Category: Other Page 3 of 184

These Four

On February 2, 2020

We live in a city of five million people, but it’s amazing how often we run into our former students from Haven of Peace Academy. I’ll be looking for a new showerhead, and she’s the owner of the hardware store. We’ll be eating dinner at a nice restaurant, and discover he’s the owner (Yes! Dessert on the house!). I’ll run into her in a meeting–the lawyer in the professional suit. Often we don’t recognize them–they’ve grown beards or are holding children–but when I hear “Mrs. Medina!” I know it’s one of them.

The first graduating class was in 2008, so there have been many since then who have gone away to college and finished college and have come back to Tanzania to make their world a better place. And it is such a joy–always, always, such a joy, to see them again.

A few weeks ago, though, we had a particularly extraordinary joy because we just happened to discover that these four girls were all in the country at the same time–which is a thrill that hasn’t happened in….maybe 10 years?

These four have always been exceptionally important–they were my students in fifth grade, then sixth grade, then they were Gil’s students all through high school. They were a part of every youth group and youth camp and Gil coached them football for four years. They babysat our kids and came to Grace’s and then Josiah’s first birthday parties. We visited them when they were in college in Minnesota. Over the years, we’ve seen one or two of them here or there, even had them visit us every now in then, but to have them all together again for an evening….that was a beautiful gift indeed.

They are all grown up now and very smart and very educated and they’ve had so many life experiences that make them absolutely fascinating to talk to. And when you consider that Gil and I had the privilege of being a part of their growing-up years, which makes our conversations with them filled with memory and laughter, well….it was a very special night. Especially considering our time in Tanzania is coming to a close.

So here are “my girls,” and if you go back in the archives of this blog, you’ll find some of their history there. (Though they might prefer you don’t do that, actually!) But they gave me permission to share a few pictures of our memories, so rejoice with me in the fun and blessing of students who have become friends.

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Then:

If you were Mary and I was Martha, I would totally be ticked off at you.

By Amy Medina

On January 19, 2020

In Other

I am all about getting the job done. Meet the deadline. Before the deadline, preferably. Do your duty. Follow the rules. Don’t procrastinate. Fix the problem. A job isn’t worth doing unless it’s done well.

Some people seek thrills by jumping out of planes or riding roller coasters. I get dopamine hits from crossing things off of lists.

This makes me an excellent employee. A pretty good principal. A mom whose is not very fun, but whose kids’ teeth are brushed and bellies are fully of vegetables. A Christian who reads her Bible just about every day…..but will often choose the task that needs her instead of the person who needs her.

I hate sitting back and waiting when there’s something productive that can be done. Which means that I am right smack dab in the middle of a point in life that is driving me crazy. Oh, don’t get me wrong–I am plenty busy. The problem is that just about every aspect of my future is an unknown right now. Five months from now, I will be jobless and homeless. Five stinkin’ months, People. This is not okay with me.

I can’t visualize where I will be and what I will be doing and what will be happening with my children because I don’t know. And I can’t know. Though Gil and I are dutifully researching and making inquiries and sending resumes, there’s not a lot of places–especially schools–that hire people eight months out.

Which means I have to wait. I hate waiting. I’d rather seize control of my life and get the job done. Make a plan. Get all the things crossed off my list. Come on, let’s get moving here!

As Jesus as and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed–or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

In my case, instead of complaining about my sister, I’m complaining about my God. Come on, God, get it together! We’re working hard here, trying to figure out our life. We’re ready for an answer, a plan. Our lives are dedicated to you, after all. We’re all about serving you. So why aren’t you helping us?

Sheesh. It sounds bad when I put it that way.

Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

Distracted. All of my planning and hard work and productivity are just distractions? Seriously? I’m not feeling very affirmed here, God.

But yes. I am distracted. The One Thing most important to me is Having a Plan. The One Thing most important to Jesus is that I sit at his feet and listen to him. Sitting? Listening? When there’s so much to do? Argh. I don’t like this.

Recently, in the midst of my impatience with the lack of control I have over my future, a hymn came to me from my childhood. I most certainly was bored with this one as a kid, with its thys and thines and slow plodding cadence. But it lodged in my brain and now? I bring it to mind almost every day.

Have Thine own way, Lord

Have Thine own way

Thou art the potter, I am the clay

Mold me and make me after Thy will

While I am waiting yielded and still

You know what I found out? The writer of that hymn, Adelaide Pollard, wrote those words while frustrated by her attempts to raise support to be a missionary in Africa. How do you like that?

