We had a baby! Adileen Kate Daggett was born at 18:46 on 21 January 2016. She weighed 3,030grams, or about 6lbs and 11 ounces. She was 50cm long (19.7") and that noggin was 35cm around. Adileen is amazing, Katie is my hero, and we were well taken care of by the team at Clinica Arequipa. I wrote a bit more about the delivery and our first day at home on our Tiny Letter.
Ten days in we're ever more amazed that this little human being living with us is our daughter.
A first step for learning how to survive in another country is grocery shopping: learning food vocabulary, finding what’s available that’s familiar, learning how to use and love what’s unfamiliar. At first, it’s fun to bring home a whole chicken but after a while it’s nice to know that there are other options. Grocery shopping in Arequipa has really evolved in the last decade. For a long time, the open air market was the only option.
One positive aspect of living in a city is the ready availability of public transportation. Katie and I don’t own a car, but that doesn’t stop us from getting where we need to go. Arequipa is full of taxis, and we occasionally ride those if we’re in a rush or if it’s late. Our main means of transportation, however, is the combi.
A first step for learning how to survive in another country is grocery shopping: learning food vocabulary, finding what’s available that’s familiar, learning how to use and love what’s unfamiliar. At first, it’s fun to bring home a whole chicken but after a while it’s nice to know that there are other options. Grocery shopping in Arequipa has really evolved in the last decade. For a long time, the open air market was the only option.
One positive aspect of living in a city is the ready availability of public transportation. Katie and I don’t own a car, but that doesn’t stop us from getting where we need to go. Arequipa is full of taxis, and we occasionally ride those if we’re in a rush or if it’s late. Our main means of transportation, however, is the combi.
What I am getting to do, studying someone else’s heart language, is a privilege. No, it does not always feel like a privilege as I am struggling through using the past tense correctly, but regardless of how I am feeling on a particular day I am trying to remember that the fact remains that it is a privilege and for this I should be grateful.
As a couple this year, we resolve to learn.
We have hopes and dreams for the future, as well as a sense of to what (and where) God is calling us. So, in 2013, we focus on learning and preparing intentionally for this calling. This is a snapshot of our future plans and what 2013 will look like.
Katie and I are part of a team that has formed to do church planting and community development in southern Peru. In 2014, our team plans to join the McKinzie and Smith families who form Team Arequipa, and transition into a sort of “Team Arequipa 2.0.” I have been thinking about Peru since 2006. Katie and I have been thinking about South American missions since we spent a month in Peru and Bolivia the summer we got married (2009). God has since provided a vision and a team and so, in the last year and a half, our plans and timeline have taken on more tangibility. Our team’s timeline and details of what this transition to Arequipa might look like continue to develop.
I said our focus was to prepare intentionally. Well, this morning we’re getting on a plane and flying to Peru to live in Arequipa for two months. Katie and I will both do two months of intensive language school with individual instructors for 20 hours a week. The rest of our time we will be practicing Spanish (i.e. doing our homework) and spending time with the McKinzies, Smiths, and Peruvian Christians who are part of the work in Arequipa. We’ll also be doing some research (which might better fit the traditional understanding of a “survey trip”) hoping to learn answers to some of the questions we have for 2014 and beyond.
We’ll be back in the US on February 28; my first day of class for the semester at HST is March 1. The rest of 2013 is dedicated to learning through formal education for me (hoping finish the last 36 hours of my degree by May 2014) and learning through working as a PA for Katie. We hope to move back to the Memphis area in early March and are prayerful that Katie will find the perfect job for this sort of working preparation.
A final question to think about as we start off the year. Is the task of learning a worthy one? Some say that at some point you need to stop “learning" and start "doing" something. I disagree. A follower of Jesus, a child of God, a "global Christian," whatever you want to call yourself, must have the posture of a learner. Humans, understood as creatures in the image of their Creator, are by definition part of something bigger, and so they have something to learn. As we do stuff, we try to learn, knowing that we’ll be better at what we do because of it.
The wisest teacher who ever lived (of Ecclesiastes fame) offers a helpful perspective on learning:
The Teacher got it right. He recognizes human mortality (which isn’t pessimism or fatalism; it’s realism) and acknowledges a bigger story. He tries to make the most of his life within the context of God’s story.
And so we find ourselves dedicating 2013 to the timeless task of learning, although I have a feeling it’s a lifelong endeavor.
Always learners,
Jeremy and Katie
PS - The two points from the Teacher above come from Ecclesiastes 8:16-17. John Fortner calls the Teacher’s attitude throughout Ecclesiastes one of “epistemological humility” (i.e. being humble about what you know and how you came to know it). His 2009 HU Lectureship keynote is well worth a listen (start a few minutes in if you want to miss the songs and announcements).
This post originally appeared on the Harding in Zambia Blog. You can read that here.
