Kenya Update II.5: Stateside Once More

[Denise Poon]

Greetings from California! First off, before I begin my usual rambles, I want to say THANK YOU ALL/ASANTE SANA from the bottom of my heart, soul, etc. etc. for your prayers and support. 

I arrived back in the States with the rest of the team Saturday afternoon, and immediately caught a plane back to LA (but not before customs confiscated the apple I bought in Heathrow London during our layover. Apparently you aren't allowed to bring over unprocessed foods. Oops). I arrived in LA at night, very exhausted and even more unshowered, and a bit loopy from the multiple time zone changes (I walked into a wall). But back in America I am, and doing fairly well. I haven't been up to much since I've been back--sleeping a lot, eating anything but rice or potatoes, editing pictures from Kenya, spending time with my parents, and pondering about the future.

I think that last one is what's been causing me the most confusion. I don't feel very much like a triumphant college graduate at all, more like a confused, underdeveloped adult not ready to face the world. And yet--I've been thinking--in so many ways, I've already faced the world. I've experienced the poverty of it during my daily walks through the Huruma slums; seen the injustice of discrimination in the eyes of the socially stigmatized crippled children in the Mother Teresa orphanage; and felt my heart break for the pain of the forgotten and overlooked over the world. I haven't just faced the third world, but the brokenness of the first world too. I've seen the oppression of Western standards of beauty in the girls of my small group, and the idol of materialism and spiritual poverty in the European tourists we encountered during our time of debriefing in Mombasa. Brokenness is brokenness and sin is sin, I suppose you could say. I've been thinking about something a boy I knew my freshman year in the dorms said, "The world's too messed up to try to fix." 

I want to try--but I don't know how. This past summer, God has showed me a lot about the world's sin and brokenness, and about my own, too. He's also taught me a lot about free will, and the freedom He gives us to make our own choices. He isn't standing there with a whip, making sure we stay on the right path or take a certain road. Though sometimes I wish He did (it would make things so much easier), that's not a relationship of love. That's viewing God with a slave mentality--as if He is just a master who will control our every move and punish us if our behavior is subpar. We don't have a master-slave relationship with Him, but one where He truly is our Father and we are His children. I have been thinking through Colossians 1:9-12,

 "⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ¹⁰ so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritanceof his holy people in the kingdom of light."

My prayer is that I live a life worthy of the Lord, and make wise decisions that will bring me closer to Him. So at the moment, I'm not praying necessarily for God to show me His will, but that He would give me wisdom, discernment, and strength to make decisions about my future that honor Him. Please do not--as Paul and Timothy did not in the letter to the Colossians--stop praying for me, in particular for:

- Readjustment back the States: It will be harder this year, since I don't have the structure and schedule of school to fall back into, pray that I process the GP and that my cultural re-entry will be as graceful as possible.

- The future: that I would be clear-minded while figuring out how to tackle my life.

- The rest of the team: that we would all continue to keep each other accountable and keep holding fast to God.

Thank you all again--and immensely--for your support. Ninawapenda (that means "I love you all" in Swahili). Please feel free to email or call/text (I can use my phone again!) me if you have any questions or want to catch up, I'd love to hear about all of your summers, too, and the ways God has been moving in all of your lives. At the end of the day, I'm so thankful and grateful to God for always being good and being a trustworthy Lord.

Shalom,

Denise

P.S. I'll be trying to figure out ways to share more in depth/show pictures, etc. with you all, so stay posted!

--
Denise Poon
University of California, Berkeley
B.A. English and Media Studies, May 2012
626-320-2182

[zoe tamaki]

Love your emails! Miss your face! Praying for you, your team and your beautifully bright future!