Yielded and still. Were you a Martha, Adelaide? Because waiting while “yielded and still” sounds like a pretty good goal for me right now. I’ll add it to my list.

Hume Lake, CA, July 2019 (Gil Medina)

This Time Next Year We Won’t Have Our Feet in the Sand

By Amy Medina

On January 5, 2020

In Other

On December 31st, I sat with my eldest daughter on a perfect tropical beach on the magical island of Zanzibar. We watched her dad and siblings heaving sand balls at each other made with famous white Zanzibari sand, so powder-fine that it has the silkiness of clay.

“You know, this time next year, we could be in the snow,” I told her. She looked at me in shock. “Sure,” I said, “Hopefully we won’t be living in it, but we might be close enough to visit it.”

We sat together with our feet in the warm sand and listened to the breeze rustling the palm fronds and let that sink in. A year from now, everything will be different.

In the next six months, we will sell or give away all of our earthly possessions except which fits into several suitcases. Every piece of furniture, our dishes, our car, our dogs. We will say goodbye to people we have known for almost 20 years and roads and beaches and restaurants that have become familiar and routine and ordinary. We will land in a new city where we’ve never lived before and start new jobs and schools. We will find a new church and new grocery stores and clothes that keep us warm instead of cool. We will buy a house and cars and an entire household of furniture.

Everything–everything will be different. I won’t fall asleep to those eerily chanting night-birds; I won’t wake up to roosters. The Call to Prayer won’t be a part of my background noise. All of the electricity coming into my house will be normal and I won’t need to buy an extra long extension cord, just so that I can find the one outlet in the house that happens to be getting enough electricity to power the fridge today. I won’t smell burning trash; I won’t associate piles of roadside pineapples with Christmas; I won’t need to strain yogurt to make cottage cheese. I won’t ride in three-wheeled Bajaj rickshaws; I won’t hang clothes out to dry; I won’t speak Swahili. I won’t visit a tropical island on Christmas vacation.

It’s more than just moving to a new place. It’s like leaving life on one planet and boarding a spaceship for another.

For a while I’ve had the thought, “I wonder where I’ll be this time next year.” But now it is next year. 2020 has come, and this is happening. I have no idea where we’ll be seven months from now. I just know it won’t be Tanzania, and everything will be different.

We spent last week on Zanzibar. It was our Christmas present from grandparents. We walked through a mangrove forest and held sea turtles and rode quads through little villages and snorkeled with schools of angel fish and chased dolphins. Many times, I would turn to one of the kids and whisper, “Capture this moment in your mind.” Because that’s what I was doing.

Yes, that is a real, live sea turtle.

And she’s feeding one.

Shopping on the streets of Stonetown

And those are 50+ year-old tortoises.

Pointing out to the kids how the original buildings in Stonetown are made from coral

with our dolphin-chasing boat

Still Looking for That Better Country

By Amy Medina

On December 21, 2019

In Other

I’ve been a foreigner for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to live as a citizen.

It’s now normal for me to stick out in a crowd, to get gawks, stares. Every two years, I apply for expensive visas for permission to live in Tanzania. Even though I’ve lived here sixteen years, I’ve never voted in a Tanzanian election, or even felt like I have a right to a political opinion. I’ve never owned a house. I know that just about everything I own will one day be owned by someone else, so I better not get attached to it. I have the uncomfortable feeling that some of those around me are in awe of my foreignness and unnecessarily defer to me, but others resent my very presence in their country.

Either way, I am an outsider.

It’s become so normal that sometimes I forget how exhausting it is to live as a foreigner. It’s like playing a card game, every day, where you keep discovering new rules that everyone understands except you. Just when you think you’ve finally got it all figured out–surprise! You don’t. And you find yourself feeling like a two-year-old or a hard-hearted wretch or just a plain idiot.

As I think about the new life ahead of me–living as a citizen in a country that technically is my own, sometimes I’m terrified; sometimes I’m grief-stricken, but other times I’m excited. Yes, my relationship with America is complicated, but the lure of the American dream is strong. We can settle down and put down roots. Maybe for the first time in my life, I can own a house! I can plant trees and watch them grow with my children. I won’t have to worry about visas anymore. I won’t stand out in a crowd.

As much as I love living overseas, there’s a part of me that aches for permanency, normalcy, security. They are feelings I have stuffed down and suppressed for most of my adult life. Now that there’s a possibility of fulfilling them, they have risen to the surface.

