm.  Instead, I was greeted with smiles, hugs and excitement to dress up again next week. I did nothing to earn the affection, but simply received the grace of my family as I snuggled with one of the smaller girls during fellowship. 

Grace upon grace.  As much as I participate in Jireh Home’s receiving, I still have no idea what it means to simply open my hands and heart and receive simple forgiveness and grace from my family here.  And I am learning to raise my hands and receive the best gift ever, responding only with constant gratitude. 

Jireh Home New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve was one of those really good days.  The days where on my walk home, I can’t believe how wonderful, blessed and full my life here is.

It started like any of the other days of holiday, except all the kids were back.  I took the morning to myself, and made it to Jireh Home for some tasty lunch, always one of my daily goals.  After lunch we played some cards, napped for a really long time, and then had minum petang.  For minum petang we had some really tasty sugar rolls that were donated.  And then somehow, I ended up playing soccer with one of our youngest boys.  Fizlee is now nine and is a scrapper.  He is tough and wants to be one of the older boys so badly.  So he wanted me to try to score a goal on him.   Our one-on-one football game turned into five-on-five, with some of the older boys joining in.  And I scored multiple goals on some of the best goalkeepers at Jireh Home.  Granted we were playing with only one goald in our tiny front yard.  But still. 

I was pretty disgusting after football, so I hurried home to shower.  I got back to Jireh Home just in time for dinner, which we all ate together as the start of our New Year’s Eve celebration.  As the night progressed we sang and danced to some of the kids favorite camp type songs (in Malay of course) and played so many games.  I discovered how difficult it is to explain camp games to the students.  So we played modified versions of Stuck in the Mud, Sharks and Minnows, and a few others.  The biggest hit was definitely Duck, Duck, Goose. 

After the games and worship, it was maybe around 10:30, way past my usual bedtime here.  But the staff brought out many two liters of soda, 3 pitchers of coffee, and a couple pitchers of milo. Then they brought out special biscuits and candy. I couldn’t help but laugh at the familiarity – so many snacks and drinks – just like in the States.    After we feasted and the kids regained some energy, it was almost 11:30 and Pastor still wanted to go over the rules.  So we quickly read the rules for Jireh Home behavior – study hard, no dating, especially no dating other students at Jireh Home, no handphones, listen to the staff, etc…  The kids were losing steam quickly, until the fireworks started going off.   Just after midnight, we grabbed hands and prayed in the New Year.  It was the strangest yet the best thing, to be praying in English completely connected to my huge, quirky family praying in Malay, while fireworks exploded in the sky. As I finished I opened my eyes to see many of the younger students gazing up in awe at the displays.  We closed with the Lord’s Prayer.  Then the fun began.

Somehow Pastor Repieh found a box of fireworks.  She decided I should be in charge of them.  But the instructions on the box were written in very poor/sketchy English and I am not much of a pyro.  So I gave them one by one to Abang Jovline, and he lit them quickly and threw them to the front yard where they exploded with a flash of light and a bang.  After the fireworks, there was still a lot of coffee left.  So the kids played rock, paper, scissors to decide who had to drink a cup of coffee.   As the pitchers emptied, two of the older boys had a race to see who could drink the remaining four or five glasses the quickest.   Meanwhile, Fizlee, our little scrapper, threw his coffee up in the gutter.   At around 1 am, when the caffeine buzz hit the kids, Pastor and I headed home to sleep.  We walked under a bright, almost full moon and a clear, star filled sky down the little dirt road to our house, climbing through the gate and into bed.