things i will miss...

these are the things i will miss most while i am in uganda:

1. milk

2. meisha

3. you

i really wish i could teleport.

today will be spent running around much like a crazed creature, purchasing last minute supplies for our team. this morning i bought $400 worth of ink for the COTN staff in uganda. crazy. $400 worth of ink is sitting next to me in an office depot bag on the ground.
i have discovered that there are very few of my friends left in san diego :( but i will soon be one of the ones who is gone...so i can't complain.
26.25 hours until the beginning of a great adventure.

packing...

packing requires much thought. i feel like i am still in school. i don't know what to wear on the airplane. perhaps I will just apparate there instead. i'm trying not to get caught up and tied down with all the petty details...because they're really not worth it. big picture, alisa. big God. big picture.
i remember last year, when we were driving from kampala to lira, we passed so many people who were just living their normal, everyday life. and i intersected that life for just a second as we drove past in the van. i remember thinking about how God loves them and that he died for ALL of them and that he is after their hearts. i wanted them all to know that as we zoomed by. but then i had to ask myself if i really knew that. or believed it. do i really believe God loves me? i think sometimes i don't or i would live differently. i am striving to believe what i know and to let that saturate my thoughts and actions. i'm excited to drive north again. i wish that i appreciated that little adventure more last year, so this year i will appreciate it more.

two days from today.

i've never blogged before. this is weird. i've never thought of my thoughts as being blog-worthy. i'm scared i might mess this up...or read this a year from now and laugh at how confined my mind and heart were. oh well. here goes something.

i normally like packing...but not when it's combined with moving out of the castle after the brutal wake of finals. today i racked up an impressive ten hours of packing and cleaning. i do like being able to look at 3 boxes and know that all my stuff fits within them. i was able to simplify down my stuff...getting rid of things is great. that is one thing i am immensely looking forward to in uganda: simplicity. it is refreshing. i sometimes feel like every material thing i own is a little string tying me down to the world, like how gulliver gets tied down by a thousand tiny lilliputians. getting rid of stuff reminds me of its insignificance.
today, i overheard a dad praying before his family ate: "thank you, father, for being up in heaven, watching over us." i wanted to interrupt and say that that is not our God. he isn't up in heaven looking down on us. he is with us. he lives in us. and he brings his kingdom to earth through us. i am glad that my God is not a god who sits up in heaven and stares down at me. no. he is moving, running, crying, laughing with me.

as i've been preparing for uganda, to return to that beautiful, challenging place, i've been thinking about how i conceive of God. like how i picture Him. and how i fit into that picture. for a while, my picture has been like this: God is up high, slightly bored of me, who is running around in a circle on a patch of grass below him. in my concept of God, God is waiting for me to just stop what i'm doing and just exist as his beloved. ugh. maybe i am as confused as that praying dad. my picture of God is starting to change though. it doesn't have me in it anymore. it looks sort of like a collage of all the lovely and precious and humble qualities that i see in the people that make up my community. it's God who puts those little pieces of himself in us...and they are cultivated with love and time and experience. every good thing in a disciple is a little bit of God's character revealed to me on earth.
in 2 days i will be on an airplane flying first to dubai, then to addis ababa, then to entebbe. then an 8 hour bus trip to lira. beautiful lira! i like flying. i'm excited to read and drink ginger ale. lschurpe. and i like the bathroooms on airplanes...they're so compact and everything is metal. i hope i get to sit next to someone on my team that i don't know very well. travel always brings out the real in people.