Smol tok nomo |
Smol tok nomo |
Sometimes I feel as if there might be an unspoken rule. One about suffering in silence making you more holy or righteous…I am not really sure how it all works but I am quite certain it exists somewhere… I guess I respectfully disagree with it. I believe there are a lot of different personality types and I can honestly say I like them all!! There are strengths and of course its counterpart weaknesses in each. However God created them all with a purpose and a use.
All that to say, in case you couldn’t tell, I am in fact a sharer. I don’t know a lot of bloggers who aren’t sharers (or writers for that matter) I just hope I find that balance you know? The one that doesn’t only share the bad things because that would make you more of a complainer, am I right? As a missionary I can say with all honesty and without hesitation that the good completely outweighs the bad in my life. My personality? Well lets just say I avoid the need for professional therapy and hopefully burn out because as stated, for me sharing the good and the bad and just living an honest open life is simply me being a real person. Can God call and use real people? Imperfect people? I sure hope so or I am in a world of trouble. WARNING: If you find the idea of sharing about issues such as, well lets just say hypothetically, LAUNDRY on the mission field unholy than STOP reading now. Since we have moved to Jubilee I have loved the constant ministry opportunities. Our road is one of the last roads before the road to town and we catch a lot of people walking in from various villages. Last week nearly every single trip we took to town we picked up someone heading in to the hospital. There was a flu bug going around and it was mostly Mommas carrying a baby and sometimes two and let me just say I LOVED it. I loved getting to know the Mom’s and getting cooed at by the adorable babies even if they had sad hacking little coughs. I LOVE the community out here. I feel apart in every way as if I was literally made for Jubilee community. I love getting to know all the ladies ,and seeing the old Grandpa that walks his little grand daughter to school for two miles on his shoulders with a really big smile. My heart feels like it is going to explode when all the kids run by my house every morning on their way to school. I love them each and will never learn not to get attached and will be heartbroken if any choose a bad path in life but I will never not love every thing about what we do here for the Lord. It is literally in my mind a privilege and the best life in the world. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get hard sometimes. Especially when you are trying to figure things out. We have been moved in two weeks and we have had a real time with our solar and our water issues. I am very worried that our rain tank won’t be enough for all our needs, which brings me full circle to tonight, my first attempt at laundry. With our solar, and water pump issues I have waited as gracefully as I can for my husband to figure out how to hook up our washer (yes, I bought a small washer) I knew it would run on a generator but we can’t find the piping fittings we need (its from Japan) and tonight was just hard I am not going to lie to you folks. I have lived three different places in Santo and spent a considerable amount of time in a fourth and I have never seen anything like the mildew that grows at Jubilee. In the two weeks that my laundry has been piling up ( while we also hosted a retreat that took both our our full time to prepare for) the mildew has been growing not just on my dirty clothes but on our clothes that are hanging up! I have been told before just to brush said mildew off, but it has been so humid and all my clothes are so damp that I am going to say if I resist my normal urge to exaggerate, a good 25% of our clothes and bedding is ruined with mildew stains. Yes we will continue to use it with stains, but is it ok that that makes me a little sad? Maybe even feel like a little bit of a failure in my woman work? So back to tonight, our first load was hilarious. Now, don’t get me wrong I am thankful for a washer this time! With a whole family hand washing was out. I would spend my full time washing and I have been there before and I am too slow for that (my hats off to my Ni - Van friends and neighbors, these women AMAZE me). So yeah, my washer is on the front porch I can’t hear the beeps over the generator and I am hauling buckets of water from my rain tank cringing at how much water it is using (my husband helped carry the water for me, he is a peach like that ;) ) I soon discover as we just hauled what felt like tons of water that half way through the load for the rinse cycle the water was just draining straight out and not operating correctly because yours truly isn’t doing it right. I tend to do this thing where I laugh instead of cry, I think it is God’s gift to me as a means of coping. With no fence I had a curious audience, mostly interested in my machine I think. By the end they were probably thinking “poor girl, hand washing is so much easier!” haha. Anyways, I am pretty sure all my clothes are still full of soap but this was my first attempt. Hi my name is Jennifer and I WILL conquer the laundry! (I am not as confident about the mildew.) So its rough sometimes and I feel so much better sharing that. I pray sharing it doesn’t make me a bad person but my thinking is when I share it helps me so I can go on for a lifetime and not burn out over silly little things like laundry when there are a million things I love about my life in Vanuatu. I am excited to have relationships growing deeper and more meaningful and I love so many here. I mean it when I say I would haul a hundred buckets of water for the honor of living among some of the best people on earth, but telling my stories of “figuring out” third world life is meaningful to me, a sharer. So thanks for letting me share that :)
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AuthorWife, Mother, Missionary, Teacher, Friend ... just a few of the many titles I gladly wear. Never dreamed this is the journey God would take me on. Archives
July 2022
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