Preparing for the Spirit in Action 16^th Anniversary earlier this month gave me a chance to reflect on the role models that are the foundation of Spirit in Action’s vision. Below is my reflection on three leaders that keep me encouraged and inspired:

We spent three days with Canaan Gondwe in Malawi and it felt like we were there for weeks.

People had told us to prepare for “Africa time” nothing happens quickly or on-time. But Canaan had everything in order; he kept us on a tight schedule, rushing us off to meet with people, see farms, share and listen to people. There were so many in that rural village who wanted to meet us and thank us, as representatives of SIA.

[See photos of friends at our anniversary event!]

Right from that beginning, when Canaan quickly drove us back to his village because our bus was 1.5 hours late, I saw that Canaan was a strong leader. He commanded respect and showed respect to everyone – greeting men, women, and children on the road. He has a warm smile and a booming voice. When he gave his presentation welcoming us, people listened and clapped in agreement. When we went to visit farms, people sought his advice on pig farming and growing tomatoes. People willingly shared their car with him and worked in the office with him.

Serving happens person-to-person

So Canaan is our first role model today. There is a quote by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen saying, “Fixing and helping create a distance between people, but we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected.” She is saying that serving is a closer relationship than fixing or helping. Serving is about being God’s channel and letting the service flow, rather than being a fixer or a helper with our own plans.

Serving creates a stronger bond. It is the best way for us to create chance – really allow chance to unfold.

Del’s dream of co-creation

Del’s dream, included here, talks about connecting with role models who contribute to their communities. Canaan is that role model, that leader – serving others by being there in the community, encouraging them, giving advice, modeling spiritual faith and practice. And his leadership is the strength of the Manyamula Savings and Loans group (MAVISALO).

Del was ahead of his time with his dream about connecting with role models already active in their communities. So Del is our second role model of the day. I think that Del really understood that international service is about encouraging others.

Many feel the call to serve others around the world – people who have less than us, people who lack their basic needs. And the challenge is to allow the service to flow through us, rather than expect the service start and end with us. This is the hard part – and yet I thank Del for his vision for an organization that allows and encourages others to lead change in their own communities. Spirit in Action is designed to recognize and encourage self-help projects and help get those started and flourishing. To summarize – we see that more change can come through a local savings and loans group, rather than a newly dug water well by American volunteers that no one uses.

Channeling a higher power

Del talked a lot about being a channel – Christ’s channel for healing and soothing injustices in the world. So our third role model is Jesus. Following Jesus’s model and being a channel for service recognizes that it is not our own power that will solve the problem or save a community. We see power in others and encourage that. In many ways knowing that we are channels, not the only power, is freeing for me. It lifts the weight of needing to have all the answers; instead the answer is to follow my role models.

Now, just because we are channels doesn’t mean we are inactive or passive – in fact our name, Spirit in ACTION, demands we do something. When we find our local role models like Canaan, we are called to manifest God’s spirit of goodness and love – and support and collaborate with Canaan and his community as they organize to assist the most vulnerable people, get more youth in school, help new families build houses and start farms.

So, it is with this spirit of our role models that we celebrate today – celebrate the model of Jesus, the dreams of Del, and the leadership of Canaan. We celebrate that through these 16 years we continue to stay true to the dream of cultivating leaders, co-creating with them, and channeling support to those leaders best poised to serve their fellow neighbor.

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This past Sunday, I was baptized at the St. Anthony Park United Church of Christ. During the service, I shared a few words about claiming the Christian faith, portraying a broader array of Christian experiences, and what the baptism meant to me. I share them with you now:

I have had a close relationship with God since I was a child. And I have never been baptized. I sometimes tell people that I’m a Christian and yet sometimes I don’t because I don’t want to be lumped in with the “bad” Christians – the ones that see a small God, and fail to see the light in every person.

When I was a kid at summer camp, we sang a beautiful song saying “They will know we are Christians by our love.” And yet, since Christianity has been given a bad name within the liberal circles I grew up in, someone changed the song to, “They will know we are God’s children by our love.” I have no problem with that, I see myself as a child of God. Yet I want to reveal to people a broader example of Christianity, one that has at its core – loving God and loving my neighbor as myself. And this baptism is part of showing that Christians and love are in the same vein.

