called by name

I tell you what…the days here are crazy long but the weeks seem to fly by! I realized (from the questions of a number of dear friends) that I had not written since I began teaching! Well, I believe God heard the prayers voiced in my last blog post because the very next day I started teaching. It was certainly a slow slow start with a painfully floppy schedule at first but each week it gets better. For the last three weeks I have been teaching S2 and S3 students and it has been a lot of fun. The lessons have been kind of random since these are not going to be my permanent students (once the S1 students return on the 7th of Feb I will shift to teach them full time). Basically I have just been choosing random topics that I thought were interesting or fun to talk about and practice different kinds of activities. So far we have covered question words, letter writing (Emma and Tess can get excited since they have about 100 letters coming their way), advertising, futball vocabulary, a story called Police Chase and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Its been fun and I am starting to feel more comfortable in my position as a teacher. It is always difficult to find the balance between being friendly and fun with the students and being strict and authoritative, I think I am starting to find my stride. It will certainly be nice, however, when I have my own students so that I can start building my units, establishing procedures, and knowing students names etc.
Rukara is wonderful, it is starting to feel more and more like home. We are entering the hot, dry season which is a bit painful, and we have had a rude introduction this week with incredibly high temperatures and no water in the whole village.
My house is now all decorated (painted some scrap wood from a construction pile with sunflowers….I am so predictable sometimes) and I have a bed and bookshelves and a table which beats the heck out of having piles of stuff on the floor.
Today was the first meeting of a new club called G.L.O.W. club, it stands for Girls Leading Our World, which is VERY exciting. I am really hoping this club can be a safe place for girls to blossom. In Rwandan high schools there are far fewer girls than boys so as my training director in Nyanza liked to say the girls who are still there are the survivors who have resisted family pressure to drop out to work at home, have children or get married. Girls also fall behind boys in performance in school and it is just clear that they are (as a whole-obviously there are those standout girls in every class) more insecure and shy in class. As many of you probably know I LOVE WOMEN and that means I am super pumped at the prospect of encouraging, challenging and getting to know in a personal way the teenage girls in my village! I gave the girls a long speech about the purpose, method and ideology of the club and summed it up by saying the club is about fun, learning and serving i.e. its going to be a blast. My good friend and neighbor Floflo is going to help me with the club which is SO EXCITING! She is a lawyer and an orphan and is just an incredible example of a powerful, smart, independent woman who is quickly becoming a dear friend! She is not very involved in the Rukara community even though she has lived here for a year and she thinks I am way weird for the way I am always moving and talking to people but she puts up with me…hahaha. BUT she asked if she can be apart of GLOW! I about cried with joy!
Of course I am bubbling over with ideas but God has been faithful to give me patience to just be with people before I even begin to try and problem solve or implement my ideas. And for once in my short little life I am ok with that. I am actually having so much joy in taking it slow.
I used to say at Furman that I was trying to do so much that I was not doing anything with excellence but merely half doing everything. Well right now I feel I am in a season where I can actually do things with excellence because life is slow and I am surprising myself by really finding joy in the slowness.
My language skills are coming along and I am starting to feel like I have real friends here. Its also funny because my friends are real adults. Haha After being in school for so long is kind of funny to suddenly find that my natural community is adults-lawyers, secretaries and teachers. ☺
The people here are slowly starting to recognize me as a person rather than just a Muzungu, and the hollers of "Muzungu!" are slowly being replaced with calls of "Ket Ket" (their interpretation of Caitlyn) or "Gasaro" (my kinyarwanda name which means rare bead).
Isn’t it funny how there is just something about being known that just changes everything? It seems as though this desire to be known is one of the core, inescapable characteristics of human kind. It is why we have blogs and twitter and facebook. It drives our friendships and shapes even how we view ourselves. It seems as though people are scrambling to be known by any means necessary. But why are we scrambling? The Bible has told us that God has called us by name. We are known by him-completely and deeply known. This truth has become more meaningful to me in the last month. My heart leaps a little every time someone in my village calls out my name and not just muzungu, and yet the God of the universe has called me by name and I am his! I am blown away and humbled by this powerful truth and I pray that I would be more and more moved by this everyday. If the God of the universe has called me by name, whom shall I fear? Why should I scramble to be known or understood, accepted or proven worthwhile by worldly standards? I have been called by name. It is a journey and a process to really internalize and live out this truth and a joy that we get to do this journey in community.
I hope today you feel in your core that you are called by name-that you don’t have to scramble, that you are loved and that you have been counted worthy on his account. That truth frees us to love deeply and encourage one another on to good works for his Glory and not ours☺

Much much love and shalom
cg