The last blog I wrote, I mentioned that God has a remarkable way of teaching us the things we need to learn. This is a continuation of our first weekend home after a great visit State-side. (And this is a note to Wanda, a very special friend of ours...it's a long one! This should keep you busy for a bit! :0) )
Because it was Semana Santa and Friday was a holiday, all of our employees were given the day off which meant we didn’t have a guard that day or that night. I had already planned on staying home with Xander and getting started on our laundry and spending the day unpacking and reorganizing. I had figured it would be a quiet and fairly restful day at home…that “figuring” was done on the plane Thursday before we arrived home to all the ticks.
What I hadn’t figured in was the amount of time or energy I would be spending repeating the following procedure numerous times throughout that day (and the days following) in trying to eliminate them. I realized I had a routine and rarely did I vary from it. I had started out by calling Jim to take care of them but we both realized early on that wasn’t going to be feasible. I was going to have to deal with the little blood-suckers, as well. And thus began the tick dance.
Initially, I would shudder violently when I realized there was yet another tick that needed my attention…whether it was on the floor, the bed, the table, the wall, the dog…or the worst of all, on Jim or me. I would then hold my breath (why I do that with this kind of thing, I don’t know, but I do) and then having worked up enough gumption, I would make what I’m sure was a horribly nasty face, reach out, pull back, reach out, pull back and finally, forging ahead, I would just do the dirty deed of picking them or pulling them off. The shudder move was then repeated accompanied by the horribly, nasty face.
Disposal was either achieved by depositing them in a plastic container for a mass casting out resulting in a “burial at sea” (the toilet) or they were dropped one by one in to the teeming waters and flushed away. (I am currently doing a Bible study on Jonah…can you tell?) I then would immediately and vigorously wash my hands with antibacterial soap. As I said, this procedure was repeated over and over. The first few days were around here were pretty dramatic, trust me.
Okay…so enough of the tick issue…I’ve probably milked all the sympathy out of dealing with them that I can. Back to the “More”…
We got up early Friday morning, thanks to the neighbor’s anemic rooster issuing his daybreak clarion call…plus it’s hard to sleep in late when you’re fearful to stay in one place or position for too long of a period. A vision of ticks swarming over my unsuspecting, sleeping body was more powerful of a motivator to get up than my alarm clock could ever have been.
As soon as we finished our quiet time and breakfast, I started the laundry. The fact that the water was already at just a trickle was not a good sign…laundry was going to take a lot longer than I had planned. That’s just part and parcel of us living in Nicaragua…I don’t even think much about it anymore…it’s just the way it is. Jim planned on going to go get some money changed and then go to the grocery store as we didn’t have any food in the house. The total lack of food was not a planned event.
I had left the food that would not be good upon our return on the second shelf of our refrigerator. I also had left a note for Margarita telling her she could have that food for her family, but evidently, I must not have been clear which shelf because when we got home Thursday night, there wasn’t anything left…no tub butter, no unopened cheese, no food in the freezer, nothing. That’s one of the pitfalls of trying to communicate in writing with folks who have little education…hmmm…I guess that would include us in regards to our language skills! No big deal…Jim would just run to the store Friday morning.
But it was soon going to turn in to a big deal. To begin with, the car wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. We weren’t really all that surprised. After all, it had been over 3 weeks since it had been started and the battery had given us some problems before. But neither of us thought it to be a major problem. Jim would just hook up the little portable charger that we purchased for such situations. He left it on the battery for a bit and then tried to start it again…still no luck.
Jim then cleaned the connections on the cables and hooked the charger back up for a little while longer. Meanwhile, we each had a hearty breakfast of dry, crumbly granola bars – one each. The thought of rationing had already crossed my mind. I was glad we had them in the pantry and I was even more glad that we had our good Nica coffee to wash them down.
Jim returned to the carport. I heard the car door open and prayed that it would start. Nada. I sighed and headed for the kitchen, trying to assess what we would have for lunch later that day. I knew I had some canned soup in the pantry and there were still a few individual packages of saltines. No problem. Hmmm…didn’t I think that earlier?
Later that afternoon, after a tasty lunch of peanut butter, crackers and water, when we knew the battery was going to refuse to be charged, we called Susanna. We were hoping she would be able to take Jim to PriceSmart to buy a battery and if she couldn’t do that, then Plan B was that maybe she could run him to the grocery store so that we could at least get a few groceries…including cat food and dog food. We were dangerously close to being out of pet food, as well.
