The last week....

(Over a span of Fri-Sun, was this blog created)

It’s Friday night around 11 p.m. and I’m sitting on my top bunk listening to our neighbors blasting horrible music. This is a Marshallese remake of the song “Staying alive”, fortunately one of the better I’ve heard. When I say “blasting their music” it’s not the same as in America, where it’s turned up pretty loud. This is you get and amp and then you find another speaker, you point them in all directions towards your neighbors houses, and then you turn it up as loud as it can go….. Since I’ve been in Ebeye, the most overplayed songs I have heard are, “Get on the floor” by J.Lo. and “Born in the USA”. Random pickings, I know. While walking to school the stores play American remake songs and I’m always tempted to dance a little(or a lot) while walking past. My curiosity on how they would react to an American doing that, makes me want to do it even more. I have a little over a week left, maybe I’ll give it a try.

Today was the second and third grade picnic. Emma(3^rd grade teacher) and I planned it. We are eachothers assistants as well, so it worked out really well.  We sent notes home with our kids telling them what to bring, but this morning we got many calls from confused parents asking what they should bring. It all worked out great though. It turned out being way more than just second and third grade. 4^th ,5^th and 6^th, grade kids all came too. Which is just how things like this works here in Ebeye. “hi Miss. Em!” “Hey, you’re not in second grade…or third.” *Big sneaky smile..Well, There’s 15,000 of us here in a mile long island, half a mile wide, there’s nothing to do but do what everyone else is doing. I got to interact with the parents a lot, and at first I was kind of nervous, because a lot of them do not speak English, and I just didn’t know how I should initiate conversation or how to make them feel comfortable. After eating (there was a lot of food, so many sandwiches!) all the kids went swimming. Blake and Karissa both stopped by at different times and Karissa left early to head to NTA but Blake stayed and helped play with all 80 of the kids. As soon as we got in the water, they attacked us. Climbing all over, pulling our hair, trying to sit on our heads…the water was just a trap. At one point I was sitting on the sand and a bunch of them came and just dragged me in, on top of coral, rocks everything, they were just so excited. I got a lot of pictures of all of this happening. After swimming we played games…well attempted too. They don’t listen very well, and could not follow directions for steal the bacon and would all run to grab it, then they’d just all find someone and fight them and body slam them on the ground. There was a lot of collisions. Which scared me a lot, but the parents seemed fine with it, so I was like alright, cool, and I enjoyed the game a lot more. I taught them all a hula hoop game that I learned at GLAA and of course they cheated and didn’t follow any of the directions, and the boys stole it and ran away. So, we ended up just going in the water again, for hours. It was a really nice day.

My time here is coming to an end, I have about one week left. I leave May 21, which is May 20 in America. I’m not going to lie, this semester hasn’t been a walk in the park, but it’s been everything that He knew I needed, not that I wanted. There’s a lot more to a student missionary year than meets the eye, a lot more than what you can see in FB pictures, no matter where you go, there’s going to be trials, but I don’t want to go off on all the hardships, I will keep those in the back of my mind, because there’s so many positive things I would rather have people take from it, myself included. But sometimes you need to be aware of the hardships to fully appreciate your blessings. Yeah, just like any other foreign country we get mocked, stared at, rocks thrown at us by the kids sometimes, sworn at, every single day these things occur. We stand out like a sore thumb. The other day Karissa and I were walking to a little island store and a little boy on the street ran up to me and slapped my butt and tried to lift up my skirt (just to be funny), in front of everyone, and the men around him (in their 20’s) thought it was so funny, and were in roaring in laughter. It was humiliating, and made me very angry. What makes that okay? just because I’m “rubelle”. If I could speak Marshallese I would’ve went up to that boy grabbed him by his ear and taken him to his mama. But instead, it’s the same old thing. They get away with it….Another quick story which happens many many times a day, I was walking and a little boy called me “be be” (like the gun) and I’ve learned that that is not a good word, it is a reproductive part on a woman. I’m not one to just let a lesson go unlearned, that boy needs to be disciplined. I turned around  and said in Marshallese, “Don’t say that, not good, I understand what you’re saying. Bad.” At first he was caught really off guard and was embarrassed, then as I kept walking, he started yelling it. What am I going to do, turn and run at him and chase him down? You have to learn to ignore it. Ignore any cold stares, and politely say hello. I really appreciate it when someone walks past and smiles and says “Yokwe”. Those are just a few examples of how you have to look on the bright side of things. If I focused on those frequent events instead of my students whom I love, instead of my purpose here, it would be so depressing and frustrating.  Yes, I see them. I’m not oblivious to it all, my heads not up in the clouds, naïve and smiling. My head is down here, but I try my best to do what I came here to do. 

