Jayid, revisited

Saturday morning our "replacement" child was posted. Victor filled the open spot in our list of correspondence children after Jayid was removed from the account about two weeks ago. I spent my workday Saturday rejoicing over the newest addition to our faraway family, while still feeling twinges of sadness that we had to give up one sponsor child in order to take on a new one.

When I got home from work, I ventured out to my mailbox despite the rain and ice pellets bouncing off my head, snagged the mail, and rain inside. I saw an unfamiliar-looking envelope from Compassion mixed in with the Netflix DVDs and junk. Enthusiastic Compassion sponsors develop a sort of eagle-eye for the cream-colored envelopes that carry mail from our kids, and we get other information from the ministry in the mail, but something was different about this envelope. I opened it up to find a typed letter about Jayid.

Compassion wrote to tell me that Jayid had been dropped by his financial sponsor, which of course I knew, but they wanted to offer me the opportunity to take Jayid on as a financial sponsor. They said they would essentially hold him for me for 8 weeks from the date on the letter, should I choose to take on this extra commitment. To be truthful, every day I was checking our account for news of a new sponsor child, I was also checking the list of children in India in the hopes that I would find Jayid and share him with my friends online, begging for someone to sponsor him as soon as possible. I hadn't imagined that I would be presented with the opportunity to sponsor him first!

I have been asking my friends to pray for Brandon and I as we consider taking on this commitment. We have of course looked into financially sponsoring more children in the past, but our budget is pretty tight, and we have always bowed either to fears we would not have enough money some month, or remembered that we want to adopt children and reaffirm our resolve to save more money for that effort. I am asking that you, dear reader, also pray for us. I believe that we really could make this work, but it would mean that I would need to work a lot harder to be responsible with our money, practicing frugality every week, and not just the weeks when things look really tight in our checkbook register. It would be devastating to me to commit to sponsor Jayid financially, only to let him down somewhere down the road by not being able to pay that extra $38 a month. Not to mention the impact that it would have on him and his family.

I hope that I will be able to report back with happy news soon. It is taking a lot of will power to not just go ahead and call Compassion and commit to this sponsorship. I really need to take time to pray about it and try to figure out what God wants me to do, as opposed to what I want to do.

Meet Victor

Saturday morning I had about 5 minutes left before I needed to leave my house and go to work. I was sitting at the kitchen table playing a game on my phone, and I remembered that I needed to check Compassion's website to see if our new correspondence kid had been posted (I've been checking every day.) I logged on to the site on my phone, because I assumed that there wouldn't be anything new on there. I just about flipped out when I saw that there were four names listed under my correspondence sponsorships, instead of three. I yelled "new kid!" and BOLTED upstairs. At this point I had about three minutes. I hopped on the computer, logged in to my account, and saw the newest member of our far-away family.

This is Victor. His middle name, Otieno, means "born at night" in Luo. He lives in Kenya. He is 15 years old. He looks to be about 7 feet tall! His little biography says that he likes to play soccer and he likes cars. He is responsible for animal care, carrying water and running errands. He lives with his father and stepmother. His mother and father were married, but his mom died. That's so terribly sad.

Compassion's website says that Victor has been participating in the program since December 2004, and his information was last updated a few weeks after that. The picture has to be relatively up-to-date, though. I can't imagine that this picture is of a super-tall 7 year old boy!

I am so excited to get to know this child, the oldest of our bunch and the oldest I've sponsored or written to so far. I spent some time at work on Saturday reading about Kenya on one of our research databases. I'm glad Victor is now a part of our family!

30 Days of Thankfulness- Work

Most of us agree that Mondays are terrible, usually because that’s the day we all go back to work. Every job has its good days and bad days, and today, I am sharing my gratitude for my job.

I work at a medium-sized branch of our city’s public library. I’ve been a patron of this library since I was about 6 or 7 years old. One day, when I was a junior in high school, I came in to get some books, and one of the ladies that works there asked if I was looking for a job. My first job was as a page at my library. I started the summer before my senior year of high school, shelving books 20 hours a week. I made minimum wage, but unlike all my other working classmates, I earned sick leave, vacation time, and had paid holidays. There are perks to working for your city’s government, even if your city’s government tries to have as little to do with your place of employment as possible.