No answer at any of Susanna’s three phone numbers, but we left messages on all three just to cover all our bases. I also sent her an e-mail just in case there was something happening with her phones and that she wasn’t receiving our messages. Supper time rolled around. We were both hungry…the peanut butter and crackers were great for lunch but didn’t have a lot of staying power. I decided to fix our can of chicken noodle soup. Oops…that can of soup wasn’t chicken noodle…it was cream of celery. I didn’t even try to run that one by Jim.
Okay, I knew we weren’t going to starve to death, but we were getting hungry…and I was getting worried. It was Semana Santa weekend…Easter weekend. There were already a lot of the smaller businesses that were closed. I knew that even more would be closed the next day…
Supper that night consisted of microwave popcorn…and since it was not the freshest of popcorn to begin with, we had lots of unpopped kernels and what did pop was tough…but oh my goodness…it tasted pretty good that night!
Another thing we didn’t have was a bag of ice. And, since it was so hot, our two little ice cube trays were having a hard time keeping up with our desire for cold water…but I have to say, I think we were becoming much more appreciative for each little blessing. And tiny ice cubes? They were a definite blessing!
Friday night, we were without a night guard. And because it was a holiday weekend, I was a little uneasy that we weren’t going to have anyone there. It was a night of little sleep…not because of outside disturbances but simply because I tend not to sleep as well on the nights we are guard-free. It didn’t help that now, Xander seems to be just like a baby who has his nights and days mixed up. He wants to sleep during the day due to the heat and then about 11:00 p.m. and on…he’s ready to play! Which means he barks, jumps on the bed, whines and digs at us. That tick-bitten canine was testing my profession of being an animal lover!
Saturday morning, we were up early again…love that raspy-voiced rooster! We scrounged up two more granola bars. I was pretty happy to have found those tucked in the back of the pantry. We also ate a little bit of some stale cereal…without milk. And it was another day without water…it hadn’t come on during the night. This meant that we didn’t have a lot in reserve in our water tank. And it also meant that we quickly became very conservative on washing our dishes, flushing our toilets and naturally, there were no showers…we took spit baths. Of course, laundry wasn’t even on our radar at that point.
We also realized around 9:00 a.m. that morning that our day guard wasn’t coming. He hadn’t called so we assumed that there was yet another misunderstanding and that he was taking the entire weekend off. Okay, we could manage without the guard. I figured that would also save us some on that week’s payroll.
We tried to call Susanna again. Great. Jim’s phone didn’t have any more minutes on it. I got mine. Neither did mine. Note to self…not a good idea to recharge the phones at the same time…let there be at least a 48 hour delay for the second one. Now what? Nothing. We would wait and hope that we would hear from Susanna. We could receive phone calls, we just couldn’t make any.
Finally, around 11:00 a.m., Susanna called. She had been staying at the hospital with a sick baby and had not checked her messages. She was busy but said that she was going home for a bit and would come by around 1:00 p.m. or so and let us use her car until Monday if Jim would take her back to the hospital. We figured Jim could run to PriceSmart after taking Susanna back to the hospital and then stop by the grocery store.
We also began discussing buying a freezer….again. We have this conversation periodically. We have looked at them and priced them and even measured for them. Because our refrigerator is small, our freezer space is even smaller…which means that our 10# bag of ice that we normally have stuffed in there, takes up most of our refrigerator’s freezer space. That day, a yodel probably would have echoed in the freezer, it was so empty! But typically, it is “full” of ice which leaves little space for anything else.
We have rationalized that if we bought a freezer, we could buy meat, chicken…maybe even ice cream… when we can find it on sale and keep it in the freezer. If we had a freezer, we would most certainly have had some type of meat in it. And if that were the case, we could have had some real food instead of the scavenged carbs we were salivating over at each meal.
The last time we had this conversation about a freezer, it was right after Christmas when PriceSmart marked down their turkeys...we could have bought one for between $20 and $30! In retrospect, I realized I had almost talked Jim into buying a ridiculously high-priced appliance based solely on the price of a marked-down turkey!!! Thank goodness, Jim is not impulsive! As happy as my head was at that moment about my sometimes frustratingly non-impulsive husband, my stomach was a little resentful about the fact.