I never realized how much I longed for a homeland until it was finally at my fingertips.

The appeal is strong. Which is exactly why I must push back against that feeling and remind myself that America was never meant to be my homeland. I can’t put my hope in a country–even the richest, most powerful country in the world.

I could buy a house, and it could burn down. I could put down roots, and then lose a job. I could save for kids’ college, and the economy could collapse. I could fit in–but as a Christ-follower, am I supposed to?

If I give into the temptation of allowing America to feel too much like home, to become comfortable, secure, rooted, then what happens when obeying God challenges that comfort? What happens when I need to stand for something that might sacrifice the personal kingdom I built for myself?

And haven’t I always said, all these years, that one of the best parts of living overseas is how it reminds me that my real home is in heaven? So why would I want to give in to a desire that tells me my home is in America?

In the most famous biblical chapter on faith, there’s a key line: The Faithful didn’t get the homeland they longed for. They did not receive what was promised.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Kind of flies in the face of the American dream, doesn’t it? The people in Hebrews 11 are our pillars of faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. They were strangers, exiles, nomads. They recognized that their homeland was not on this earth.

Those who never found a home on this earth are celebrated as our faith-heroes.

There’s no reason why God would want me to feel at home in this world. I keep craving it; I pursue it; seek after it….but it’s a misplaced longing. In fact, if I do feel too much at home, then something is wrong. Because that desire was never meant to be fulfilled on this side of eternity.

Which is why, even in America, I will need to remind myself tokeep living like a missionary.

Of course, it won’t be wrong for me to buy a house and plant trees, or vote, or teach my children the Pledge of Allegiance. I just must be careful to remember where my true allegiance lies. Because my home will never be found on this earth.

This is What We Do With Media. What Do You Do?

By Amy Medina

On December 16, 2019

In Other

I would love for someone to research what kinds of cultural changes took place in Tanzania starting in 2009. That’s the year the the fiber-optic cable came to East Africa, bringing high-speed internet for the first time.

Before 2009, it cost 50 cents to send a text message. Internet came in by satellite and was agonizingly slow. We would beg people never to send us pictures by email because of the hours it would take to download them. Hours. Literally.

But starting in 2009, that all changed. And today, I spend the equivalent of $5 a month on my phone plan, which gives me all the calling and texting time I need. Our household spends about $30 a month on internet. We stream from Hulu and Netflix. We Skype. At HOPAC, I do everything on Google Apps (it’s awesome!). Kids from fourth grade up have email addresses and are required to turn in assignments using Google Apps. I’m sure we’re still “behind” the developed world technologically, but we are catching up fast.

But this is a whole new world in parenting, isn’t it? And it’s terrifying. How do we keep porn away from our kids? How do we keep out the predators? How do we teach them about healthy digital habits–when we struggle with it ourselves? How do we prepare them to handle cyber-bullying and sexting and social media pressure–knowing that we can shelter them from it for a while, but not forever? How do we train them to discern truth in the midst of all of the messages that bombard them through media?

Navigating this new world, we need each other. Not one of us can draw upon our own childhoods to help our kids through it. This is entirely new territory, for all of us.

So the purpose of this post is to share what our family does. Not because we have it all figured out, but because we don’t. I would love to hear from others: What do you do? How do you navigate this new world with the kids in your sphere of influence? How do you keep them safe while still preparing for them for a digital world? Let’s learn from each other.

This is us:

1. Lily (age 10) has an iPod, Josiah (age 12) is getting an iPhone for Christmas (shhhh…don’t tell him), and Grace (almost 14) has an iPhone. We also have a couple of Kindle Fires and a laptop that any of the kids can use, and Josiah recently purchased an Xbox One (which is his pride and joy). Parents get to know any passwords and are allowed to pick up and look through any device at any time.

2. Internet browsers are not installed on any of the devices. The only time our kids are allowed to browse the internet is for school purposes, which they can do on the “kids’ computer.” There is a very strong filter on that computer called Qustodio, which prevents almost all browsing. So when the kids need to do research for school, Gil or I have to put in a password to disable Qustodio for a specified length of time. Kids can only use the internet at the kitchen table within visibility of anyone walking by. The kids’ laptop is never allowed in a kid’s bedroom.

