Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika

This post was triggered by my recent viewing of Invictus (which is not at all about Rugby by the way!) But it was inspired and made possible by the passionate Dr. Johan Mostert and the beautiful people of South Africa.

Some things came full circle for me today. Some that won't show up in the post, but will be seen I hope.

I'm a southern girl and proud of it. Born and raised in Columbia, Tennessee. The radio set to Nashville's 97.9 today a song about how everybody has a "hillbilly bone" made me smile and say AMEN as I drove into the country to a friend's house to be greeted by a pot bellied big, some chickens, and kiddos on the back of a gator eating watermelon slices as big as they were!

I LOVE where I come from!

In 1995, I was graduating from Columbia Central High School, beginning my first year of "freedom" which would start with that rite of passage unchaperoned trip to Panama City Beach, which is insignificant to this post, but it was one heck of a trip class of 95ers was it not? the only significance that it carries is to let you know where my mind was in 1995! :)

In 1995, a world away, Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa were experiencing a new "freedom" as well, one that my 18 year old mind bound for PCB didn't know about and quite frankly wouldn't have cared about. Apartheid "separateness" had "ended." And just like we graduates found that our "freedom" came with many new battles to be fought, Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa were "free" to begin to battle as well! As I walked through the Apartheid museum in 2007 and saw the barbed wire and armoured cars and videos playing of dates not like those in my history books of the Civil War and battles no one living had endured, but the 1980s and 1990s news clips played. This was in MY lifetime!

My "tour guide" was Dr. Johan Mostert, a professor from my graduate school, a white South African man by skin color only it seems. With passion and through tears he walked us through, recounting his memories and his love for his nation and their story which tightly interwove into his own story. Have you ever had one of those teachers who taught you things you didn't know you were learning until much later in life? A teacher, who stayed far enough away from the text book to teach you what you really needed to know to be changed, to understand, and to succeed? Dr. Mostert was THAT teacher and so much more! To say I am grateful would be an understatement.

I should probably confess now that I was so frustrated with him on this trip. It was in my head to be a "mission's trip," which to ME meant work, work, work, work, work to have the largest impact possible in a short time. Dr. Mostert was far more concerned with the impact this trip would have on our lives and our hearts than he was in what we could accomplish in 3 weeks time. And I'll have to admit, your methods although completely unorthodox:) will impact my life and your nation and mine far more than anything we could have hoped to accomplish in 3 weeks.

We went from the finest neighborhoods in Pretoria to the townships, this was not a days drive, it was a couple blocks away. I was appalled by the contrast of the make shift scrap tin homes from the bricks and landscaping I had just left. How can this be? I was shocked... as were the people in the townships, that this white woman was entering. I kept thinking, "are you kidding me? What on earth is wrong with South Africa?"

..... I love where I'm from, but I must be honest.... I see color....

I would have sworn to you that day that "apartheid" was dead and gone in MY great nation!

The contrast of the Leave it To Beaver Neighborhood next to the pieced together homes in the townships was just not right. To walk into the home of my hosts and sit down and have tea and watch South African Idol and then to travel minutes away and walk into a mud hut with no electricity, (with no NOTHING) to find a woman dying alone of AIDS in the dark no one had tended to her for days. Seriously? This is outrageous!

Several years later in my home town, I turned off West 6th Street, my grandmother lived there most of my life, when the Fuzzy Duck was a Dairy Queen ya know? Two blocks in, I visited a home where the tv was positioned on the floor, and everyone sat on the floor although there was seating and furniture to put the tv on, boards lined the windows making it so dark. A teenager entered the room and stated what's the white woman doing here? 2 blocks away....

I'm not sure what I'm getting at, we have a long way to go in the areas of equality and justice that's for sure. I'm pretty confident that our remedy is not going to come from our government. But politics and color are not what this post is about. It's about. Although I hope to spend my lifetime practicing missions, helping those who can't help themselves, going into places of great need being Jesus with skin on making sure bellies and hearts are full all around the world! I don't think that's God's calling or expectation for EVERYONE, to pack up go into the nations! He's gifted each of us uniquely and placed us strategically in our homes and jobs and churches and teams and schools and positions and has laid specific areas of need on our individual hearts! So this is not a post about foreign missions although if you'd like to donate to MY endeavors, my AGWM acct # is 294171-4! :)

So if this post is not about rugby, my senior trip, racism, politics, or foreign missions, what's it about? It is about those in need.... two blocks away.

AVATAR!

I'm loosely committing to being a more faithful blogger! I'm starting to realize the best blogs are about everyday life, however, I'm missing the essential ingredients... the cute kids & their poop stories, the romantic husband (& his poop stories),a pet of any kind (& their poop stories) or an office job where people freeze staplers in jello & say ridiculously inappropriate things, etc. etc. (The ridiculously inappropriate things said at my job are all unfortunately CONFIDENTIAL!)

SO tonight, I will blog about my everyday life my RedBox weekend pick: AVATAR
(Please, please don't be jealous of the excitement that is my life!)

I was totally boycotting it... SciFi (ewww) Blue Aliens (eww) a 3hr movie (eww, eww) however, a 6th grade boy spent his entire therapy session telling me about it and making me promise to watch it (I'm an excellent therapist, as you can tell I had complete control of this session! AND who went home with the homework!) I promised and I'm a girl of my word! So I watched and here are my thoughts:

The aliens could have been better looking... I had no warm and fuzzy feelings towards them! Speilberg had me fall in love with ET who I HAD to have a doll of that I snuggled with and I kissed my ET lamp every night before I went to bed! (His heart stayed on as a night light!) Big fail on making me fall in love with the AVATAR or making me crave Reese's Pieces for that matter! However, the guy who turned into the AVATAR... that's an entirely different case... He can call me any time! Speaking of which, if any of you happen to know Roberto from The Bachelorette this season... my phone number is 931-374-1799.

Avatar is definitely a boy movie... I asked my little brother if he'd seen it, he looked at me like I was crazy and said, "3 times!" It was near the reaction I got when I told him I'd never seen The Matrix!

My former youth group students will roll their eyes at this part (who am I kidding? they're not reading this!) But I, of course, "ruined" the movie with my spiritual thoughts afterward, as it reminded me of how we SHOULD be deeply and constantly connected to our Creator, how He DOES desire to talk to us and remind us of His greatness through His creation, and oh how He loves us!

On a much less spiritual note: it also made me think of what life would be like if my MIND controlled my actions... I just leave it at that!

Overall, thumbs up on the AVATAR!