But knowing Susanna was going to be coming by soon, picked my spirits up. 1:00 came and went. And so did 2:00…and 3:00 and 4:00. And we had no way of calling to check on her to make sure everything was okay on her end. Finally, Susanna called and she was on her way to the pick Jim up. It was almost 6:00 p.m. She had her own problems to deal with so we were very thankful that she made the time to run up to our house to get Jim.
They left to go back to La Mascota…the children’s hospital where she was staying with the baby. It is a fair distance from our house. About an hour later, Jim called me from the grocery store. Due to the hour and the fact that there were already lots of celebrants out drinking, driving and shooting off their fireworks, Jim had decided not to try to go to PriceSmart and instead, headed straight to the grocery store. Thankfully, La Union takes American money because by the time Jim was able to get out, the money-changers had already gone home. We had skipped lunch…I don’t know how much of an option it was at that point…so the thought of seeing my beloved husband walk through the door with food…well, it almost made me giddy!
Saturday night, we were again without a guard which was going to mean another restless night. Actually, it would have been a restless night even if we would have had a guard. Our neighbors had one of their all-night parties…which literally go all night. The loud music, singing and drinking typically last until daybreak and that night was no exception. I think we finally fell asleep around 5:00 a.m. and of course, we then overslept, not waking up until well after 8:00 a.m. We missed our Easter service and communion at church!
What was amazing to me was that overall, I had dealt pretty well with the ticks, I dealt with the dead battery and I was even okay with minimal meals. But for whatever reason, the fact we had missed church on Easter really got to me. I was teary most of the morning. It just seemed that ever since we had set foot on Nicaraguan soil again, that we had been met with one challenge after another.
I thought about what it was that I could take away from all of that. I wanted to find the positive in each obstacle. I wanted to know what God was doing in that weekend that seemed to be filled with examples of Murphy’s Law at work.
The ticks? Affectionately known here as the Plague of the Blood-Suckers…what could be good about that? I was forced to deal with something that I absolutely abhor. Never did I think I could get to the point of popping those bloated little blimps of blood off my dog without an automatic gag reflex kicking in to gear. I can now. And I think God is making sure I don’t forget how to do it as we are still tick-picking here in Ticomo, but thankfully, the numbers are decreasing dramatically.
The dead car battery? We don’t know why, but we feel that it was obvious that God wanted us to stay put that weekend. And what we might have initially considered a huge inconvenience very well could have turned out to be God’s hand of protection on us. Thank you, Father, for the “No” answer to those prayers we asked of You on Friday and most of Saturday to enable us to go to town. We don’t need to know from what you protected us but we do need to be grateful for that protection.
The empty refrigerator and freezer? Once I got hold of the truth that we weren’t going to starve to death and no one was going to have to happen upon our bleached bones, I realized that our lack of food enabled a needy family to have some food. And I honestly was glad that we were able to help Margarita and her family even through a misunderstanding.
No food in the house? Okay, that was an exaggeration. We had granola bars, peanut butter, crackers and popcorn. We had enough and we didn’t suffer a bit. All I have to do is look out my kitchen window and I see folks who can’t say that. God provided what we needed. Proverbs 30:8-9 (NIV) says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the Lord?" Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” That verse has new meaning for me now…and I sincerely hope that I have more compassion now for those who suffer hunger pains that are real and prolonged and less tolerance for those who whine and complain that they don’t like what is put before them.
No night guard? We have the One who sees everything watching over us and we never have to fear that He may fall asleep or not show up. He’s here.
No Easter service? Funny…my Bible still has the same Resurrection account and God has blessed me with the ability to read it for myself. Although it is not something I would advocate, we did okay not participating in our Easter service here. And God had already blessed us with a special communion service with our church family in Cassville the night before we left to come back here.
I think that rough weekend was meant to prepare us for what lies ahead for us here...and it’s true, the battles have already begun. It’s always a Mountain Top time when we get to visit our family and friends in the States and this time, we were also able to participate in a wonderful missions’ conference while there. It’s never easy to leave the comfortable and familiar.
There’s no doubt that God has blessed us immensely. I think He wanted to remind us of that. I think He also wanted to remind us that His blessings don’t always come wrapped as expected. Sometimes they appear in the most unexpected way. I think He wanted to remind us that, of course, there’s going to be more ahead…more difficulties, more frustrations, more discouragement…and we are to meet each one of those more situations with more of God. I’m profoundly thankful tonight that He is More than enough.