I asked Pastor Victoria to include “Be Thou My Vision” as one of the hymns today as a reminder that in my life I want to follow Jesus and live with him as my role model.

I want to see abundance. When I get one more request for help from Africa for work I don’t want to be like the disciples and send the crowds away. I want to welcome them, invite them to eat, and know that we all will be satisfied, with some left over.

I also want to stand for justice. Just as Jesus got angry enough to act by turning over the money-changers tables, when I am with people who are gossiping, I want to be strong enough to say – don’t say that, or that’s not the way I see it.

I want to show up at parties and turn water into wine…but never mind about that…

Finally, I take with me the knowledge that the Lord only requires three things of me as I enter into this sacrament. That is to seek justice (like my work with Spirit in Action in the world), love kindness (to be gentle to myself and always seek a solution that is best for many), and to walk humbly with my God (especially as I leave this wonderful community and begin a new life with Boyd in Toronto).

And I pray that as I am baptized, like with Jesus, God will also say, “this is my beloved daughter, with whom I am well pleased.” So I thank you for being here today to witness this public act of faith, and for being a community that had prepared me to say that I am a child of God and I am also a Christian.

I love you and I will miss you when we leave, and yet finding this community, which is so safe and so strong, is like a promise that I will find another such place wherever I am.

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P.S. Hope to see you on Saturday at our Sweet Sixteen Anniversary and Silent Auction in Alameda!

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Are people in Africa happy? Are people in the North America happy? Of course, the answer in both cases is: some people are; and some people aren’t. Whatever our situation, how we act and think can increase our happiness.

Recently, a good friend of mine sent me a blog post entitled, “12 Things Happy People Do Differently.” Always on the lookout for inspiration to send to SIA partners at home and abroad, I printed out several copies and sent one of them to Canaan Gondwe, our fantastic Small Business Fund (SBF) Coordinator in Malawi. This sparked a great conversation between us, each sharing how we act to incorporate these “happy habits.”

Below is an except of Canaan’s response to five of the attributes.

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Happy people! Ofonime Nkoko (SBF Coordinator, Nigeria) and Canaan Gondwe in Kenya.

Tanya, thank you very much for sharing this article with me. This will help me and the management and the whole MAVISALO to reflect on our conduct, character, and to move to things that happy people do in life. Sometimes we fail to increase our levels of happiness because we are harboring wrong views and attributes of ourselves.

1. Express gratitude

My college lecture once said and I quote “don’t despise your small beginnings but in them thank God in order to excel.” We usually tend to look down on our current state and think nothing is being done. As we do that, we lose a sense of gratitude and happiness.

2. Avoid over-thinking and social comparison

Very strong statement and advice. When one over-thinks and lives a life of social comparison, it has a negative impact in the way you look at things and this also cultivates poor social relations. When you embrace such values in life, you lose a sense of happiness. You easily burn out and lose balance. But it is good to have mentors in life. Make connections with people who have succeeded and employ good ideas from them and move. One mentor of mine said “walk your pace and vision, walk your talk and walk your level.” I saw this as avoiding social comparisons.

3. Practice acts of kindness

Kindness is one the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22). This is God’s own fruit in us as human beings. God’s kindness is shown in giving and helping the helpless human beings. I see this being emulated in SIA in rolling out SBF to our communities. Is this not God’s own kindness? Is this not kindness in its fullest form? Are the sponsors and board members of SIA not celebrating in a sense, for bailing out one person from poverty, elsewhere in Africa? If Canaan can spend hours helping a less privileged person in this rural community, is this not an act of kindness? Very important attribute indeed.

Tanya and Canaan in the MAVISALO poultry house.

4. Nurture social relationships

One person said, “a problem shared is half solved.” Man is a social being from creation. We need to be connected to other people and this brings balance as we share views, successes and challenges. We are molded holistically as one said and I quote, “there is beauty in diversity.” In nurturing social relationships, we are able to understand our people better. This is very true in even in providing the leadership to our organization. As leaders we need to come down and listen to the people we lead. I have personally succeeded as a coordinator by nurturing relationships. I respect each and every person and relate deeply with them because they are God’s own creation.

