From Home to Home

September 11, 2014 / alliekappe / Leave a comment

One month and 7 days ago, I stepped off of an airplane and onto American soil for the first time in 5 weeks. I hugged the necks of my mom, dad and brother and tried to process the fact that I was actually home. Surprisingly, I didn’t actually cry at the gate like I had imagined myself doing in so many anticipatory daydreams – but the joy that I felt to finally be home was indescribable. After an adventure that seemed like it lasted for ages and yet passed by so quickly, I was back.

28 days ago, I came home again. I spent 8 hours in the car with my family and let nostalgia wash over me as we drove that familiar route down I-35 and into Fort Worth. I got to hug the necks of my sister, brother-in-law and sweet 1-year-old niece for the first time in 7 weeks. I walked into my former room that I had left so tidy and neat (but really, it was pretty clean) and it was like walking into the room of a stranger. My distant memories of the month I had spent in Fort Worth in June felt like a whole different life and a whole different me living it, especially after spending so long in a country that it’s safe to say is the exact opposite of the one I had left behind.

Don’t get me wrong – I was so ecstatic to be back. I can’t say I held the same level of excitement for starting the craziness that is my last semester of nursing school, but it was so comforting to be surrounded again by family and friends and English speakers and healthy food. After my first summer trip to Tanzania last year, I knew to expect reverse culture shock. Ironically, it was coming home last year that was much harder than adjusting to the new environment when I first got there. With 3 extra weeks tacked on to my trip this summer, I had a feeling that my reverse culture shock adjustment might take a little more time. What I didn’t expect was how difficult that adjustment would actually be. As much as I tried to warn myself beforehand, nothing was enough to really prepare me for the challenging process that was ‘coming home’.

Now that I look back on it, I’m not sure what part of my brain thought it would be easy to get over every contrasting part of Tanzanian culture and every heartbreaking moment I witnessed. To my surprise, people on the street no longer greeted me with a friendly ‘mambo’ or tried to sell me their homemade paintings. It was no longer considered normal to struggle with scarce resources each day in Casualty or watch 2 stillborn births in one morning. I no longer had 30 other healthcare students to come home to and remind me that regardless of how awful that day may have been, there is still so much to be thankful for. Zooming trucks, weaving piki-piki’s and overflowing dala-dalas crowding the streets were replaced with smooth pavement, bright white and yellow lines and perfectly paced fancy cars that actually follow traffic regulations. The refreshing walk back from the hospital each day was replaced with a much quicker transport on four wheels. Order took the place of chaos. Excess took the place of scarcity. Routine took the place of spontaneous adventure.

One of the hardest parts of the transition was trying to fit back into the circles of society that I grew up in and now live in, riddled with idols of entitlement and success and fortune, full of people who have no idea how good they have it. My hand is the first one raised to admit that I took complete advantage of the country and environment that God gave me to grow up in before He exposed me to what a much less privileged part of the world looks like. I know that the U.S. has its own handful of disadvantaged people groups, but it was hard to see the importance of arguing over our “awful” healthcare system after working in a Tanzanian hospital whose meager attempt at adequate patient care was considered ‘incredible’ by the locals because that is the best they have. I had to hold my tongue when I heard people complaining about their lack of “cute clothes” and need for a back-to-school shopping spree, and all I could think about was the kids at Neema House that only had a couple of outfits to choose from and the hospital patients that barely had enough money to buy food for their families, much less an extra pair of pants. My heart twisted with pain and unrest as I watched these blessings get taken for granted so easily. But what was even more difficult to come to terms with was how easily I slid back into that same routine.

I walked so easily back into a world of comfort and safety and didn’t even think about taking a few minutes to thank God that I didn’t have to worry about the threat of bombings and terrorism anymore. I spent my first week back in the States enjoying the luxury of my queen-size bed, sleeping in until whatever time I pleased, and taking advantage of the freedom that was given to me on a silver platter. A distance of 8,836 miles had somehow caused me to forget about the culture I had just lived in for 5 weeks, where rest was rare and true freedom was unheard of.

It took me a long time to realize why I still didn’t quite feel like myself, even after I had been back for 3 weeks. I didn’t immediately recognize the source of the bitterness and discontent that haunted me. And then the stress of clinical orientations and last-semester-of-nursing-school busyness and looming job applications and the pressure to make decisions about the future came rushing in, and my discontent only seemed to grow. After week 4, I was a bit worried that this feeling was never going to go away.

