three friends

If you look up joy in the concordance of the Bible, you may be surprised (as I was) to find how many times joy is related to being encouraged and being around and being connected with other Christians.

True story. I would have thought joy was soley ever only related to Jesus, but actually, God uses other people as well to give us joy.

Last week, we got to spend a bit of time with three people who came over for a workshop with local Pastors. The workshop was at SWIM so we met these three trainers, hung out, enjoyed fellowship. They spoiled us with Banana Nutty Ho drinks and Chocolate Milkshakes!

But best of all, their presence gave us joy. Joy in seeing what God is doing in and through their lives. Joy through their encouragement. Joy in just hanging out.

So Todd, Phil and Morgan, thanks for coming and we look forward to seeing you again, either here, in heaven, in NSW or... in Chicago... keen!

Bugs in the Rice

I live somewhere in the South Pacific, rather near the equator. That's significantly far away from you. Far away geographically. Far away relationally. Far away emotionally. Far away culturally. I live in a different world from you and it's a hard world to live in and I'm afraid that because so few of my readers have ever been to this other world, it's hard for my readers to grasp what it means to live here. I'm afraid I must sound like I'm complaining all the time. But I'm on a pendulum of either making it seem as if everything is a wonderful bliss of victory serving God in this tropical island full of coconut trees and beautiful parrots, or divulging some of the frustrations of life... then wishing I didn't because I'm not sure you understand. And I'm not sure it helps anyway.

Anyway, there's a purpose to my divulging in frustrations today...

You see back in NZ, life was so plain easy. That's pretty much what it boils down to. Life was easy (although, at the time I sure found it hard). You might think I'm being idealistic and looking through the "rose-coloured" glasses to blurry images of the good ol' times. I dare you to come here and compare the two worlds. I think you'll find the West an easy place to live daily life. You can buy any food you want. And you can eat it. If you need a pair of sandals for your baby whose feet get cut on sharp stones and infected, well, you can find some... and good ones too! If you've run out of medicine, you go and get some more. When you have infections you see a doctor or get what you need to treat it. Your kitchen bench won't go mouldy in the space of a week. Your clothes don't perpetually smell of sweat. You can do a load of washing in the morning if you want. When you want to plant something in your garden, you buy what you want, plant it and it grows.

Things always worked, life had an ebb and flow, a busy one, but when you add up all the pros and cons, there's a whole lot of pros. Life is easy. A local woman I know recently moved back here from living in Australia for six years and people say to her, "why on earth did you come back? Why didn't you stay in Australia. It's so much better there." And it is. It really is. (Despite Robert Leckie's observation: "Poor Australia. Here, too, nature has witheld her favors." - Helmet for My Pillow)

You see in this part of the world, life is really hard. Just plain hard.

You're lucky if you can go supermarket shopping. You're lucky if you come back with 40% of the things on your list. You're lucky if you buy a pair of jandals that last more than a month, or don't get stolen before the week's out. You're lucky if someone sends you a much needed care package of vitamins to fight your infections. You are extremely blessed when God heals you, because there's no doctor that can help. You're lucky if the road is smooth. You're lucky if you can keep on top of the dust that blows in from the road. You're lucky when people don't stare at you in the street because you're so different from them. You're lucky when you can visit a cold place for 6 weeks and rid your body of Miliaria or heat rash that itches and rages over your body. You're lucky when you're not constantly misunderstood. You're lucky when your best friend brings you a plate of chocolate brownies (thanks Karen). You're lucky when you're not constantly sweating and exhausted from temperatures above 35 degrees celsius. You're lucky when people don't think that just because you're white, you're rich and you can solve all their problems. You're lucky when the ship is going. You're lucky when there's enough water. You're lucky when you know how to respond to the constant requests for money. You're lucky when there's enough food. You're lucky when you can positively help people in poverty. You're lucky when your telephone works. You're lucky when you open a packet of rice, pasta, flour etc and there are no bugs in there. No bugs in the rice. Bliss.

But you're not often lucky.

There are 4 types of missionary housewives. Those who filter all their rice to pick all the bugs out. Those who pick out only the ones they see. Those who freeze their rice for a few days to kill all the bugs. And those who just chuck the rice in the pan with water and enjoy the extra *gulp* nutrition.

There are often bugs in the rice. We often eat bugs.

And then comes the day that everything crumbles all at once, you are not so lucky all day and then you're cooking dinner and, yup, you guessed it, there are bugs in the rice.

And you close your eyes, holding the lids shut tightly to squeeze the tears back inside and you think back to the other world. The world you used to live in. And you sigh... because life is just so hard. And you turn back to picking out the bugs, or whatever your method happens to be.

But I'm glad that I live here and that I'm in this place where it is oh so very hard for one reason (so far). Because if I hadn't come here, I would never have found out that in the West my joy came from everything going well, the fact that the world there is easy. It never occurred to me before. But now that all that ease, and the wonderful sense of accomplishment, and the control I had over so much of my life and choices, now that all that has been taken away from me, I have seen that my joy has gone too. Because my joy was based on the wrong things. On there being no bugs in the rice. But now that there are bugs in the rice, and my joy level has correspondingly dropped, I need to find the real source of joy, because there just are simply few other things around to give me any sense of joy.

It's not that children, or food, or gardens, or work, or relationships shouldn't be enjoyable. But that's not what your joy should be founded on. When that is the foundation of your joy, well, when that's not there, your joy isn't there either.

Sometimes Jesus says things and it takes years to really find out what He means. I used to be confused about what God meant when He says that He gives strength to us when we are weak... then I became a High School Teacher. And then I learnt all to well what He means by giving strength to those who are failing.

Now I'm confused about joy. What does it really mean to get your joy from Jesus, to rejoice in the Lord? I'm not sure I know what it all means on a practical daily life kind of level, but I do know that's the kind of joy that can't get taken away by things like bugs in the rice, and life when it's really hard.

