From the Library of Amanda Stillman

Northern Sudanese me

Anytime you look at someone’s library, you learn something about who they are. Whenever I’m at someone’s house or office, I look at their bookshelves. It’s always interesting to me.  My family is pretty bookish, and we all have some sort of book collection.  Joanna and Benji’s library is full of books about parenting and being godly people and getting the Gospel out into the world. Marian and Josh’s library is full of military books, young adult fantasy, anything by L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, or a plethora of other sophisticated female writers, and of course, parenting books, and books about being godly people. Marian and Josh have a ridiculously large library filled with a variety of books (some stolen from good people who happen to live out of the country and some borrowed from that same good person, but many purchased legitimately). You can tell things about their lives and personalities from their books. Joanna and Benji have a small library since they

Sudanese sisters in Yemen!

don’t have a lot of room to keep lots of books, and they care about being parents and being godly people. Marian and Josh have posh military housing, so they have lots of books, and they care about being good parents and being godly people and knowing about the military. Also, Marian just loves books. As for me, surprisingly, I own no parenting books. My books about being godly are all on my kindle because you can often get those books for free online, and I am always looking for discounted godliness. The few that I do have actual copies of were given to me by my concerned parents. My mom once gave me the same book two years in a row at Christmas because she’s getting old and so is her memory. It worked out well, though, because I hadn’t read it the first time, and I did read it the second time. And it was actually a good book.

Some of my early Sudanese friends

I was thinking about this because I just bought a new language book. When I committed to buying it—clicking the ‘confirm’ button on Amazon, I realized something: I committed to buying this book because I’ve accepted that I’m moving to this new country. It is not unusual for me to be looking at language books. The Foreign Language Section is my favorite of any bookstore. I can spend hours checking out obscure dictionaries, phrase books, and grammar texts for various languages that I’ll probably never take the time to learn—from Xhosa to Khmer to Quechua or Kurdish. I am just fascinated by the sounds and letters and meanings.  But I rarely buy them, for the same reason that I rarely buy anything: I never have enough room in my life for more stuff beyond the essentials. I really hate having stuff—I love getting rid of excess crap I’ve accumulated, but books are an exception. So if I buy a book, I have to really like it. Or I would have to be enrolled in a class that required it.  But I’m done with school now, hopefully forever, so the books I buy have to be useful to me. The books that I keep now are all re-readers for me. So there are a few books by a Canadian author dear to my heart—Gordon Korman. I was taught by Canadians until grade 6 (see how I did that, eh?), and they shaped my young reading interests. Gordon Korman makes me laugh, and I love laughing. His book about kids who hate camp and try to escape is written for junior high boys, and I love it so much I have it memorized. And I still read it again every time I’m back with it.  And then there are books about relief and development, which is my chosen field, and occasionally I want to go back and get ideas and refresh my memory on certain concepts.  But the largest category of books in my small library are the language books. If you look through those books, you can see a bit of my story—where I’ve been, the people I’ve met and loved, the languages and cultures that have shaped my own thoughts and ideas, the millions of words crowded in my mind that I’m constantly translating from the word that BEST fits to the word that the person I’m speaking with will actually understand. I don’t speak all of those languages fluently, but I can at least carry on a basic conversation in all of them. And I’ve known and cared about someone who speaks each of those languages. If I haven’t been to a homeland of that language, at least I plan to go someday (Yes, I’m talking about you, Afghanistan and/or Iran).

Indian babies=I like them

So the book I just bought is a Juba-Arabic phrase book. It is scheduled to arrive at Joanna and Benji’s house about a month or so before I make my next move to the next country that will be my home for however long the Lord allows. I’ve loved Sudanese people from my college days when I worked with precious refugee kids from there. Then I lived with a lovely Northern Sudanese lady for a year in Yemen, even celebrating a big holiday with her family. I’ve never lived in Africa before, though I’ve traveled there. I’m looking forward to spending time in a place I already feel connected to.  I’m glad I’m not saying goodbye to India forever, though. I’ll be back and forth for the rest of this year at least. It’s a new transition for me, but I’m pretty good at transitions. I’m good at change and moving on and trying new things, but I’m bad at goodbyes. I always have the urge to sneak away without telling anyone. I never do that, but I always wish I could. I don’t like to make people sad. I know how much it hurts to be left behind. It is really hard to balance the goodbyes between all the friends from different places.  I know I’ll be eating 5 or 6 dinners every day for that last week….it’s fun at first, but it gets challenging towards the end. I hate those prolonged goodbyes—come back to my house one more time, eat dinner with us for the last time, one more time, one last time…That mantra will be going through my head too. Last time to watch for mongooses while I run…last time to sleep in this bed, cook in this kitchen, shop at this store, pay my electricity bill at the ATM…

Sudanese babies=I like them (I was so young and innocent!)

I’m excited about what’s next—new people, new challenges, new adventures, but I know that it will inevitably be followed by another goodbye and ‘last time for____’.  They say home is where the heart is, and I’ve left pieces of my heart all over the world. Ripping off chunks of your heart and throwing them around is pretty painful, but I’ve certainly made myself a lot of wonderful homes all over the place. I’m not complaining. Most people don’t get much say in their occupation. I did get to choose mine, and I’m acutely aware of what a blessing that is. I know not as many people are as jealous of my life as I think they should be, but I’m thankful for my calling and how much I love doing what I do, even though so often it just hurts. Mostly I’m thankful for the hope that I have that everything is going to be renewed. There will be a new Earth, without pain and sorrow and poverty and evil. And I’m pretty sure that all the people and places and cultures and languages I know and love will be right there with me, perfected in the way He always intended that they would be. I will be out of a job then, of course, so I’ll get to devote myself to lots of new hobbies, like developing my superpowers of flying and teleportation, or maybe joining some new and exciting profession like marine archaeology or sky-diving ballet (it’s not a thing yet, but it will be).

Drawing diagrams of toilets in the dirt--every little girl's dream job! Don't worry, India: this project isn't finished yet. I'll be back! (Probably 3-4 more times this year...)