To be very honest, that feeling still lingers in the back of my mind every day, and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. It’s difficult to not have a different perspective after seeing a level of suffering, injustice and persecution that isn’t as tangibly obvious in our developed country. But it’s even more difficult to live in the midst of those things for 5 weeks and never really be able to forget them. Part of the process of growing in relationship with God is seeing and understanding the weight of brokenness and sin that covers every inch of this world. He opened my eyes to that in Tanzania, and after seeing and experiencing some of the worst situations I’ve ever had to go through, it was hard to not carry that weight of brokenness and despair with me when I got back home.

But that’s not the end of the story. It can’t be, because if I let my thinking stop there this world would be a pretty sad place. If I linger on that truth for too long, I am missing the best part of the story. There’s a reason we’re called to recognize the brokenness that fills each of us, and it’s not so that we can live the rest of our lives under a burden of guilt and shame. The more I see and understand how utterly broken I am, the more frequently I am led to the foot of the cross to worship in the sweetness of God’s grace. The more I am faced with my own shortcomings and failures, the more I realize that I cannot do anything apart from Christ. Navigating the dark corners of Arusha this summer showed me this in the most tangible way that the Lord has ever used to teach me. The days that I forgot to rest in God’s sovereignty or tried to handle things on my own were the days when the burden of death and sin and brokenness were so incredibly overwhelming. When I buried the difficult emotions that arose after watching a mother grieve over her dead infant, I carried that around with me for weeks and let it bleed into other parts of my life. My confusion and anger pulled me away from the Lord. But when I sat in the back of the van on our way back from the hot springs and surrendered every emotion that was consuming me to the Lord after we watched a man face death and somehow survive, I was filled with an indescribable peace that the world would consider impossible in such a short time after witnessing a trauma. It was something I could only get from Jesus.

The world would tell me that it’s not fair for a perfectly capable mother to lose her child, and maybe if she had access to better prenatal care or had given birth in the U.S. this never would’ve happened. JESUS tells me that unexplainable loss like this is a result of the brokenness that entered this world the second Eve bit into that apple. It will never have a justifiable answer and it is impossible to completely fix the problem until the day He returns to bring complete redemption to His Creation. The world would tell me that a near drowning is something that no one should ever have to witness and what a blessing that we were there to help that poor man. JESUS tells me that He is sovereign and He put us in that specific place at that specific time for a very good reason. He reminds me that despite using us to save a man’s life, it was none of our own efforts and ALL of His saving grace that pulled the man out of the water that day. An inescapable part of following Christ is sharing in His suffering and coming face-to-face with the brokenness that leaves us hopeless if we’re not clinging to Him.

So instead of focusing too much on the situations I faced in Tanzania that can’t be easily fixed and don’t have a good answer, I get to focus on the relieving Truth that the Lord’s sovereignty reaches even the darkest corners of this Earth. Instead of allowing the impossible weight of hopelessness and despair to overwhelm me, I get to rejoice because Christ promises that one day He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death will be no more, neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, because these former things will have passed away (Revelation 21:4).

Despite the trials and challenges that I was faced with in Arusha, I am so thankful for every moment that God gave me there and the soft spot He has grown in me for their people and culture. Each heartbreaking experience He brought me through continually reminded me that there is nothing I can do to solve the world’s problems, but thanks to Jesus I don’t have to. I’ll leave y’all with one of my favorite quotes that captures a Truth that I can never get enough of.

“Because Jesus was strong for me, I am free to be weak.

Because Jesus won for me, I am free to lose.

Because Jesus is someone, I am free to be no one.

Because Jesus was extraordinary, I am free to be ordinary.

Because Jesus succeeded for me, I am free to fail.”

– Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

Thank y’all so much for following my journey to Tanzania and back this summer. Your prayers, support and kind words meant the world to me along the way and I couldn’t have made it through this experience without y’all. I hope my shared stories over the last few months gave you a picture of my life in Arusha, my favorite adventures & the immense presence of the Lord through it all. If there’s one thing I learned consistently this summer, it’s that HE is good all the time. Praise the LORD that we get to rejoice in that Truth.

Love,

Allie

P.s. SURPRISE announcement – I went back and forth all summer on whether or not I wanted to keep writing after I got home. If you can’t tell, I kind of enjoy it (sorry again for the length of my posts) and the Lord has taught me so much through the process of writing blog posts and trying to communicate my thoughts. So, get excited, I’m planning on continuing to post blogs whenever I can for as long as I feel like it. I can’t say it’ll be predictable, but hopefully it’ll be fun 🙂

Until next time, Africa.

Little Richie

July 2, 2014July 7, 2014 / alliekappe / 1 Comment

This is Richard. Or as I like to call him, Little Richie. Every time I try to call him Richard I imagine an old man and that seems a little ironic for him. He was born about a month ago & he’s called the NICU at the hospital ‘home’ ever since. Once he’s old enough and well enough he’ll be moved to Neema House Orphanage, a home for children 0-3 years of age that’s right around the corner from our house. I haven’t had a chance to visit it yet, but that’s on my list of things to do this week and I can’t wait to tell y’all more about it.