My imperfections sometimes really get me down. I should have done this…etc…, but God’s grace is shown to me more abundantly than it ever was.Over this past semester I have questioned. Who is God? Why do I believe what I believe? Who am I? Who do I want to be? I fall short on just about everything..But, I am coming out of this experience more sure of who I am than I was before coming, and more sure of who I want to be. 

I know it is going to be very hard to leave my students. “Miss Em, please don’t go…love you…please. We miss you so much.” Then they all dog pile on my arms and legs and I drag them around while walking. I look at them and see the growth they’ve made this year. I saw a picture on my computer that I took with them when I first got here, and I couldn’t help but feel the irony, of how unconnected I was from them then, in comparison to now…..Saying goodbye to Barnabas, junior, and riki is going to be especially hard for me. They’ve been my musketeers from day 1. I’m going to do my best this week to show my entire class love more than ever before and encourage them about the future, and not focus on me leaving, because this is only going to be a temporary separation until heaven. Man, I just love them all. Bed, Charlie, Sham, Risa, Rema, Wiwi, JJ, Ronald, Mailani……all 26 of them. I know God strategically brought each one of them into my life. I am just overcome with sadness when I think about how I won’t see them when they get older. I want to know what sort of men they turn out to be, and what fancy ladies they will be. I know I need to trust them in the hands of the Lord. I will place them there, it’s just hard to let go of what made my missionary experience so wonderful and so challenging…Those little rascals. Still as crazy and wild as ever in class. My first two weeks teaching them, I could not see how I was going to make it to the end of the year. It was so hard to see the end. But, I’m here.

I am excited to go home though. I enjoy the thought of not having bugs crawl all over me while I’m sleeping. Lice and ants will be very few on my bed sheets at home, hopefully non existent, but who knows what’s going to trail back with me (just kidding mom ;) ). The other day I woke up to something crawling around in a plastic bag on my floor. I thought it was just a mouse so I was just planning to grab it’s tail and toss it in the toilet, but it was not. It was a giant cockroach running in circles creating quite the raucous. He was probably upset since I killed his whole family that week. One of them was on my ceiling and I sprayed it and it fell on my neck and crawled down my arm onto the floor. I wanted to rip my skin off, it’s such a gross feeling. They’re super fast, crackily and have tons of legs. Putting even a glass of water down in our apt is a bad idea. Ants come speedily and are doing baptisms in it before I even get a chance to drink it. I am anxious to see my family and friends. I thought I’d be more excited about reliable internet, but it’s not important to me like it was. It will be convenient though. Fruit, exercise, clean water…it all sounds so nice. It feels like a dream. I cannot, literally cannot convince myself that I am leaving in one week.  It’s just so unreal. I was thrown into this life here, every single day, with the same people, in a small unsanitary island, where I have learned so much, and now it’s going to be gone….everything, all the stray roosters, pigs running around, dog shootings, little kids with no clothes running around, where scabies is the norm, waiting for a boat to bring us food, houses whose roofs are held down with rocks,seeing basketball being played 24/7, friendly little kids, moo moo dresses(slaughtered the spelling), breastfeeding in public, loud upbeat music, always having a kid with me (Sonora is here right now…3^rd grader). I’m actually going to have to listen in conversations now. Here I assume that no one is talking to me because it’s all in Marshallese, but no one will be doing that at home, and that could very well be speaking to me….weird. So unreal. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that it’s here. The sm’s, we’ve become like a family, whether we wanted to or not. We are, and we all have our part. We know we know each other better than most people know us, it’s something special. Ebeye is something special to all of us, God brought us together here.

This evening I am going to my first goodbye event with my island mama. A boy named Jeo’s mama. Oh yeah, it’s “mama and baba” here. I love to joke with him, “Where’s mama?” “Ahhh, missah, she’s mine…*big smile.” “are you saying that she’s not mine?” “Missah…I’m her fb friend.” Haha. 

Well, I have overwhelmed myself with how much I have written today. I will probably do one more blog post before I leave. I hope that you got a blessing out of this post, and that you look for yourself who God is in your life, and who you are and who you want to be. Also, Ebeye is looking for teachers next year. If you are interested in being a missionary, pray about Ebeye. Before I left to come here my sister Sara gave me a quote, “There is nothing more precious in the sight of God than his ministers who go forth into the waste places of the earth to sow the seeds of truth, looking forward to the harvest”-Acts of the Apostles pg 369-370. She also added a fun pun, “Not that Ebeye is a dump or a waste place or anything.” It’s funny because Ebeye is known for just that, but it’s so beautiful. Let God speak to your heart today, and may He give you the strength that you can’t find on your own.

Seeing you soon. J