More Trials

Well, I'm here at the Internet cafe again (due to the lightening storm night before last, we lost our Internet access again). It's also our 2nd day without water (well, running water from the tap, that is). We have to use bottled water to flush the toilet, brush our teeth & wash the dishes. But there's not enough for showers or washing clothes. That will have to wait until the delivery trucks get through the fuel line-ups to deliver the much-needed water. It's God's way of levelling out the foreigners' lives with everyone else. It makes us all equals in the sense of basic needs. But I don't hear anyone complaining.

Did I give God permission to stretch us in the last post? That reminds me of many years ago on the mission field when I asked God to humble me. He took me so seriously that He actually answered and I had to beg Him to lay off! I couldn't take it!

Well, our family is also experiencing some reality. We are not your super-spiritual missionaries who are walking on a higher plane. Oh, no. Lately we've been having our share of squabbles, disagreements, 'who ate up all the bread?', 'you didn't ask permission to wear my clothes!', 'you didn't clean the floors' - 'yes, I did!', plus one night with some fairly unkind words that were supposed to be in jest. I guess God has some more cleaning up to do in our lives. The one good thing is that every week they have a prayer-and-fasting day and it's hard to hide your mood/attitude. Needless to say, not everyone showed up at the prayer meeting (I mean, living in the church compound makes it difficult to wear a mask!). So when one of the leaders asked where another member of the family was, we just told the truth. Well, he came and prayed and then shared his own family struggles. It opened up another path both ways. God always somehow brings good out of pain. And I think He's trying to make us a little more Nepali in the way they share everything. Here we are trying to keep our own things (including treats) as our own and it just leads to greed and selfishness. Well, it was one of the girls who suggested we try to share better, rather than hoarding our supplies. But that means, if you buy a little bag of chips and walk into the compound, be prepared to actually only eat a couple of them. The boys will even get a 'ring' (it's like a donut but bigger and thinner) and break it into smaller pieces and pass them around. He only eats one piece. God make us more like them! (Oh, oh! Am I praying a dangerous prayer again?)

Well, I'm sure we'll come back different but probably in more ways than we thought. It was also somehow good to share that our family has its share of problems, too, and find out that we're the same as them in that way. The term 'flatlanders' has made its way here to Nepal, too!