Because it was Semana Santa and Friday was a holiday, all of our employees were given the day off which meant we didn’t have a guard that day or that night. I had already planned on staying home with Xander and getting started on our laundry and spending the day unpacking and reorganizing. I had figured it would be a quiet and fairly restful day at home…that “figuring” was done on the plane Thursday before we arrived home to all the ticks.
What I hadn’t figured in was the amount of time or energy I would be spending repeating the following procedure numerous times throughout that day (and the days following) in trying to eliminate them. I realized I had a routine and rarely did I vary from it. I had started out by calling Jim to take care of them but we both realized early on that wasn’t going to be feasible. I was going to have to deal with the little blood-suckers, as well. And thus began the tick dance.
Initially, I would shudder violently when I realized there was yet another tick that needed my attention…whether it was on the floor, the bed, the table, the wall, the dog…or the worst of all, on Jim or me. I would then hold my breath (why I do that with this kind of thing, I don’t know, but I do) and then having worked up enough gumption, I would make what I’m sure was a horribly nasty face, reach out, pull back, reach out, pull back and finally, forging ahead, I would just do the dirty deed of picking them or pulling them off. The shudder move was then repeated accompanied by the horribly, nasty face.
Disposal was either achieved by depositing them in a plastic container for a mass casting out resulting in a “burial at sea” (the toilet) or they were dropped one by one in to the teeming waters and flushed away. (I am currently doing a Bible study on Jonah…can you tell?) I then would immediately and vigorously wash my hands with antibacterial soap. As I said, this procedure was repeated over and over. The first few days were around here were pretty dramatic, trust me.
Okay…so enough of the tick issue…I’ve probably milked all the sympathy out of dealing with them that I can. Back to the “More”…
We got up early Friday morning, thanks to the neighbor’s anemic rooster issuing his daybreak clarion call…plus it’s hard to sleep in late when you’re fearful to stay in one place or position for too long of a period. A vision of ticks swarming over my unsuspecting, sleeping body was more powerful of a motivator to get up than my alarm clock could ever have been.
As soon as we finished our quiet time and breakfast, I started the laundry. The fact that the water was already at just a trickle was not a good sign…laundry was going to take a lot longer than I had planned. That’s just part and parcel of us living in Nicaragua…I don’t even think much about it anymore…it’s just the way it is. Jim planned on going to go get some money changed and then go to the grocery store as we didn’t have any food in the house. The total lack of food was not a planned event.
I had left the food that would not be good upon our return on the second shelf of our refrigerator. I also had left a note for Margarita telling her she could have that food for her family, but evidently, I must not have been clear which shelf because when we got home Thursday night, there wasn’t anything left…no tub butter, no unopened cheese, no food in the freezer, nothing. That’s one of the pitfalls of trying to communicate in writing with folks who have little education…hmmm…I guess that would include us in regards to our language skills! No big deal…Jim would just run to the store Friday morning.
But it was soon going to turn in to a big deal. To begin with, the car wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. We weren’t really all that surprised. After all, it had been over 3 weeks since it had been started and the battery had given us some problems before. But neither of us thought it to be a major problem. Jim would just hook up the little portable charger that we purchased for such situations. He left it on the battery for a bit and then tried to start it again…still no luck.
Jim then cleaned the connections on the cables and hooked the charger back up for a little while longer. Meanwhile, we each had a hearty breakfast of dry, crumbly granola bars – one each. The thought of rationing had already crossed my mind. I was glad we had them in the pantry and I was even more glad that we had our good Nica coffee to wash them down.
Jim returned to the carport. I heard the car door open and prayed that it would start. Nada. I sighed and headed for the kitchen, trying to assess what we would have for lunch later that day. I knew I had some canned soup in the pantry and there were still a few individual packages of saltines. No problem. Hmmm…didn’t I think that earlier?
Later that afternoon, after a tasty lunch of peanut butter, crackers and water, when we knew the battery was going to refuse to be charged, we called Susanna. We were hoping she would be able to take Jim to PriceSmart to buy a battery and if she couldn’t do that, then Plan B was that maybe she could run him to the grocery store so that we could at least get a few groceries…including cat food and dog food. We were dangerously close to being out of pet food, as well.
