[one chance. one gift]

Since August, I've been voluntarily tutoring a seven-year old Sudanese refugee on Monday nights for an hour. Her mother never made it past third grade. Her father had moved out for a while there, and she struggles in reading, math and all things that mean school. Tonight was the first time that I got a chance to visit with her father, though, and I was incredibly humbled.

Because he told me he's hoping to go to school. Not for a certain major. Not to fulfill all these lofty dreams. Not to gain titles, fill a resume or earn status. He's going to learn English - his third language. He's going to master the basics. He's going simply to know more and is hoping it will help him get a job. Any job. He applied to Wal Mart, but they haven't called back. He worked at a meat packing plant, but that was extremely hard work for little pay and was away from his family. So he wants to start free English classes and find a way to pick up school again where he left off after high school in Sudan.

And wow. It just continues to amaze me what we take for granted in this country. I would never apply for a Wal Mart job - mostly because I hate the store and corporation and the way they pay their employees - but yeah. I was looking for a different job earlier in the semester because I was discontent with my current part-time one, yet I didn't even consider a place like that. And to him it's a job. It's money. It's a way to provide. It's work. It's not about social status or forming an opinion or worrying about hourly wages.

We had just a simple conversation about simple things, but it truly humbled me. I worry about student loans and grades and forget it's a privilege to go to college. I get caught up in thinking about what I want to do, where I want to go and what my goals are and lose sight of the privilege it is to dream big. I complain about homework, tests, papers, projects, boring classes, stressful schedules, meetings, long to-do lists, practicum hours, work, demands, demands, demands. Yet everytime I go over there on Monday nights, life is somehow simpler. We read "Cat in the Hat." We have a tea party. We do word searches. We count money. We make puppets. We play memory games. I get a chance to share the gospel with her. Her dad gets a chance to share the basics of life with me.

Somebody once said, "Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have," and I think that's what internationals continue to teach me every time I set out thinking I'll teach them. I first started working with the international ministry at Memorial Lutheran Church here in Ames in October 2006, and my life has been changed and put into perspective time and again these past few years.

Many of the Sudanese refugees I've met have experienced a lot of painful things. They've been forced from their homes. They've seen war and death. They've lost the ability to live near or with their families - one of the core parts of their culture. They are living here in a society that most of them never chose to come to, many don't understand and others have no desire to stay in. Yet despite all of this, they see so much good in the things we only complain about.

It reminds me of the time I spent over two hours listening to another refugee woman's story. I was interviewing her for a project, and this is what she had to say about education:

“I asked my son ‘what are you going to be when you grow up?’ and he says, ‘I don’t know’. I tell him ‘you have a choice. You have a perfect life and go to school every day which is a very important thing. If you don’t take advantage of it you will end up in the streets. Don’t throw your gift away. When God gives you one chance it’s a gift. God gave it back to me here because in Sudan you don’t have chances but here you do.’”

Wow. Here we have choices. Here we have blessings in abundance. Here we have privileges most of the world only dreams of, and I pray that I can keep that in perspective the next two days as I attempt to crank out another paper I'm dreading. I pray that I can see it as a blessing, and I pray that I can use my chance, my gift, for God's glory.