Richard is very premature, and he is an orphan. He was born to a young 14-year-old mother who wasn’t ever planning on having a child. She has epilepsy and her family decided to take her to the priest to try to “cure” her of the disease – instead of helping her at all, he raped her. A few months later Richard was born & given over to the orphanage because his mother didn’t have the means to raise him well.

To be very honest, we don’t know when he’ll be well enough to move to the orphanage or if he’ll even make it to that point. He’s still in the touch-and-go stage to see if he’ll develop well and stay healthy enough to survive. He is still very tiny and thin, and unfortunately some of the students have said the NICU nurses here don’t feed him very regularly. That’s what sparked my post a few days ago & a desperate plea for prayer. He needs all the prayer he can get!

Richard & the other babies in the NICU are some of the easiest patients to visit and immediately see how much their care differs here compared to what we have in the United States. In our advanced society, even the most premature baby has at least a 50% chance of survival thanks to all of the machines and equipment we have available to keep them alive. Here, having a 1.2lb baby born (like we did today) is almost like a death wish. Their chances of living for even another week are so slim, it often seems like it’s not even expected. Instead of having a plethora of tubes and machines to hook up to, these tiny babies lie in laundry baskets with blankets pulled tight over the top and a rubber-like sheet to catch any urine or poop that might escape. Almost all of them don’t have diapers – they are simply wrapped in whatever blanket their mother brings them and changed only when they see their mothers. If a baby is high-risk, they can be placed on the “resuscitation table”, which is basically a surface with a sheet on it where they can lie flat instead of being covered in blankets. The only real machine they have is to give the babies oxygen if they need it. The rest of the babies have no monitoring whatsoever, so if they were ever to stop breathing their chances of survival go from slim to none. They are rarely visited; the only time their mothers can see them is when they come in for scheduled breastfeeding times about twice a day. The nurses only seem to transport them back and forth, and for the rest of the time they are left alone. You can probably see why the NICU is one of our favorite places to visit as students – we are more than happy to cuddle with and care for these tiny ones all morning.

This place is like the opposite of what you would find in the United States, and I can’t blame you for reading this post in disgust as you imagine the conditions that these young babies are left to try to survive in. I had the same feeling of shock and heartbreak when I first walked in there and we began to realize how hard it is for these neonates to make it. Don’t get me wrong, there are a good handful of babies that are born big and healthy and are released to their families after a few days. But there are also so many more premature babies born in one day than you would see that frequently in an American hospital.

My first instinct was a desire to somehow give them a proper environment equipped with everything they would need to increase their chance of survival. But realistically, that is a very difficult dream to fulfill. Transforming that one ward would mean transforming the entire hospital, which would require Arusha to drastically change their healthcare system. It would require an acquirement of resources and finances that they simply don’t have access to. When you widen the problem to a more global perspective, the amount of change necessary to really make a difference is overwhelming.

It brings me back to a question I struggle with so much here. Why was I born into a good home, a stable family, a country that is so advanced and constantly developing to achieve bigger and better things, and these people are born into poor homes, broken families, and a country that is light-years away from meeting the “standards” of the United States? They don’t deserve to face such suffering and I don’t deserve to live in such luxury. My idealistic side so badly desires a world where everyone is on the same playing field and there is no inequality in the hand we’re dealt in life.

Being here has reminded me all too well that our world does not operate that way. Not in this age, anyways. For me, I know that this brokenness is a result of a fallen world laced with sin. Ever since the days of Adam and Eve sin has laid claim to the Earth, and we will never be able to live a day without pain or suffering until we see Jesus’s face again. No matter how much the conditions of the NICU and the hospital and this country break my heart, I know that I can hold onto that hope. I don’t have a good explanation for why Richard was born into the situation that he was and why the hospital doesn’t have the resources to be able to improve their wards enough to adequately care for their patients. But amidst the uncertainty, the one thing I do know is that God is good. Even in the pain, unfairness, and suffering He is good. Even in the best days, He is still so good. He has bigger plans than I will ever be able to see or comprehend, and I can trust that He is in control. When my heart has been threatened with overwhelming grief and frustration, this Truth is all I have.

I hope you are not discouraged or angered by Richard’s story. I was at first, but I want to encourage you to see the bright side that God has given him. As of today, he is alive. No matter how little he is or how long he lives, he is precious in the sight of the Lord and his life has impacted others, and me, in ways he may never know. Please continue to pray for him, his health and the days he has left here – whether that’s just one or a whole lifetime. And maybe take a minute or two to thank God for the blessing of today that He has given you, because that’s all we’re promised. His mercies are new every morning.

