Hey Guys,
I just wanted to get you updated on things. I will be honest, things have been really tough for my team lately. This week has been full of sadness, greif and anger. We are all suffering in our own ways right now.
If you havn’t heard by now, one of my team mates, Sarah Buller, passed away last Sunday in a terrible car accident. I was at home watching a movie at the time. Her and two of my other team mates, and one local were all taken to the hospital with Sarah. Sarah flew away home to be with Jesus Sunday the 5th of April at around 3:45pm.
My heart has been so broken for her parents, and her 8 other siblings back in Minisota. I actually got to meet her parents last month when they speant a few days with us, going to Sarah’s different ministries. My heart is so broken that they will not see their oldest doughter untill we all speand life with God in eternity.
Sarah was a great ministry partner. She loved the kids at Doreen’s just as much as I did. She had such a heart and passion for Christ and serving Him. You could see that in her decision to come to Africa for the 9 months she was willing to commit of her life. She left behind a beautiful family, four that were just adopted a little bit ago, to come here to the other end of the world… making new friends and a new family, touching the lives of all she was around. She tought me never to forget the famliy I am around. She will be truly missed by us as the PE team in South Africa, as well as her family and friends at home.
The first time I met Sarah, we were riding on a bus to Training Camp in Atlanta GA, awaiting what would be in store for us over the next few months. Her name was easy to remember, because of there being three other Sarahs on our huge team of 41 people. I will never forget the South African Team Tallent Show when all four Sarahs came out to do a tallents… where they just showed off the fact that all their names were Sarah. I really laughed hard. Over the next few months after we found out she was on our team, we had times of laughing together through the sillyness of our team… like our Bingo Family night where we all dressed as old people and pretended like our hearing was bad as our elderly wacked out leaders tried to read us the numbers… hahaha.
The day she died, the police came to our house to get her medical information. I was one of the first to find out that there was something wrong. As I searched the leaders room for her medical information, the police assured me that she was allright… they just needed to know if she was allergic to anything, and her blood type. Two hours later after everyone had started heading home from our Spring Break, Matthew came to the house to tell me that our beloved Sarah had died.
Later we would find out that the injuries she suffered was way beyond the doctors ability to save her life, and there was nothing they could have done to save her.
Today I believe that she is being sent back home to be with her family. We are celebrating her 19th birthday with our Church Family at LightHouse, remembering her and the impact she left on our life. I hope to see Doreen and some of the kids there today.
I have been doing allright. I cry here and there when I remember her. Yet, I feel such peace about her death, and such trust in Christ that He knows what He is doing. I have no doubt in that. I trust Him in this whole thing. I know we will all be together again. These feelings of greif are normal in seporation. As mom told me once, “Death is so hard because God didn’t create us for it. He created us to live forever, and then sin entered the world. Seporation is hard on our spirit because it is not meant to be, and we are not meant for it.” These feelings of sadness and anger that run in me are just normal…
Our team has hit a delema… what do we do now? Obviously there is a lot of greif still left in us. As Meghan J., “one of my other team mates,” blew out her birthday candles, she cried and needed help to blow them out. There is almost always someone crieing in the house. Most of us have resorted to watching TV or facebooking from our cellphones to dea with our greif. We have started to spend much time here at Mug & Bean to write letters and skype from our computers… and yet nothing we can do will bring her back… and we just are left with the memories and the greif of her death.
What do we do we do now? What is to become of us after the mamorial service, after our Church family that are staying with us to help us through this hard time have gone home? How are we going to handle life when we start to do the chores again… after we go back to ministry? Will life ever go back to what it was before with us. As Dee Dee said last night at our meeting, “One way or another, thing will not be the same… and we will have to start taking everything differently.”
Last night at our meeting, we talked about the fact whether the last five months was worth staying here. One way or another, we will have to process this greif. There is no easy fix… no manual that AIM can give us, no book that could help us all deal with this. There is no easy fix… and if we stay here, we could easily spend the rest of the time processing grief… waiting for the time when we could be home with our families.
Last night… I thought to myself that for me, I need to stay here… to be with the Youth. I can just picture what a trajidy it would be to not only see Sarah leave, but the rest of us go because of her death. What about Doreen’s Kids? They deal with so much allready, having so many people die in their own lives, only to have me leave them too… left to deal with their own grief coming back that they didn’t deal with before. What about all our team mates? We especailly need each other now more than ever… and yet… will we all be here in a weeks time?
Last night… I was totally against the idea of going home early… but this morning as I woke up… I thought seriously about going home early. I have so much to do. I have so much support to raise for Kenya, and pluss I will be around people who love me and care for me… and who support me at home. I can finally lay my head on my mom’s lap and snuggle with her in the ungodly hours of the morning… I can finally go to the movies with Dylan, I can go into my sisters room and get the support I need by talking into the long hours of the night, I can see beloved friends like Querida, Ashly and Krista and cry on their sholder as the pain comes up again and becomes to hard to bare. I can see my new baby cousin, and be part of people at home’s life again. I will be back in December to see people again here in SA, it won’t be goodbye forever here.
What about my family here? How can I say goodbye to my South African Mummy, Carol? How can I say goodbye to my friends like Juan-Luis? To Jethro? To Tristen? To Andrew, Brad, Berry, Nikita, Bart, Doreen, Vuyo, Tsepo, Tina, Qua Qua? Faith? My Team Mates that will stay behind? The people at Debreif that I havn’t seen since December? How can I give up all that?
What do I do?
I am at a cross road, a fork in the road… which turn shall I make. I honestly don’t know what to do. I have to admit… this is what angers me… the stress I feel because of all this. Last night after our meeting, I grabbed a GrapeTizer glass bottle, went out to the park out front and threw that bottle at the tree to break it because I was so angry. I needed to releive stress… and the crazyness of this whole thing hasn’t helped. I don’t feel I have had time to connect, even with Matthew who I often confide the depths of my heart in. We are too tired at night to talk. I sleep late in the morning because I need the rest… and think to much during. Our crazy life has left us all hopeless on what to do… and because of all this… we all wonder whether our time here is up.
I don’t know what to do now… I am so tired, stressed and angry that I do not know what to do now… and I am left to try to move on with life, when I miss the life we had before all this happened….