No answer at any of Susanna’s three phone numbers, but we left messages on all three just to cover all our bases. I also sent her an e-mail just in case there was something happening with her phones and that she wasn’t receiving our messages. Supper time rolled around. We were both hungry…the peanut butter and crackers were great for lunch but didn’t have a lot of staying power. I decided to fix our can of chicken noodle soup. Oops…that can of soup wasn’t chicken noodle…it was cream of celery. I didn’t even try to run that one by Jim.
Okay, I knew we weren’t going to starve to death, but we were getting hungry…and I was getting worried. It was Semana Santa weekend…Easter weekend. There were already a lot of the smaller businesses that were closed. I knew that even more would be closed the next day…
Supper that night consisted of microwave popcorn…and since it was not the freshest of popcorn to begin with, we had lots of unpopped kernels and what did pop was tough…but oh my goodness…it tasted pretty good that night!
Another thing we didn’t have was a bag of ice. And, since it was so hot, our two little ice cube trays were having a hard time keeping up with our desire for cold water…but I have to say, I think we were becoming much more appreciative for each little blessing. And tiny ice cubes? They were a definite blessing!
Friday night, we were without a night guard. And because it was a holiday weekend, I was a little uneasy that we weren’t going to have anyone there. It was a night of little sleep…not because of outside disturbances but simply because I tend not to sleep as well on the nights we are guard-free. It didn’t help that now, Xander seems to be just like a baby who has his nights and days mixed up. He wants to sleep during the day due to the heat and then about 11:00 p.m. and on…he’s ready to play! Which means he barks, jumps on the bed, whines and digs at us. That tick-bitten canine was testing my profession of being an animal lover!
Saturday morning, we were up early again…love that raspy-voiced rooster! We scrounged up two more granola bars. I was pretty happy to have found those tucked in the back of the pantry. We also ate a little bit of some stale cereal…without milk. And it was another day without water…it hadn’t come on during the night. This meant that we didn’t have a lot in reserve in our water tank. And it also meant that we quickly became very conservative on washing our dishes, flushing our toilets and naturally, there were no showers…we took spit baths. Of course, laundry wasn’t even on our radar at that point.
We also realized around 9:00 a.m. that morning that our day guard wasn’t coming. He hadn’t called so we assumed that there was yet another misunderstanding and that he was taking the entire weekend off. Okay, we could manage without the guard. I figured that would also save us some on that week’s payroll.
We tried to call Susanna again. Great. Jim’s phone didn’t have any more minutes on it. I got mine. Neither did mine. Note to self…not a good idea to recharge the phones at the same time…let there be at least a 48 hour delay for the second one. Now what? Nothing. We would wait and hope that we would hear from Susanna. We could receive phone calls, we just couldn’t make any.
Finally, around 11:00 a.m., Susanna called. She had been staying at the hospital with a sick baby and had not checked her messages. She was busy but said that she was going home for a bit and would come by around 1:00 p.m. or so and let us use her car until Monday if Jim would take her back to the hospital. We figured Jim could run to PriceSmart after taking Susanna back to the hospital and then stop by the grocery store.
We also began discussing buying a freezer….again. We have this conversation periodically. We have looked at them and priced them and even measured for them. Because our refrigerator is small, our freezer space is even smaller…which means that our 10# bag of ice that we normally have stuffed in there, takes up most of our refrigerator’s freezer space. That day, a yodel probably would have echoed in the freezer, it was so empty! But typically, it is “full” of ice which leaves little space for anything else.
We have rationalized that if we bought a freezer, we could buy meat, chicken…maybe even ice cream… when we can find it on sale and keep it in the freezer. If we had a freezer, we would most certainly have had some type of meat in it. And if that were the case, we could have had some real food instead of the scavenged carbs we were salivating over at each meal.
The last time we had this conversation about a freezer, it was right after Christmas when PriceSmart marked down their turkeys...we could have bought one for between $20 and $30! In retrospect, I realized I had almost talked Jim into buying a ridiculously high-priced appliance based solely on the price of a marked-down turkey!!! Thank goodness, Jim is not impulsive! As happy as my head was at that moment about my sometimes frustratingly non-impulsive husband, my stomach was a little resentful about the fact.
