New town.
New culture.
New language in the mix.
First time living on my own.
It’s shocking. But as I sit here in my kitchen the morning after my first night here, I am happy. Almost like a nervous but giddy little girl waiting to see what her daddy has in store for her in some fun, little adventure. Probably because I AM that little girl. And my Daddy has a LOT in store. I don’t know what that is yet. I don’t know what the next few weeks and months and years are going to look like. But He invited me, I said yes, and now I get to hang on for the ride!
Don’t get me wrong: There have been tears. Just two Tuesday morning, as I packed my final things, I broke down and had to spend a few minutes just talking with my parents. Truth be told, this situation is not my first choice. I have never had a desire to live on my own, and I do not really enjoy the idea of needing to learn a language so difficult and unique as this one. I love having my siblings around me (most of the time) (: and my heart feels sick at the thought of not being able to be at the home as children, our children/siblings, come and go from the home and face sickness and seizures and emotional challenges. I love the ministry that our family has there, and it is going to be so hard to not be there with them. But Tuesday morning I climbed up onto our roof one last time and I told God that even though I was pretty nervous and overwhelmed, I told Him ‘yes’ and my ‘yes’ still stands. I will not back out just because this does not fully line up with my own dreams of “ideal”, because I trust Him to the point that I know His plans will always be better than mine.
I’m also coming to understand that He knows my own heart and needs better than I do. And while He owes me absolutely nothing, He has faithfully continued to meet all of my greatest needs up until this day; what reason would I have to doubt Him now? There is absolutely no reason.
I have much more to share with you all about all that God is teaching me and all the ways that I am being challenged in my thinking, but for now, as I have a lot to try to to get done today, I am going to give you all a quick update and run down of the last couple of days here.
Tuesday afternoon, we arrived in San Pablo and unloaded most of my things (with the exception of my dog) and did some initial cleaning and arranging.
Some men were still doing the work needed to add a pila (washing station for dishes and clothes), so we really could not stay the night. So we headed to San Pedro where we spent the night in a hotel. The next morning, we got breakfast and then headed right back to San Pablo where we spend a few hours doing more cleaning and unloading of boxes and my dad and Don did some little projects such as fixing light fixtures, changing light bulbs, helping to move the pila into place (that was a task) and cleaning a mini-chandelier. You would think that final task would have been fairly simply but…well, you should just ask them about that.
Working hard or hardly working?
At about 1:00pm, my dad and Don headed back to San Antonio Aguas Calientes, but my sisters stayed here with me. (They will be returning by bus on Monday.) We looked at each other with funny expressions and looked at our small supply of food that we brought to get us started. We decided a box of macaroni and hotdogs would be our best option for our short amount of time. Half way through it dawned on us that we had no butter and it was too late to go tienda hopping to look for some, so we went without. The three of us sat around a tiny little table in my cute little kitchen eating our simple little unhealthy North American meals made over a cute little stove. (Are you catching onto the theme?)
When we finished up, we had to leave all of our dirty dishes sitting on the table because the pila was still being worked on. We spend a bit of time discussing goals for the day, foods and items still needed, and plans for house to accomplish everything. So we straightened up, grabbed Champ, and headed out on a walk. We decided to go visit our friends, Pastor Efraín and Bety and their family, who had just returned from a few day trip in which their daughter gave birth to her first son. We met their handsome little grandson and caught up with the family. They were then so kind as to send their friend and house worker with us to help us buy some needed veggies, foods, and supplies for dinner and breakfast this morning. (They did this so that we would get the correct prices instead of paying “skin tax” as some friends of our like to call it.) So María helped us purchase what we needed. We headed back to the house with our rice, beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, oil, and eggs, getting funny looks from neighbors who are all gawking at the whites and the German Shepherd. We continued along with friendly smiles and greetings, trying to act as normal as possible, and stopping to talk to any children or women who seemed eager to do so. (A group of children kept calling Champ from their doorway, but when I would move toward them to lead Champ to them, they would scurry into the house with screams a giggles.)
We arrived back and the house less than an hour after leaving, and we did some more touching up around the house, and general preparation for dinner. Making dinner was a little more time consuming and difficult than we expected as we are still learning to use new cooking tools and moving around my disorganized kitchen, but with team work, we are able to pull off a really good stir-fry meal over rice! (The rice was not as good as we had hoped, but we will learn with time.) We sat and talked at the table next to the big open window facing the street just yards away as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and neighbors moved too and fro, talking, laughing, and going about their day. Champ wandered in and out of our open front door, walking out to peek out the gate at all those passing by. (He has been sort of depressed these couple of days as he tries to figure out what is going on.)
By the end of dinner, Mitchel let us know that the pila was finished and the garage (aka: future classroom) cleaned up. So Taryn washed all of our dishes, we checked out the garage, pila, and roof and then…we set up my little Christmas tree!! I know it’s early. But I am going to go home for a few days for Thanksgiving and the Fulp family “Christmas Tree Day”, and I didn’t want to come back to a lonely, Christmas tree-less house at the end of that. Not to mention, this move is just a shock overall, so I needed something happy and fun to add to the mix.
By the time we finished figuring out all the issues with my cheap lights and stringing strings onto my cheap bulbs, it was quite late and we were quite tired. We found a way to fit the light therapy mattresses that we brought onto the floor of my bedroom for my sisters to sleep on. Then we fought off some fearsome attacking spiders (aka: I used a fly-swatter to smack two medium-sized spiders that surprised us on the wall), got ready, and went to sleep.
This morning we woke up a little later than we should of (8:00), showered, made some scrambled eggs and peanut butter toast, warmed up some refried beans, and made a pot of coffee. We then tackled the simple task of tying some rope up on the roof for a clothes line and I washed the dishes and two towels (made filthy yesterday) in the pila. Turns out I am quite the weakling. I forgot how exhausting it is to wash large items in a pila! But the towels are now on the room, the house fairly in order, and we have plans to eat a very simple lunch, go on a walk around town, visit a couple of friends, buy a few more items for cooking and house work, make soup for dinner, and watch a movie on our computer once it is dark.
I, personally, already feel myself wanting to shut down and hide out. That is why we are leaving my front door open, taking intentional walks, and talking to anyone that we get the chance to talk to. I have messed this up before, and it always hurts more than it helps. God has brought me here, so He will carry me through whatever I may face. He will be with me every step of the way. So I am setting goals and establishing requirements for myself so that I don’t give into my introvert-like tendencies. But for those of you who have relationship with God, please pray for me? Pray that God flows into me and then overflows to others, so that it is not me but Him that they are seeing. These are my neighbors and future friends around me, but this has to do with that which is so much more than me. So pray that I keep my eyes and ears open to what God is doing and that I lean on His strength to join Him!
Thank you for those who have been praying for me and encouraging me in a variety of ways. Thank you to those of you who helped support me financially as I get started. Each of you have helped me in ways that you cannot even know! I will do my best to keep you all updated (although not in such a detailed manner as this…that would get frighteningly boring. Wait—did I forget to mention my bathroom breaks??) In the meantime, keeping serving God where you are at so that we can encourage one another forward! I am certainly in need of accountability, and I am certain that many of you are, as well, so maybe we can do that for one another?
No comments:
Post a Comment