3. Kids are not allowed any screen time (for anything other than school work) on school days, with a couple of exceptions: Josiah gets 10 minutes a day on the ESPN app to check soccer scores, and Grace can use iMessage or WhatsApp several times a week for a limited amount of time. Grace also has unlimited access to the “notes” feature on her phone. (She journals a lot on her phone.) Grace is not allowed to WhatsApp boys without our permission (unless they are in a group chat). We’ll give Josiah similar boundaries on his phone.

4. They are each allowed an hour of screen time on non-school days. For the boys, this is almost always Xbox (Fifa football in particular), and for the girls, they usually choose the YouTube Kids’ app (often DIY craft videos). The kids can earn extra screen time in various ways (or get it taken away).

5. Gil has all of these devices synced to his phone. He is able to check in on exactly what they are watching and how much time they spend on a particular app. For Grace and Josiah, this means that we got them (used) iPhones. Though they were more expensive than other phones, the parental controls on them are much stronger, so it is worth it. All of the apps on all devices have time limits on them, they have curfews on them to disable at night, and no apps or advertisements can be accessed without parental permission. The devices are locked by parental settings that can be monitored and changed from any parental device.

6. A rule of thumb we use is, “If you ask, we might say yes. If you don’t ask, you might lose a privilege.” For example, if there’s a song they want to listen to or a show they want to watch, if they ask first, then we will consider it. If they don’t ask, but we see that they’ve watched or listened to something outside our boundaries, they might lose the device (or app, or privilege) for an amount of time. (We tried Spotify with these boundaries, but that wasn’t successful. So Spotify didn’t last on our kids’ devices.)

7. We regularly talk to our kids about what is and isn’t okay to put into your brain, and more importantly, why. We talk about the dangers of porn and how it’s addicting and what it does to your brain and your relationships. We bribe them–literally–to let us know when they come across something that might not be okay. We say, “You will never be in trouble for telling us about something that you read or heard or saw that could harm you. In fact, this is so important that we will give you x amount of money when you tell us about these things.” This was Gil’s idea, and he did it because he wanted to take away the shame and secrecy that accompanies “forbidden fruit”–and so far, it seems to be working. The kids have done a good job of telling us when they come across something inappropriate. Our kids are still young and sheltered though….we know a lot more will hit all of us. But we’re trying to set the stage now for wide open conversation down the road.

8. We put “worldview lessons” into our family devotion times. The kids love this, because it usually means that they get to watch a movie clip. We watch it together and then discuss: “What message is coming across in this scene? What are they trying to say about the world?” We routinely teach our kids that ideas are never morally neutral. Every book, every movie or TV show has a worldview. And if we aren’t careful to root it out and understand it, we will find ourselves being influenced without our consent.

9. We are extremely careful about devices “from the outside.” We rarely allow our kids to go to sleepovers, and when our kids’ friends come to our house, their phones don’t get our Wifi password. Our kids aren’t allowed to watch or listen to anything on anyone else’s device without asking permission first. This isn’t always easy to enforce, because it’s so easy for kids to get “sucked in” to someone else’s device. When this does happen, we usually don’t give out consequences (unless it was blatant disobedience), but we do have a talk (again) about why it’s important to ask Mom and Dad first.

10. We have yet to navigate the social media world, which is fine by me. We’ve talked about it a bit with the older kids but they haven’t really been interested since WhatsApp is what’s most used in their friend groups. I read stuff like this and I want to keep my kids as far away from social media as possible. But I know the time will come when they will want it, so would love any advice on helping kids to navigate it.

I think what’s most important to me is the family culture we are trying to create. “Screen time” is isolating, so when possible, we watch movies or play video games together. We are very careful about what the kids watch but we also have widened those boundaries as they get older–and we will continue to. We say things like, “You can’t watch that now, but when you’re older, you might choose to,” because we want to create an expectation that they will become increasingly more responsible. We eat dinner together almost every night. We read novels together at bedtime and on family trips. We talk. A lot. We train our kids that this is a broken world so we have to be careful, but we also don’t want to hide from it. We discuss what it means to “redeem the culture” and how to find echoes of God’s story, even in a secular world.

The goal? A young adult who desires to live a life of holiness, not out of fear of punishment, but because he or she sees the value in it. Someone who knows how to think critically about media, how to discern truth from lies, and how to put down the phone and interact face to face.

Easier said than done, I know. We have not followed our own standards perfectly. We’ve had a couple of close calls that could have led down a dangerous road. But that’s just made us more vigilant.

This is what we do. I’m sure there are some of you who feel we are being way too strict and some who feel we are too permissive. This is a hard line to walk! What do you do? Let’s learn from each other.