The year ahead...

Next weekend is SIM Kenya's Spiritual Life Conference. The theme is "Bound to Serve" and it's about community and abounding in Christ's love.

I've been learning that I am a leader. Whether I like it or not, I am a leader.

I have had several huge projects tossed on me this past week, and I found I've risen to the occasion. In addition, I'm playing guitar at the SLC, so I'm involved with organizing music. The girl that is actually in charge is not a leader- someone just asked her to do it and she has a problem saying no. The other woman who is co-planning is just... strange.

She's a wonderful woman and she wants everyone to be involved, but she has a problem communicating. She asks one family to pick some songs for one day, and then told the musicians that that family will be in charge of music for the given day. However, when I talked to the family, they just thought that she was asking them to make suggestions. Ai!

Occurrence after occurrence has shown me that just as I'm a leader and I don't want to be, some people are not leaders but they think they are.

Why don't I want to be a leader?

My mentor asked me this question a few days ago. I told her it was because people are scared of leaders. Leaders are mean people, I said. People that order others around and yell and enforce the rules. I don't want to be that person.

Meanwhile, Caleb has shown me a new style of leadership that I've never noticed before. It's the same style as my dad's- a sort of nonchalant, suggestion-oriented leadership. He sits quietly and waits for an opening in the conversation, and then he makes a vague statement that gets other people thinking. Someone comes up with a plan and they think it's their own. But really, the quiet leader was intending it all along. Leaders like this can lead from the back row and no one would ever suspect.

Caleb and I are, shall we say, dating. Not dating in the way we think in the States, though. Not going out to dinner and a movie and a goodnight kiss on the front porch. Not hours on the couch in each other's arms talking about nothing in particular and occasionally not at all. Not for fun.

We've become fast friends over the past four months. I don't hesitate to say that he's my closest friend here. We understand each other. So, I wasn't surprised when one morning he came over, made me pancakes, and said, "So, dating. What do you think?"

It threw me for a loop. I knew it was on his mind. He'd passingly mentioned it before, but I hadn't expected it so soon. So, I gave him a vague answer and we said we'd reconvene after I'd talked to a few people.

A few people meant my mentor, the girls in the other apartment, and Dorothy and Dwight, our director and our immediate boss, respectively. They all gave me the same cautions and the same encouragement. I prayed. I read the Word. Caleb and I talked again, and after SLC, we'll begin a formal courtship with the intent of eventual marriage.

I told my parents. They were shocked, but supportive. They said they'd been praying about it. I was rather surprised at their stance and of course they want to be in communication with him, but they were not intently against it.

So now, I'm asking you, my friends, to enter into prayer with me about this relationship. Pray that Caleb and I will know where to set our boundaries. Pray that we'll remain accountable to those around us. Pray that we'll listen to God however He chooses to speak to us.

And pray, please, that in the year ahead God will grow us both into the people that we are intended to be.