But knowing Susanna was going to be coming by soon, picked my spirits up. 1:00 came and went. And so did 2:00…and 3:00 and 4:00. And we had no way of calling to check on her to make sure everything was okay on her end. Finally, Susanna called and she was on her way to the pick Jim up. It was almost 6:00 p.m. She had her own problems to deal with so we were very thankful that she made the time to run up to our house to get Jim.
They left to go back to La Mascota…the children’s hospital where she was staying with the baby. It is a fair distance from our house. About an hour later, Jim called me from the grocery store. Due to the hour and the fact that there were already lots of celebrants out drinking, driving and shooting off their fireworks, Jim had decided not to try to go to PriceSmart and instead, headed straight to the grocery store. Thankfully, La Union takes American money because by the time Jim was able to get out, the money-changers had already gone home. We had skipped lunch…I don’t know how much of an option it was at that point…so the thought of seeing my beloved husband walk through the door with food…well, it almost made me giddy!
Saturday night, we were again without a guard which was going to mean another restless night. Actually, it would have been a restless night even if we would have had a guard. Our neighbors had one of their all-night parties…which literally go all night. The loud music, singing and drinking typically last until daybreak and that night was no exception. I think we finally fell asleep around 5:00 a.m. and of course, we then overslept, not waking up until well after 8:00 a.m. We missed our Easter service and communion at church!
What was amazing to me was that overall, I had dealt pretty well with the ticks, I dealt with the dead battery and I was even okay with minimal meals. But for whatever reason, the fact we had missed church on Easter really got to me. I was teary most of the morning. It just seemed that ever since we had set foot on Nicaraguan soil again, that we had been met with one challenge after another.
I thought about what it was that I could take away from all of that. I wanted to find the positive in each obstacle. I wanted to know what God was doing in that weekend that seemed to be filled with examples of Murphy’s Law at work.
The ticks? Affectionately known here as the Plague of the Blood-Suckers…what could be good about that? I was forced to deal with something that I absolutely abhor. Never did I think I could get to the point of popping those bloated little blimps of blood off my dog without an automatic gag reflex kicking in to gear. I can now. And I think God is making sure I don’t forget how to do it as we are still tick-picking here in Ticomo, but thankfully, the numbers are decreasing dramatically.
The dead car battery? We don’t know why, but we feel that it was obvious that God wanted us to stay put that weekend. And what we might have initially considered a huge inconvenience very well could have turned out to be God’s hand of protection on us. Thank you, Father, for the “No” answer to those prayers we asked of You on Friday and most of Saturday to enable us to go to town. We don’t need to know from what you protected us but we do need to be grateful for that protection.
The empty refrigerator and freezer? Once I got hold of the truth that we weren’t going to starve to death and no one was going to have to happen upon our bleached bones, I realized that our lack of food enabled a needy family to have some food. And I honestly was glad that we were able to help Margarita and her family even through a misunderstanding.
No food in the house? Okay, that was an exaggeration. We had granola bars, peanut butter, crackers and popcorn. We had enough and we didn’t suffer a bit. All I have to do is look out my kitchen window and I see folks who can’t say that. God provided what we needed. Proverbs 30:8-9 (NIV) says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the Lord?" Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” That verse has new meaning for me now…and I sincerely hope that I have more compassion now for those who suffer hunger pains that are real and prolonged and less tolerance for those who whine and complain that they don’t like what is put before them.
No night guard? We have the One who sees everything watching over us and we never have to fear that He may fall asleep or not show up. He’s here.
No Easter service? Funny…my Bible still has the same Resurrection account and God has blessed me with the ability to read it for myself. Although it is not something I would advocate, we did okay not participating in our Easter service here. And God had already blessed us with a special communion service with our church family in Cassville the night before we left to come back here.
I think that rough weekend was meant to prepare us for what lies ahead for us here...and it’s true, the battles have already begun. It’s always a Mountain Top time when we get to visit our family and friends in the States and this time, we were also able to participate in a wonderful missions’ conference while there. It’s never easy to leave the comfortable and familiar.
There’s no doubt that God has blessed us immensely. I think He wanted to remind us of that. I think He also wanted to remind us that His blessings don’t always come wrapped as expected. Sometimes they appear in the most unexpected way. I think He wanted to remind us that, of course, there’s going to be more ahead…more difficulties, more frustrations, more discouragement…and we are to meet each one of those more situations with more of God. I’m profoundly thankful tonight that He is More than enough.
"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God;" Romans 8:28
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