A year after I started at the library, I applied for a promotion. It was spectacular timing- a coworker had transferred to another branch, and his job became available for bidding just as I was getting my diploma, which was a requirement for the job. I moved up, still working 20 hours a week, but earning almost twice as much money per hour.

Working with the public has its challenges- particularly if you work at a library, where all sorts of interesting, special, difficult, and scary people like to hang out. Some of the problems that accompany working at a library are compounded when your library is considered a part of the city’s government. People occasionally make annoying, rude, or untruthful remarks about your job. Folks who don’t want the government involved in their lives at all tend to forget that you technically work for the government when you are in their presence (even if you’re a libertarian, like me, and agree with them on a lot of political points.) People can be more demanding, because their tax dollars pay your salary, gosh darn it. They try to get you to stay open later, joke about how they wish they could keep you at the library all night, and sometimes treat you like slaves, I’m sorry to say (we have one lady who is always happy to remind us we exist simply to “serve” her.)

But despite the occasional struggles, I really am thankful for my job. I enjoy working at a library. I have good relationships with most of my coworkers (and I don’t have “bad” relationships with any of them.) I get to work most of my hours with one of my best friends. I am grateful I get paid what I do, because working full-time would be really difficult for me in a lot of ways. And I’m not qualified for a higher-paying job. If I didn’t work where I do, I’d have to work twice as many hours for half the wages, with about six times the stress. Ick.

And I do love books. I love talking to kids about reading. I like the fact that so many little old ladies find me extremely charming. I like being around books all the time, always finding new things to read. I’m thankful for my job, and I’m thankful for the library!

30 Days of Thankfulness- Church

As today is Sunday, I feel that a post about how I am thankful for my church is completely appropriate.

I am so thankful for my church. I have been to a few churches in my life. I went to one for a very long time, and although I had good relationships with several of my teachers, I never really fit in with anyone my age there, despite the fact that I went there from the age of 3 until I was about 17. My family started visiting another church, one that is very big (famously so), in part because we really enjoyed listening to the sermons on the radio on our way to the previously mentioned church. Despite the church’s gigantic size, we felt really welcome there. 

When Brandon and I started dating, I would sometimes visit his church, Okolona Christian. I started going there about half the time before we got married, and we talked about trying to split our time equally between the two churches. In the end, though, I just started going to OCC full-time, and moved my membership in the summer of 2010. I really like my church. I like the fact that so much of Brandon’s family goes there, and we have someone to sit with every Sunday. Sometimes we take up a whole row of seats! My church is smaller than my last church, but bigger than the church before that. I help in the nursery once a month, and am a volunteer with the disabilities ministry (though I’m not able to help out with that one as much as I’d like to!) I like the worship music, and I like both our pastor and our assistant pastor. I love the fact that my church is so service-minded, constantly looking for and promoting ways to connect with the community. I like the fact that they are so supportive of local, national, and international missions. I like the fact that the pastor’s wife came to my bridal shower even though she had no idea who I was (other than knowing my in-laws), and when we were all waiting at the airport last summer for my father in law to return from his deployment in Afghanistan, our pastor was there, and he asked me, “How are you doing, Jessi?” This was a really big deal for me, coming first from a church where no one knew me despite my constant presence in a sort of small community, and then a church with 16,000 regular attenders, where I know the pastors didn’t know who I was (through no fault of their own- I just wasn’t really plugged into the church.) Please don’t misunderstand me and think that I’m saying I’m glad the pastor knew my name because I’m so important. I’m not. It’s just nice to be known. It shows that someone cares.

I love my church, and I’m thankful that I have the freedom to worship wherever I choose. I went from searching for excuses to stay home from church to crying on the rare occasion I was too ill to attend (for the record, I believe I have only missed TWO Sundays this whole year, thank you very much.) I’m thankful for Okolona Christian!

30 Days of Thankfulness- Family-in-law

I am willing to say nice things about my in-laws to anyone who will listen. I would hand out pamphlets, like a Jehovah’s Witness, but for in-laws. I don’t understand the sitcom stereotype that in-laws are to be feared and hated. I don’t understand people who dread spending time with their in-laws. I don’t understand people who talk badly about the family of their spouse to other people. I don’t get it. If you hate them so much, why did you marry into the family? But I digress.

