Thursday, July 10, 2008

Thoughts In the African night . . .

Friends and Family,

I just have to tell you all about my new best friend . . . my headlamp. I am more than thankful for my trusty little light that follows me where ever I go. He started to flicker the other day and I freaked out! What ever will I do without my headlamp!! We have become such close friends in the past few weeks . . . It gets dark around 6:00pm in the evening, and it seems to be a theme that we don’t have electricity in the evenings. If we are lucky NEPA comes on around midnight and stays until 9:00am . . . not the most convenient of times, but I am thankful for this little power with which I can rotate charging my computer, cell phone and IPod . . . even if it means waking up at midnight to plug in one of the three items.
As a result of the untimely power my evenings are often left in the dark. I have a few candles, which I do have to say are quite nice and relaxing to sit by and read or journal write by in the evenings, but my headlamp can travel with me, something these candles cannot do. I tried lighting candles in each room, so that if I needed to go into my bedroom, I wouldn’t be walking into a dark room, or similarly if I needed to use the bathroom, I didn’t need to venture into the dark abyss of the bathroom (you never know what you might find in a dark room in Africa, a giant cockroach or a variety of other unwelcome roommates) . . . but leaving all those candles burning for a few hours, isn’t safe or economical, I would need to buy a lot of candles. So I have now resorted to burning just one candle and leaving my headlamp on me so that I may use it whenever I venture into a new room . . .
This decision to not go anywhere past 6:00pm without my headlamp was also aided by the difficulty in actually lighting a candle here. “How difficult could it actually be to light a candle” you may be thinking to yourself . . . well quite difficult is the answer. It takes about 5-7 matches each time you decide you want to light something, whether that be a candle or the stove or the oven (yes my oven is a gas oven . . . the electricity is not reliable enough for electric stoves or ovens). The matches here just don’t work and it’s not just me . . . believe me everyone here complains about how bad the matches are . . . they break in half when you strike them, they often don’t light, or they light and die rather quickly. It’s amazing the pile of matches that accumulate on the table in only one evening. I have been informed by more experienced missionaries that the matches with the tomato on the box are the best, but I have yet to invest in tomato matches. I will let you know how well they really do work once I am able to find these tomato matches.
It seems funny to be writing about matches and headlamps when I have seen and been thinking about so many more important things, but I thought I would share a little bit of what daily life is like here . . .
On a more important note God has been teaching me and showing me so much about need. There is so much need here. The other day I was eating my lunch out at Gyero and I dropped a piece of my food on the ground. Within seconds, the chickens, and dogs had run over to fight over this tiny scrap of food . . . and then the ants came and picked up the little crumbs that were left behind.
It’s very overwhelming at times to be faced with these constant needs. Being white, people are constantly begging and asking for money, and I can’t give away money to everyone. It’s hard to understand how God provides for all of these needs, but it blows my mind when I think about it and realize that he is big enough to provide for all these people, and he cares for each one of them individually and he knows what their true needs actually are.
Today at Bible Study we were discussing whether we truly believe and take to heart the fact that God will only withhold something good from us when he has something better planned. It’s easy to believe and see that God does this in hindsight, because we see how he provided, but so difficult to believe it in the midst of a struggle, when we think we see what we need, but don’t see God providing it for us. It comes to trusting and believing that God knows us and has our best interest at heart. We talked about several verses, but I came back to these two standards: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do and he will direct your paths.” – Proverbs 3:5
And
“And all of us have had that veil removed so that we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord. And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us we become more and more like Him, and reflect His glory even more.” 2 Corinthians 3:18

Hope this finds you all well. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement! I am thankful for all of you!

1 comment:

Anne Higbee-Owens: said...

Hi Honey, Can I send you something? Car battery, gas generator, box of strike anywhere matches, bbq lighters? How about a few cans of "Raid"?

Say "hi" to your roommates before you squish them or something...

I love you!
Mom
:)