Becoming Chris Kamalski

I don’t even know where to start, and much of my mind feels a bit too fried to reflect as I wish to, but given the fact that this is the first chance I’ve had in the past 7 days to even jump onto my blog, here’s a few things that have gone down:

• I turned 30 last Friday!  I know everyone knows that to the point of nausea, but it feels significant and I want to celebrate that.  The God of this world has woken me up each morning with breath, and I am grateful for this.  I feel older and that I am on the verge of entering a new season.  In many ways, I feel like I’m an adult now.  This likely reflects one of the generational differences of the crew I am walking through life with..but in some (small) sense, I am arriving finally.
• Maxie (‘I’m dating an African girl, remember?’) injured her leg and knee pretty badly at the tail end of our staff retreat this past Thursday.  Coupled with our car overheating at least 5x on the way home (Think we busted a head gasket, ouch!), a 40km tow home 5 feet behind a stranger’s car, and taking her to the ER 3x over the course of 3 days, it’s been a wild few days, one of those times where it seems like everything else stops. I feel like my birthday flew by because of this, which I didn’t mind at all, and yet sucked. We find out tomorrow how bad the damage is…pray!

She beat me at mini-golf this night.

Mpumulanga road trip goofiness.

The obligatory candid shot. Tony has a pretty good eye, eh?

• Rob Yackley, the NieuCommunities Director, has been with us this past week. We have had fantastic chats regarding further work with NieuCommunities, my role within CRM and how that can/should expand over the next few years, and simply a deeply affirming time of my calling and gifting being something that CRM would love to help empower.  Much more on this after a bit more processing time…but things are looking good!
• Had a FANTASTIC homemade carrot cake Friday night with sweet colored candles sent by my awesome cousin Megan after Rhythm last week.  We celebrated a bunch of October birthdays which was sweet.
• Huge party Saturday night to honor the Ward family, who are moving on from NieuCommunities after having been instrumental in staring this site 7 years ago.  We decked out Pangani as an art gallery celebrating their work and the creativity that has flowed from those they have touched.  Many of my pictures were displayed in various forms. Incredibly healing, moving, and celebratory(even though I had to take Max to the ER yet again that evening!).
• Meaningful breakfast this morning thanking the Crawley’s (Colin is the Director of Enterprise International, the business division of CRM) for their sacrificial service these past 6 months extending their stay to help our staff team transition.  Great tearful words were shared.
• I’m heading to London for 2 days exploration on the way home for work down the road with CRM (may be years down the road actually).
• MUCH MORE to say about further possibilities of continued work here in South Africa…but I need a bit of time and space to process all the conversations before sharing publicly likely next steps.
• 30 crazy, short days from now, this Apprenticeship year with NCSA will end!  Where has this year gone?