a day late...

I just realized that when the time changed this week I somehow set my computer a whole day ahead instead of just an hour... Which meant that I thought I was posting on Wednesday, which would be appropriate anyway, because I feel like I'm a day late for everything this week...

A day late for my nephew's 11th birthday... A day late figuring out how to handle the latest communications curveball thrown at Mercy Ships... A day late editing text for the next fundraising appeal that needs to go to 9 different nations...

Thankfully, Alaska is so many time zones behind that I can still call my nephew and I think he'll forgive me.

The work stuff is a bit trickier... Staring at my screen with a looming deadline on this appeal, I wonder yet again how I ended up with this editorial task. I love wordcraft, but I'm a designer, not an editor. And I hate corporate fundraising letters – wouldn't that make me the last person who should be writing them?

But then... somewhere in the middle of reading about a Liberian girl named Irene who survived a disease called noma and has lived with a disfigured face for 20 years, I forget what day it is. I forget I don't have any real editorial credentials and that the clock is ticking towards 10:00 pm. I forget the conference calls I haven't had time to prepare for and the organizational hoops I haven't jumped through. Politics fade away to petty and so does my perfectionism.

All that really matters is that there are 400,000 children a year being attacked by a disease most of the world doesn't even know exists -- a monstrous infection that is entirely preventable and treatable. What matters is that 8 out of 10 of those children die in agony, their parents watching helplessly. And the 1 or 2 that live, survive horribly disfigured and suffer emotional pain for the rest of their lives... Unless...

Somebody does something.

This imperfect and sometimes dysfunctional organization that I work for is doing something. The flesh and blood people that make up this organization are doing something – at the cost of much more than their blood, sweat and tears, they are trying to make a difference. And they are.

People suffer and die in our world for lots of reasons. A senseless, preventable disease like noma should not ever be a reason.

What matters is that people need to know this – they need to realize this tragedy is happening in their global neighborhood, and they CAN do something about it. Somewhere in between the predictable lines of yet another fundraising letter, is it conceivably possible that the words I choose could help them get that?

Maybe it's not too late.

:: Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them... he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?" God said, "I did do something. I made you." – Author Unknown

two faces...

Last summer while working on the mercy show I was especially drawn to this image Scott took at the medical screening during the last Liberia outreach of a girl who suffered the results of a disease called noma...

Her face has stuck with me, and last week it somehow seemed right for her to go in the new Mercy Ships general brochure (which you'll see soon), but I wanted to know her name...

I emailed Scott on the Anastasis to see if he remembered her... and I found out she just happened to be onboard, in the ward. She'd come back a full year later to the next screening and made it to surgery.

This is her now... Mazay, 15 years old.

She wants to be a nurse.


:: more about noma
:: a documentary on noma
:: what mercy ships is doing

french...

...it's harder than I thought.

Reading and comprehending French is one thing... speaking it (properly) is quite another. My three-week course one year ago might have accomplished more if I hadn't immediately returned to America for three months afterwards. But what kind of language averages three letters per word that you don't pronounce? And what kind of country has not one, not two, but FOUR national languages??

I could make up a whole list of excuses for why I'm not conversational yet, but instead I'm trying to come up with reasons to convince myself why I need to be able to speak French at all...

Reasons to learn French:
1. So I can go to the post office by myself.
2. So I can read my letters from the government and the bank myself.
3. So I can say something besides "Bonjour, ça va?" to the cleaning lady and the postman.
4. So I can order at a restaurant without the waiter automatically switching to English.
5. So people won't be rude to me when I finally go to Paris.
6. So I can watch more than just 4 news channels.
7. So I can impress people when they come to visit me.
8. So when I leave I will have something to show for living in another country for two years.
9. So I can join the rest of the world outside America in which everybody knows (at least) a second language.
10. So I can prove to myself my own theory that there is nothing I can't learn.

You'd think I would love languages, because I so love words. But it might actually be that love of words and my profound relationship with them that makes it that much harder to learn a whole world of new ones.

The English language is like a dear friend I've grown up with -- familiar, intimate, like family. I've known it as long as I can remember, and I know it inside out. I know its nuances and idiosyncrasies and I know how to bring out its best. It's a relationship I treasure and even marvel at, on occasion.

And French -- French is that aloof stranger I'm intrigued by, but resist being forced to get to know. An imposter in familiar letters, taking on suspicious forms and sounds that I don't recognize. I begrudgingly admire the way French looks... even how it sounds... But it just hasn't endeared itself to me yet. I want to get to know it on my own terms, gradually, until it feels comfortable and fits naturally into my life. It seems so forced and manipulative to spend obsessive hours insisting on a relationship, abusing its pronunciation... My passive personality would much rather casually warm up to a language than stalk it.

At the same time, I realize that many of the best things in my life have come completely uninvited. Including people. Random strangers I never planned to or wanted to meet, thrown into my life with or without my consent. But then somehow, through the disarming subtlety of time and shared experience, we connected. And eventually I realized I couldn't remember life before them or imagine the future without them. They added pieces to my life that I never knew I needed.

So I'm making an effort with French. Extending the hand of friendship, and trying not to be too reluctant about it. It helps that I have the world's most interesting and excellent tutor -- Jean-Pierre.

Jean-Pierre is the definition of "debonaire" -- a perfect Suisse-Romande gentleman and an impressively well-read traveller who is on at least his 4th or 5th language. He fascinates me and frightens me at the same time -- a little like the French language. But he's also like my misplaced Swiss grandfather. What could possibly be intimidating about someone who makes me pumpkin soup and listens to classical music and stops our lessons to play with his dog?

Perhaps if for no other reason, I'll learn French for Jean-Pierre.

:: "It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning." – Claude Bernard, French Physiologist