Why do we do the things we do and why does it matter? Does it matter? And why do we share our experiences with others?
Asked differently, why tweet? Why is a group of 30 Americans invading Zambia for a semester, and what changes when you tweet out of a new context?
In some ways there’s a lot of pressure in going to study for a semester abroad. It’s 2012, which means most of us have an audience somewhere, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere on the world wide web. How can we communicate the story of a semester of learning through travel and encounter with other cultures?
Going to AFRICA to study abroad is that much more intimidating. Not only is the learning curve high in Zambia, the cultural dissonance great, and the experience culturally immersive, the idea of “studying abroad” has come under fire. Blogs such as "I Studied Abroad in Africa" parody the entire experience. They cite some pretty bad instances of the “White Savior Industrial Complex” colliding head-on with our self-centered Facebook spheres. Stated simply, we assume it is our place as well-to-do white Americans (I’m speaking generally) to enter another country to “save it.” And the way the story is shared on Facebook can look a whole lot like our primary motivation was the cool Facebook albums.
It’s a convicting (be it one-sided) critique that begs continual self-assessment.
But why stop there? Let’s pile it on a little higher.
Going to Africa to a place like Namwianga Mission to study abroad with a CHRISTIAN university who sends out scores of groups every year on mission trips complicates everything. Now the pressure is really on, because many in our circles see “Africa” and think “mission trip.” So we have to have all of the right, religious answers figured out so that we can communicate our message clearly, and, most important, accurately…right?? There’s a critique here too (and Messy Monday "The One About Missions Trips" summarizes it well). “If going on a ‘missions trip’ is the apex of spirituality, how could people be spiritual before there were airplanes?” What is spirituality, anyway? Good question.
All of that said, here we are, 30 of us, living in Zambia, being hosted at the Namwianga Mission. For three months we’ll be living together, taking classes, and learning in many different contexts. In one way, it’s just another semester of school. In another way, it’s an opportunity to learn something about humanity through the lens of one culture encountering another. We come as learners. We want to explore deep, foundational questions, to dive beneath the surface, so that what we learn will not only apply to our immediate context but will also translate to every human encounter for the rest of our lives.
What do we hope to learn? As we build relationships with the people here, study the humanities from an African perspective, learn missionary anthropology, we want to consider what it means to be made “in the image of God.” I believe that there is something fundamentally good about interacting with another person who is different than you are. The problem is, we usually think that we are normal and that everyone else is “weird.” We see something that seems strange to us and make an initial judgment based on our own perceptions of reality, often at the expense of learning something of true value.
That’s where preparation comes in. (1)
We’re going to learn, and we don’t take it lightly. We don’t want to assume anything. We can’t assume that anyone else sees the story to be told, or that our audience cares about anything more than a travel log. (2) We definitely cannot assume that we have it all figured out. What we hope to be able to say at the end of the semester is that we made the most of this special opportunity. We want to be intentional about articulating the encounter, acknowledging the critiques, and using them to clarify our motives and season our conversations.
As we write, blog, tweet, and post, it’s important to us for those back home to know we’re trying to see past the immediacy of our context to the bigger picture. “Trying” is the key word there. We’ll make mistakes, but we seek growth in the attempt.
So, why tweet? We have to give voice to our experiences in order to understand them. Your perspective helps ground ours. We invite you into this conversation hoping you’ll interact with us, ask big questions, and learn along with us.
This brings us to one final question (at least for this post). It’s the question about mission. Do we have anything that we can give? Is there any way we can help? We won’t know the culture well enough to contextualize the Gospel appropriately (even though we’ll be asked to). When we meet someone who has less than we’re accustomed to, we default to giving them money or a toy or some tangible gift. We do this hoping to help, but often end up fostering dependence.
So, here’s what we think. This isn’t comprehensive, but we hope it’s foundational:
God is on a Mission. We participate in that mission. God has created humanity in His image (Genesis 1:26-28), so there’s something fundamentally good about one human encountering another. The problem is that we often don’t effectively reflect God’s image of graciousness, compassion, slowness to anger, abounding in love, forgiveness, faithfulness, and justice (Exodus 34:6-7). In fact, all of humanity has fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). God described himself this way in Exodus, he “revealed his glory” to Moses with this self-description. Got then revealed himself fully in Jesus of Nazareth, fully human, fully divine, Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Jesus fulfills humanity, defeats sin, overcomes death; in Him we have seen the glory of the One and Only, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). We want to discern the image of God in ourselves and share this image in others through relationship, hoping to help discover what is already there by nature of our common humanity.
That’s how we hope to “help.” Instead of handing out toys and candy, we’ll try to do the types of things that Jesus spent his time doing. (3)
We go humbly. We go trying to learn. We go believing in a God who is at work throughout the history of humanity and even now is at work here in Zambia. We go trying to find Him here.
This blog is our attempt to articulate this story, His story.