5. Learn to forgive

Keeping hatred makes one feel low. Hatred spoils facial expressions. Truly, when you harbor hatred, you walk a sick person. We need to forgive those who wrong us. God forgave us and this is wanted even for us. Forgiveness brings healing to the forgiver and the one forgiven. We enter a new life indeed if this is done.

Tanya, I once more thank you for the 12 tips. I will share this with my friends. Send us more of these when you bump on them. They are fruitful indeed.

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A round-up of some of the exciting things to cross my desk in the last week:

1. SIA Business Groups Receive Reinvestment Grant – Dennis Kiprop, the Small Business Fund Coordinator in Kenya, sent me this photo of himself with 4 of the newest SBF businesses in his area. He met with each of them this week and gave them the $50 reinvestment grant, which comes three months after their initial $100 business grant.

2. Offertory Prayer – I really appreciated this prayer at my church last week and I think it’s appropriate for my daily work with SIA:

O God, through the offering of these gifts, may we become more open people:
open-minded in heeding your wisdom,
open-hearted in healing a broken world,
open-handed in responding to your call for cherity and justice.
With thanks for all good gifts, we dedicate these offerings today.

3. Cellphones for Health - A long and interesting article about technology start up companies in Kenya. One new business created a system for automated text reminders to go to patients reminding them to take HIV/AIDS medications or to get maternal health check-ups. So cool what cellphones can be used for in Kenya!

4. Doing it Differently - The blog How Matters recognized Spirit in Action as an organization “doing aid differently” on her Pinterest Board! How Matters is dedicated to discussing the ethics, complexity, and importance of community involvement in international aid. (Don’t know about Pinterest? It’s a new media-sharing tool, and another thing making me happy this week!)

5. Monday Morning Inspiration - “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson (via http://www.dailygood.org)

Let me know what’s inspiring you this week!

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A round-up of some of the exciting things to cross my desk in the last week:

1. Empowering Women at CIFORD – I finished making a video (with Boyd’s narration!) about this great community organization, which we visited last summer. Spirit in Action, with support from the Charles Wentz Carter Memorial Foundation, awarded CIFORD a grant to hold more girl’s empowerment workshops this year!

2. Community Involvement in Uganda – This article tells an encouraging story about a conference that (gasp!) included local leaders in the discussion about rural electrification, access to capital, women in business, and access to technology for youth. “While the panel topics were nothing new for a ‘development’ conference, the panelists were not your usual invitees. They included primary school students, village brick makers, local farmers, and young “tinkerers” who had built their own home-made radio.” Full article here: Uganda: Villages in Action Bringing Poor People’s Voices to the Forefront

3. New digital camera made it safely to Malawi – Canaan Gondwe, Small Business Fund leader, wrote, ‎”Tanya, We are overwhelmed with the performance of this new camera. We are witnessing quality pics. Connecting them to computer and importing them is also easy.” We can look forward to many more photos of the exciting progress in Manyamula Village!

4. News from Balayiro Women’s Self-Help Group – I got a wonderful letter in the mail from this thriving group in Kenya. They received a small cash grant to buy local seeds for the group. “We prepared the seeds in the seedbed. Luckily enough there was moderate rainfall and warm weather. Now we are expecting a good harvest! Traditionally, in Luhya community, farmers do save the indigenous seeds from year to year in crop recycling method, covering them with ashes from the burned firewood.” They grew:

Jute Plant – A leafy green, rich in betacarotene, iron, calcium, and vitamin C, eaten with Ugali (maize meal).

Spider Plant – The leaves, stems, pods, and flowers can all be cooked and eaten. The leaves are bitter, but the bitterness can be bleached out with boiling water. A group of farmers are growing this plant in Minnesota for the Kenyan diaspora here!  

Black Nightshade – This nightshade is not poisonous, as we tend to imagine here in the West. The barriers and the leafy greens are eaten and are highly nutritious.

5. Quote on compassion – (from a women’s retreat I attended last weekend): “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant wit the weak and wrong…because sometime in your life you will have been all of these.”

This basket from a small business in Uganda will be one of the auction items!

P.S. Save the Date – May 5^th Celebrate Spirit in Action’s “Sweet Sixteen” Anniversary! We booked the Islandia Clubhouse in Alameda, CA and I began pulling out some of the silent auction items that we brought back from Africa! More details to come soon.

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