Blog#2

So, today marks day 13 of being here. It's shocking how quick it all has passed. I'm enjoying homevisits. About the middle of last week I decided to buy some groceries for the families we visited. The first family I bought 2 packages of spaghetti noodles, 2 pounds of elbow macaroni, and 2 bars of soap. The second family, I had to buy at the Corner Shop by the Guest House because there wasn't a shop near the house, or so I understood the social worker to say. They didn't have spaghetti so the social worker replaced it with sugar.
After being at the house for a while, we decided to head back to the Guest House; and right before we left we handed the groceries to the mom. She got really excited and explained to the social worker that that morning they had used the last bit of their sugar and she had told her girls there would be no more sugar for anything, and that they'd have to pray that God would provide. Then she praised God for His provision.
It's really interesting to be used of God that way. It's not like I had any idea of their needs; nor did I choose to buy sugar above spaghetti noodles. God worked it out so that we would get sugar, not spaghetti. Because they prayed for sugar out of faith. And God was pleased with their faith and answered it.

Another interesting story is the first visit of that day we went to this house that was smaller than my parents' bathroom. And it housed at least two people. Luxurious house, right? Well, that didn't stop the mother from praising God for the house they had, that it was OK.

How often are we ungrateful for what we have, always wishing we had something bigger, something better, something different? How often do we overlook the fact that we have a multi-room house, running water, consistent electricity, enough food?

It's definitely a smack in the face to live in a life of ungratefulness for big things, when people are living with small houses and are thankful for that.

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I'm really glad I'm staying here for four months. Despite the fact that I haven't done anything of my main mission(which might play in this forthcoming expression), I wouldn't be ready to leave in two days if I had come for 15 days. Like, if my mission vision wasn't that of teaching music and ASL, and just come to be a 2-wker, I'd most likely would want to stay here longer.
I think if I ever go on other mission trips to other countries, it'd have to be for at least a month at a time. You can't really experience the culture, or all of the potential lessons ready to cultivate. Like, with the Spain trip I feel like it was more of what I can do for missionaries(which isn't bad nec.). But I think in the area of missions, I'm more called to the people, not the missionaries. Saa...
And being with the people, learning their stories, learning their love, learning their faith, will give me greater experiences on which to act. Like, to see my lack of faith in “big things” that are in reality little things, while these people have faith for everything.

I've been here 13 days. :O I really hope the rest of the time doesn't fly so fast without at least something amazing happening per day. Like God working in my life or seeing God work in another's. Or even both.

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Oh, so on my way to Addis on Christmas I sat next to this mother and her 3 year old son, Yared(?). He started talking to me, and I couldn't understand anything obviously. So Jonnett leaned over and told me to ask him what his name was in Amharic. She then tells me how to tell him what my name is. And then I ended up finding out how to count to 5 from him. I had a bag of gifts for Mussie's nieces and nephews and one of the gifts was a “my first 1000 English words” so I showed him some things like bed and sugar and rice. And then I taught him how to count to five in English. :D It was rather cute all together.
Like during one time of lull, he stared at me and we had a conversation out of raise of eyebrows for a couple of minutes. :p


It's lunch time now and I leave for more homevisits in an hour and my thinking for blogging isn't coming fast enough, so I'm going to end it here.