When dreams come true

I'm leading our community worship time tomorrow and here's my little intro to our time together, with some extra comments for context.

We come to the end of what would knew would be a long term - 11 weeks : 2 modules and 3 weeks on missions -  and what has proved to be a term of God working in big ways.

While I definitely am looking forward to seeing the bigger picture of what God is up to, I consider the sense of confusion and fear I’ve felt and the days when truly seeking God and finding rest in Him seemed too hard. The joy and thankfulness I felt were so easily forgotten when I couldn’t see the way forward. In His abundance of grace, God reminds me that he hasn’t changed! He didn’t stop being faithful when I couldn't see a way forward.

And He has spoken into those emotions. Of course I’ll have feelings, but I am being challenged to live beyond what I feel, to live in the knowledge of my sure foundation. To no longer be a slave to fear, but to live the life of a child of God, with my eyes fixed on His, trusting Him with everything I am and all that I have, no matter what’s going on around me.

The songs I’ve chosen today are ones that remind us of God’s faithfulness, of the hope and security we have because we know, love and serve Him.

The final song might not be so familiar to all of you but is a song I remember singing as a young teenager, believing with all my heart that God would use me to bring nations of people to Him. I’m just amazed, and really humbled, that He has me here. He has me training.

I’M GOING TO BE A MISSIONARY!

I know this is really obvious. But what I’ve dreamed of since I was 4 has finally come true. It’s taken me 6 months and a song from the 90s for me to realise:

I am training to be a missionary.

For those of you interested, the song is Hillsong : You Said.

It's been a while... sorry x

It's been far to long since I have made use of my blog.

There are lots of reasons. Mainly because I had this skewed idea that I was to be writing a weekly report, an itinerary in reflection. Once I missed a week, the idea of updating on two weeks seems like a harder task. Then it snowballs, and months down the track, 'updating you' is just a little overwhelming. I don't know what happened in February! The point isn't for it to be another 'task' to cross of my endless to do list! So a new mindset, a new approach.

When I was in Adelaide for the Easter holidays I would sit with friends over coffee or a meal, never sans... and I would tell them about the concepts of life. I just made that phrase up, but what I mean is: the themes, the struggles that run through weeks, the tensions I am working through, not the things that are scheduled in at 10 AM daily - which is morning tea time FYI.

So I start today, and probably because I decided to become a 'spotifier' this week. That's just online music streaming, but as I sit here with music in the background, I feel better. I should listen to more music. Not so that I can tell someone what my favourite band is (I'm not that kind of music lover), but because it evokes emotion, it calms, it energises, it takes me away from the endless spiral of thoughts that consume my mind.

I'll share some of the concepts of life here with you from now on...x

A new beginning

Well hello!

I'm sitting here in the kitchen of my unit that I share with Eun Kyong, there's chutney boiling away on the stove, and just 2 sleeps until classes start. I have been well orientated this week, ready for life and study on campus.

Thanks so much for stopping by to catch up on what I’m up to.

Since I last posted, I've spent the majority of my time back home, working as a coordinator in community care. Until last Saturday when (mum and) I had packed my car with my necessary possessions... and a few luxuries... and headed east! I am spending the next two years completing missionary training in a residential, cross-cultural learning community on a semi-rural property.

Mum left Monday afternoon after helping drive over, unpack, set up, sightsee and sneak in a few early birthday celebrations for me... I turned another year older on Thursday!

Orientation Week officially started at 4 PM on Monday and for those of you interested in the finer details, consisted of the following sessions:

• getting to know you,
• introduction to duties,
• community gathering,
• creating community,
• food safe training and kitchen orientation,
• farm orientation,
• prayer,
• fire safety,
• workplace scramble,
• connections (IT),
• intro to courses,
• commencement service planning,
• library orientation,
• missionary speakers, and finally
• city tour.

My birthday on Thursday was different to most I've had. Eun Kyong got up early to prepare for me a traditional Korean birthday meal, which for breakfast consisted of seaweed soup, rice and kimchi.

Korean breakfast of seaweed soup and kimchi.

Morning tea celebrations with everyone on campus included a birthday fruit platter.

College morning tea birthday 'cake'.

Finally, in the evening, a bunch of girls came together for coffee and cake to celebrate. It really amazed me how after only 4 days I had such a lovely group of new friends to share it with.

Girl time with coffee and dessert.

As wonderful as the people, place and program is, it's been a very busy week, and to be honest, I'm really glad it's over. I find it incredibly overwhelming meeting 80 new people, being with them all the time, taking in a ridiculous amount of new information, and following a program that for me started with vegetable prep duties at 7.45 AM, continued through the day with the above listed sessions, and finished with dinner wash up at 7 PM.

I did very much enjoy my first Saturday morning here by going off campus. Breakfast with a friend of a friend followed by hours wandering the harvest market and main shopping mall, and generally trying not to get too lost!

Wanderlust Caravan.

When I returned this afternoon, I whiled a few hours away by decorating my room, cooling off with Eun Kyong in the river that borders the property and making a delicious tomato chutney/relish with some of the abundance of tomatoes the farm is producing at the moment.

Tomato chutney/relish in progress.

Tomorrow brings my first local church visit. I am going with Eun Kyong to hers and then she has made plans for us and her church friends to go on a trip to the beach. Very much making the most of the hot weather being thrown at us this week.

I look forward to Monday, to starting my course and the routine it will bring.

Thanks for your interest in my life, and your support as I walk this path. It means so much to me.