– Allie

The art of storytelling

June 18, 2014June 23, 2014 / alliekappe / 1 Comment

I’m going to be honest, I feel pretty cheesy right now. As much as I love writing and stories, I’ve never been one to really enjoy sharing my own. In my head, it sounds like a great idea. But then I give it a little more of a realistic thought and realize that I actually hate that idea. Starting a blog means having to sit down and try to discern what’s going through my mind – and then hitting a little button that shares it with the world. Not just one person, anyone who cares to take a few seconds to read it (although right now, I’m pretty sure I’m closer to the ‘one person’ mark).

That thought is already starting to give me butterflies – the anxious, sick-to-your-stomach kind, not the cute fluttery kind. My approval-craving mind is creeping towards how to best compose each post, how to balance serious and poignant thoughts with witty comedic relief, and how I will ever convince myself to actually hit the ‘publish’ button. Already I’ve spent way too much time re-reading my own words and wondering if this whole ‘sharing my story’ thing is really going to be worth it.

Unfortunately, God has other plans. This past semester, He has taught me so much about the power of stories. During one short week in Belize, our mission trip’s most frequent conversation starter became ‘so, what’s your story?’ and that simple phrase pushed me farther out of my comfortable little shell than I’ve ever been pushed before. It may not seem like that big of a deal to some people, but sharing my own story brought back memories of past experiences that I wasn’t very excited to remember, much less share with others. God used that week to show me His incredible sovereignty in every single moment of my life and His ability to use my brokenness for His glory. But more importantly, He revealed so much of Himself through other people’s stories – my small group leaders, my closest friends, a random girl I found myself sitting next to on the bus on the way back to the hotel. That week He began to cultivate in me a desire to hear the stories of others and learn how to share my own.

Sounds like a perfect “mission trip lesson”, right? Pretty and nice and all tied up with a bow? Not quite. This idea of sharing stories is a lot easier to talk about than it is to actually put into practice. The conviction that God placed on my heart was brutally attacked by the world & my own sinful heart, both of which quickly pulled out the big guns like ‘desire for approval’, ‘fear of vulnerability’, ‘waste of time’ and countless other lies about the consequences of storytelling. In just a couple short months, I went from revealing the darkest parts of me to complete strangers on a dock floating in the Caribbean Sea to barely being able to honestly answer the simple question of ‘how are you?’ to some of my closest friends. I had allowed those lies to seep into my mind and convince me that not even a sentence about how I was doing that day was worth sharing.

I wish I could say that the Lord has fully revealed His truth amidst these lies and convicted me of my sin and I can now comfortably share my story with the Trader Joe’s clerk as she rings up my groceries, but that’s not true. He has slowly started to work on that walled-in part of me, but sometimes it takes time for the Lord to chisel away deeply rooted fears and mold my heart to resemble His just a little bit more. So yes, I’m still working on answering ‘how are you?’ with a little more depth than ‘I’m good! How are you?’. But where God begins a good work, He promises to bring it to completion (Ephesians 1:6). Not on my own timeline, and not to full completion until I’m standing face-to-face with Him, but in His own perfect timing.

God has given me this past month to rest, spend more time with Him, and start to get used to this idea of sharing more of myself with others. The days have been slow and the rest has been sweet, but in 8 short days He will be throwing me into an adventure that will require more trust and vulnerability than I’m used to. I’ll be spending 5 weeks across the Atlantic learning more about the country I fell in love with last summer, meeting new people, working in new environments, and hopefully going on a lot of adventures. As incredible as that sounds, I know that He has not given me this opportunity just to have a good time and check “travel back to Tanzania” off my summer bucket list. This trip will give me a chance to hear so many new stories, share my own, and most importantly tell people about His. As comfortable as the inside of my leetle shell is, He’s going to be pushing me very far out of it and I hope to fully embrace the challenge. Just the thought of what’s to come fills me with just about every emotion you can imagine.

I hope to use this blog as a way to share my adventures and stories with whoever cares to read about them. Prepare to read about the good days, the bad days, and everything in between. They will definitely not be formal, organized, and have a perfect balance of insight and wit, I can promise you that. Maybe they’ll make you laugh/smile/cry (doubtful – I’m not one for tears), maybe you’ll enjoy them, maybe they will simply serve as a great way to procrastinate from whatever else you should be doing. Regardless of what leads you to them, I hope that each one reveals a little more about me and a lot more about Jesus. I can’t wait to see what God does with this blog (even if it just acts as my own memory keepsake) and the next 5 weeks!

– Allie