Committments

Discovery #22: Recycling can make lots of beauty.

In Garbage City, there is an NGO that works with at risk women from the area to teach them a skill and educate them. Some of the women work with paper and some work with cloth.

The organization gets fabric scraps from clothing factories and they weave them into all sorts of wonderful things such as bathmats, purses, and wallets. They also use the scraps to make quilts and quilted items such as Christmas stockings and advent calendars. I bought two beautiful stockings :) Some other ladies work with recycled paper to make note cards, bookmarks, and things like that.

Discovery #23: Chunga! 

Monday night we had our Spring 2011 Commitment Service, which Jordan, Emily, Kyleen, Libby, Isaac, Carolyn and I planned together. They have this service every year to celebrate the commitment the group has made to live by the MESP covenant (which includes rules about not drinking or smoking, not dating anyone in the program, and putting others needs before our own, etc...) and as an intentional community. 

Our service began with dinner. The table was set with name cards in Arabic made by Libby, Kyleen and I. The students and staff took turns serving each other dinner as a symbol of our service to one another. After dinner, we went to the rooftop, where we normally have devotions, and played an icebreaker game: chunga. It's a bit complicated to explain, but, basically,  it's a dancing game. We all got to see each other in RARE form...and our Egyptian neighbors enjoyed watching us from their fourth story windows as well ;) It was also a great opportunity to see the staff - Dr. Diia, Dr. Holt, his wife Suzanne, Chris, Brian, and Dena - get silly and competitive.

Following that, we worshiped and read scripture together and then had a time of group sharing. We went around in a circle and each complete the sentence: "Rejoice with me when ____ ; weep with me when ____." I asked the group to rejoice with me when I get to travel and see all sorts of cool things and to weep with me when I get impatient and am unintentionally hurtful to others. This was a very moving time with the group as each individual shared a piece of themselves with the group. We then broke up into apartment groups and prayed with each other. The girls in my flat also share with each other about some concerns and excitements for the semester. They were all so supportive and I can't wait to get to know them better as the semester goes on.

To close out the night, we each wrote a fear or something that we needed to give to God on a strip of paper and tied it to a make-shift wooden cross symbolizing the fact that we need to cast our cares at the cross this semester. We then partook of communion together as a community. 

After the service, Suzanne came up to me and thanked me and the others for planning a wonderful service. I'm really happy about the way it turned out and hope others took away from it what I did -- that, though it's not going to be easy, this semester is going to be about loving and serving one another unconditionally.