Seeds

Today we have reached the end, at 4.00pm we will leave DBTC for the last time. When tomorrow arrives we will be in a different country and a different reality.

Emotions are very mixed, sadness and happiness running very close together.

The last nine months have been quite an adventure, we have learned a lot, experienced a lot, celebrated a lot and eaten a lot. Most importantly of all we have been touched by a lot of different people.

I would like very much to thank the Salesians of DBTC who have made us feel incredibly welcome and valued during our time here.

The last nine months has been a time of planting seeds. We have had the privilege of serving and helping a group of young people who, by all of the comparisons which most of our world value, are extremely poor and live with a constant lack. We have had the chance to plant seeds of learning in each of them, it is now time to walk away, what these seeds will become we do not know.

However, even more profoundly these young people have planted seeds in us. They have shown us that the standard economic measures of well being are not the full measure of a person. They have shown us what it is to be joyful even when life is hard; they have shown us what it means to really live in community and they have shown how valuable simply smiling can be. These young people have given me a new world of possibilities, many of which I am undoubtedly unaware of; I do not yet know what these seeds will grow into within me.

I leave with sadness but also a lot of hope.

If you are still reading this blog I thank you very much for sharing in my journey. I will end with a quote from a South African Christian[1] which, I think, sums up how I feel right now. It is a sentiment I hope I will be able to carry with me as life moves on:

"The deep joy, which only comes from God, can only be present in us if we live with others, because happiness is only true happiness when it is shared."

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[1] Taken from Lettre de Taizé Sept-Dec 2011, my translation from the French