A-Twitter with Excitement!

Part of my job as a missionary is educating people around the world about what happens in this particular corner of it. That’s how we work towards reconciliation and it’s one reason I’ve devoted so much time to this blog.

In the continued effort to share the story here, I have recently joined Twitter - check me out at twitter.com/jazink.

For those of you who don’t know, Twitter is often referred to as a micro-blogging site. I write tiny updates about what I’m doing. You can either “follow” me and have the updates sent directly to your cell phone or you can just read along at the web site.

(A note to other users: I can't receive tweets in South Africa so don't be sending me any of those @ messages I don't understand anyway.)

Part of my reason for doing this is that I’ve realized how much of my daily life here never makes it onto this blog. I find that daily life mundane and routine by this point but when I stop and think about it I realize just how different it is. For instance, I had a great series of interactions on Thursday, first getting this really sick patient onto TB treatment and then having an unexpectedly great meeting about micro-credit (almost entirely in Xhosa without a translator) and then having a wonderful English class. Or there’s the time I had five really sick HIV patients in the back of the truck and found myself not feeling sorry for them or wanting to help them but cursing how heavy they were to pick up and help in the back. I’m not sure that writing about it in mini-posts is the best approach but it is at least worth trying.

This is definitely an experiment and I have no idea how it will pan out. For one thing, it might become too expensive for me to keep sending all those SMS messages. Once I've been at this a little while, I'd appreciate your input on how effective a means of communication you think this is.

But for now, check it out.

twitter.com/jazink