My in-laws are wonderful. They are a big, merry bunch. My mother in law, Denise, has become a great friend of mine. She even joined our Bible study group, and she’s friends with my mom, too! Take that, stereotypes! My father-in-law Mark is so supportive and helpful. I have three brothers-in-law (no sisters-in-law yet!), ranging in age from 22 to 13. I cheer for Anthony at church basketball games. Stephen cracks me up, and one of my favorite things to do is hang out with Jonathan and watch Food Network on Sundays when Brandon is watching football.

I love my extended-family-in-law, too! All of them. They are the sweetest people. Family get-togethers are a real joy. I have an aunt-in-law who hugs me across the counter at the pharmacy where she works, every time I stop by to visit. I have an aunt-in-law and an uncle-in-law who always seem so happy to see me, and ask how my parents are doing. I have cousins-in-law who are fun to talk to and spend time with. And another cousin-in-law who sent a very sweet thank-you note for his graduation gift, which included a little bit about how perfectly I fit into the family. I melted a little, honestly. It made me so happy. I love each and every one of them, and I’m glad they like me!

30 Days of Thankfulness- Family

My gratitude for and toward my family has many facets. For one, I am thankful to even have a family. I know both of my parents, and have known them my whole life. I have all four of my grandparents, and even knew some of my great-grandparents, which is more than some people can say. Having a family- and a loving one at that- is a blessing in itself.

I am thankful for the relationships I have with members of my family. I have not always been on the greatest terms every day of my life with various family members. I fought with my mom a lot growing up. I didn’t fight as much with my dad, but when he did get involved, that meant I was really in trouble. My relationship with my brother has been contentious off and on throughout our lives. And to be 100% honest  (I hereby declare this to also be “honesty month”), I sometimes felt out of place with my extended family growing up. I was book-ended in age by a cousin and a little brother who I often felt were more special than I was on one side of my family. My brother got a lot of attention because he was the youngest, and my cousin got a lot of attention for being so hard-working, successful and active.  I did nothing. As a matter of fact, when I finally did do something- and did it pretty darn well, thank you- a teacher of mine had a brief meeting with me and said she wanted to do cartwheels down the aisle of the play I starred in, because she was so happy people were cheering for me and paying attention to this talent I had, because she knew that other members of my family got lots of glory for a lot of stuff. That is seriously one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me in the 24 and a half years I have lived on this earth.

But things have changed over the past few years, and for the better. I don’t fight with my mom anymore. Since I moved out, my mom has really been a rock for me, helping me maintain my mental and emotional health during the biggest upheaval of my life (getting married and moving out.) She has also become my best friend. I have a good relationship with my brother, when I can get him to answer my emails and texts. We like talking to each other when I visit my parents’ house. I’ve become pen pals (pen cousins?) with my cousin, and after spending most of my life in her shadow (and bickering with her over stupid stuff as a kid), we are friends and write to each other frequently. I feel more accepted and loved by my family now than I ever have in my life. And I’m grateful for that.

Lastly, I am thankful for my family’s proximity. A lot of people live some distance away from their families, only seeing them at Christmas and Thanksgiving, if they’re lucky. Almost all my family lives here in Louisville- most of us cover the same few zip codes! I see my dad’s side of the family pretty frequently, and though my maternal grandparents live a tiny bit further away, I can still visit them easily. I’m thankful that I can visit with my family pretty much any time I want. If I couldn’t, I think that would make me really sad, and certainly would have made me a lot more homesick than I already was when I got married. 

I may come back later and upload more pictures- I don't have many on my computer right now, but I do still  have this one to post, from when I uploaded it around Mother's Day. : )

30 Days of Thankfulness- Home

Have I told you lately how much I love my house? I don't live in a mansion. My house isn't brand new, and it doesn't have all the features I thought I would insist on having, like a basement and a fenced-in yard. But I love my house, and I'm thankful for it.

Brandon and I spent the first two years of our marriage in an apartment. It wasn't great, and at the end it was downright frustrating. But we've never been homeless. We've always had a pretty spacious place to live- two bedrooms and two bathrooms at least! We haven't ever seriously worried about where we were going to live.

Our home is well-constructed, safe, and warm. We don't live in a tent, like the people still displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. We don't live in a landfill, like so many of India's poor. We don't live in a home made of cardboard, cinder blocks, mud, or corrugated metal. We have plenty of space, big windows for the sun to shine through, a nice little yard, friendly neighbors and a safe neighborhood. I am thankful for my home!