Hi dear friends,

You are all doing well I hope. The reason I’m writing is because I’m about to leave the country for a time, indeed far before I imagined I would. The choice wasn’t mine per se, more of a team-wide consensus that, given the many local security situations that have cropped up over the last few months—culminating in a serious crisis that I’ve been helping with for the past five weeks—it is time as an NGO to temporarily pull out, take a breather and rethink how we are going to go about the next round of team activity. We are planning on returning (and in fact have already bought our return tickets) sometime around March 2011.

A lot of things were in the works here—my hospital English classes, my mentorships of university students, my Dari lessons, my newly leased mud house … not to mention all the health education work that my NGO as a whole was doing in the remote regions around our town. We were beginning to dig deeper in our relationships with people and really make friends. Friends who, two days ago, cried when we were saying our temporary goodbyes.

But the good news is, we are placing the future in the very best hands, so to speak, with the full intent of continuing to serve in this country. We just need to look at how to do that, really meditate about it, and try to find the best way for the long-haul given the worsening situation here. A jiggle here, a tweak there, and by the grace of God we’ll be back in action after a few months’ time, continuing our work in this awesome country. If you guys could send some good thoughts about our decision-making process and all the many factors … personal, security, family, etc. etc. etc. … that need to get plugged into the equation.

I want to emphasize that I am fully in trust-mode on this one, and that I do fully and realistically expect to return soon.

Thanks for everything, your support, thoughts, love, mentorship, interest and care. See ya soon…

Khuda hafez,
E

[Photo by evanistan @ Flickr]