Tahnee x

nursing : indian style

on sabbatical...reflections on the year thus far part two

there have been numerous occasions over the past five months where my nursing efforts have been somewhat unconventional. here is one.

living in a rural area of a country whose medical resources leave much to be desired, it was never going to be the same as my cosy little graduate year at flinders medical centre.

out of nowhere would come nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches, fainting, fevers, diarrhoea, stomach cramps, lethargy. sometimes the symptoms would last for 24 hours. some a few days. there were times when the viruses were spreading so fast, the term 'dropping like flies' demonstrated it's true meaning.

the worst of this scenario is when one, or both, of our little twins - shavani and saloni - would catch something. the now 15-month-old girls were severely malnourished when they first arrived on the farm a year ago. they have spent their first year fighting numerous infections and setbacks but are now well on their way to being thriving, walking, talking little toddlers.

i remember one evening finding out that shavani, the older twin, had been sick for most of the afternoon. she had a fever above 39* and had been brought into one of the only bedrooms on the farm that have air conditioning, and failing electricity, at least have the capacity to run the fans and lights.

as 'the nurse' it was my job to share my bed with shavani, constantly feeding her, changing her nappies, checking her temperature, giving her medications and nebulisers, and trying to get her some sleep. twice that night i ended up having to fully shower her off and change our bed sheets, post-vomit.

this went on for a couple of nights, with the older girls taking over her care during the days when more help was readily available. but night shift was just me and my baby-patient. i really didn't sleep much during those nights, but the desperation to make sure my baby was breathing, hydrated and keeping her temperatures below 40* ruled sleep out as one of life's common necessities.

needless to say, i have the utmost admiration for mothers and their newborns, and likewise, parents who have literally been 'up all night' with their own sick offspring.

xx

moments that make it all worth while

on sabbatical...reflections on the year thus far

around easter time, as i was taking the nursery kids sunday school lesson where jesus ascends to heaven, we started by learning how to say 'goodbye' in different languages

when we came to the end of the bible story, i asked the 3-8 year olds what jesus would have said to his disciples when it was time for him to leave them

the answer was a resounding 'SAYONARA!'

it always amuses me how cute the little ones are when they are sick

one evening i was looking after four-year-old kevin

it was just after dinner and i his temperature was 39.2*

the conversation of me trying to figure out what was wrong went something like this

nurse tahnee : 'kevin, is your head paining?'

kevin the patient : 'no. i have fever.'

nurse tahnee : 'yes, you do. is your tummy paining?'

kevin the patient : 'no... my tummy is full.'

elephants in the jungle

last night, in an an attempt to finally see some elephants before they move on to greener pastures, literally, we went to the plot. me, my didi (big sister) filly and her daughter eddu, my mummi saru (filly's mother-in-law), her youngest son rodney, and aunty esther and her son micah.

the electricity had gone off and i was over at filly's when her husband (my jija) eugene phoned to say the elephants had come back to graze through the harvested pastures for whatever skeric of nutrients they could find. he was already there with their two youngest daugthers, eli and angel and their house-helper ashvani, as well as sunny - one of the farm boys, and the guards that work at the plot, protecting the crops.

i ran to get my camera and mozzie spray and off we went, all seven of us perched upon a 5103 john deer tractor. through the taru village, across one dry and one almost dry riverbeds, through the jungle and into the plot. it was bumpy, to say the least. but we had a lot of fun.

while we did see elephants that night - only 20-40m away grazing through the harvested crops, the reality of their strength and brutality was felt only by one of the workers. as we had been on our way, he had decided he was too drunk to stay at work, and set off for home.

for some reason, partly due to his alcohol consumption but also just his general nature, he decided to chase the elephants that were grazing along the boundary. he was on foot and throwing things at them. at some point, he fell. no one really knows what happened next, but at this stage it seems like the one of the elephants intentionally or accidentally stamped on his chest.

he was brought back to the small straw hut and as he muttered the story about being trodden on, no one was sure what quite to believe. but the boys emptied the straw out of one of the tractor-trolleys, hooked it up, transferred him in and off we all went back to the farm.

in the car on the way to the hospital, he pleaded with the men not to let him die. despite all the promises that they so desperately wanted to believe, there was nothing they could do. before they reached the nearest hospital, 20 minutes away, uncle naresh breathed his last and was pronounced dead on arrival.

today is a sombre day. one of sadness. lessons. post-mortems. disbelief.

a day that makes me realise life in india is not only hard, not only a struggle, but a huge risk.

we live off the land. but we have taken the land from some very big and powerful creatures. respect for nature has taken on a new meaning.

seeing the elephants was pretty surreal. and an experience i'm sure i'll look back on and be thankful for.

but knowing a man died a relatively slow and rather painful death right before my eyes - where even as a nurse, i could do nothing; and as a woman, i could do even less - has hung heavy on my heart today.

it's about time...x

It’s taken a cold, a bout of gastro and 2 migraines in as many days to tie me to my bed… so, Namaste! It’s been a while and needless to say I am very much ‘into’ life here in India.

More than ever, I am being called upon as the ‘Camp Nurse’. Just tonight, Job came in with blood pouring from his head, after the small boys thought it was a good idea to throw mud, and then rocks at each other. Apart from that, plenty of accidents to attend to when the hostel boys are cutting grass or falling off their motorbikes.

My 3 little ones started school this week as the new school year began. I was a little lost, to say the least, on Monday morning without my playmates, and dread to think what it will be like when the children are my own!

Had a moment sightseeing another of the mission properties this week, and made a detour a little higher into the foothills of the Himalayas and a little closer to Nepal to see a magnificent glacial-fed river that marks the border between the two countries. A very peaceful and breathtaking morning drive.

It’s definitely starting to heat up, the electricity stays off for a lot more of the day and being a hydro-electric system, we often run out of water.

Aside from taking the Youth Meeting every second week and the Nursery Sunday School and Small Girls Bible Study, I have had some great conversations with the young adults around the farm and God has provided me with amazing ministry opportunities.

xx