There's this beautiful gospel song we sing here:

"This Joy that I have, the world can't take it away.

This Joy that I have, oh the world can't take it away.

This Joy that I have, oh the world can't take it away.

The world didn't give it and the world can't take it away."

One day I'll sing that song to you... and then I think I'll really know what it means.

Adoption Party

On Saturday we had a lovely party to celebrate Theresa's adoption. Surprisingly every single person we invited came, except for the beloved Aunty Karen, who wasn't yet in the country. So it was a full house, or rather, full yard. ok counting it all up there were about 50 people. Woah, that's a big deal for just a recent convert to parties.

The star of the show was tired and grumpy, because we'd also gone out to the beach in the morning. But that's ok. We'll celebrate it every year, so she'll have heaps more parties to get excited about.

Anyway it was loads of fun, with lots of lucky food, or providential food, whichever way you view a pot luck/providence meal. Lots of standing around talking, kids running around, dogs trying to steal our food - just the usual.

But it was great to celebrate this wonderful event in our lives.

good heaps

This is a good sign:

It means that one day soon, very soon, in fact, the road is going to be fixed. With all the rain we've had, plus the usual wear and tear of big trucks going up and down the dirt road all day, the road gets pretty atrociously bumpy.

You can always judge it by how much any extra fat on your body wobbles around while you drive over the bumps.

There's been a lot of wobbling and jiggling lately.

And when there's a lot of wobbling and jiggling it wears you out so much physically. The road and traffic in Honiara has been so bad lately, I'm very tempted at learning how to "drive" the little boat we have here at SWIM, and drive( ok, what is it that little boats do? they don't sail, because they don't have a sail but an OBM?? I'm confused!!) over to Point Cruz - the centre of town, moor it up by the yacht club, do all my errands/shopping etc in town, then swim (?) back to my boat and drive (?) back to SWIM. Great plan...

Anyway, but now I won't need to because it's stopped raining and someone (not the council - probably one of the local trucking businesses) has decided that the road is bad enough for them to fix. Yay.

The second thing I noticed when I was back in NZ for a holiday was... how smooth the roads were. Amazing that you can drive anywhere and you don't spend your whole time getting from A-B avoiding potholes.

Lovely.

And now, we are going to have a few less potholes around here too!

Barava Truwan Nao!

I'm sure you'll be very very happy along with us when we tell you that... today we got the piece of paper. The paper that we've been waiting 15 months for! Justice So and So signed the final adoption order, granting the adoption of Theresa in favor of us!

We are so overjoyed and so thankful to God.

Praise the Lord!

The downside of rain.

This week has escaped out of my grasp, somehow. I was going to write this post soon after Sunday and now I discover it's already Thursday. And not just Thursday, it's Thursday night.

I just wanted to tell you about Church on Sunday. It wasn't raining this time, but it had been raining hard the day before. The church building was literally swimming. We waded through the hot steamy water. It smelt like a sewer. I dreaded to think about what we were walking through. Needless to say, we soaked our feet in hot detol water when we got home. It made me grimace to think of the infections, and malaria and other health issues that would spring up as a result of this excess yucky water.

In 2010, months after the big flood that welcomed us, Amanda, Andrew and Grace's daughter, had this nagging, hacking cough. Normal cough remedies didn't seem to clear it up. In the end they found out that a worm had got into her body (ok, I'm not talking about the lovely worms that chew through dirt in your garden... those are nice worms and you should encourage their presence) through a small scratch or something while walking in/around this mud that the flood had left, and had entered her lung eventually and was causing this awful cough... Terrible stuff.

My bets are that in two weeks lots of people will have malaria around here...

Anyway, back to the subject. Um, yes, excess yucky water. Worshipping with our brothers and sisters in Lunga SSEC was as usual encouraging. Theresa even sat relatively still for parts of the sermon. After Lords Supper, we waded back through the water and walked back in the hot sun.

The area where the church building is belongs to a company called Tongs. They supply building stuff etc. Anyway, they have housing their for their staff. It all got so flooded there, that they dug these trenches for the water to flow out of people's living areas and houses. Unfortunately the water just sits there (4 days later, it's still sitting there) because there's nowhere for it to run to. Perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.

The point of telling you about it is this:

it's so sad to see people's gardens damaged by floods. I mean, if your garden gets constant rain for 2 weeks straight, you'll probably be ok. If your vegies all die, well, that's ok, because usually, you can go to the supermarket and buy more.

But these guys... that's their food. I mean, that's almost all the food that they would eat in daily life. If the ground is too wet, the cassava (which is in this picture) will just rot in the ground. Then what do you do? Then what do you eat? I don't know.

Today it was sunny. I am so thankful, not for my sake but so that maybe some people might be able to salvage some of their crops and still have food to eat.

It's so hard for us to comprehend. In our society when (or should I say if...) your cupboards ever get empty, you go and buy more. And if you don't have money to, well, in the crowd I grew up in anyway, there's always someone who will give you food or money. It's just hard to comprehend getting to the end of the barrel and finding there is nothing left.

We are so rich. Materially, but maybe we miss out on having a firm grasp on the fact that it is God who feeds us, God who provides for us, God who supplies the harvest.

Rain Rain Rain

It's the wet season, and it has been for a while. The rainy season is anywhere between November and April. We definitely noticed in November, that almost every afternoon, it'd be stormy with thunder, lightning and rain, and then the days were sunny and humid.

When we were on holiday in NZ over Christmas we'd hear people say, boy it's humid today. Pha! Humid? New Zealand. Get a grip. Humid is living in a sauna.... all day. In NZ, if I ever went into a sauna, the cool thing is, than 5 minutes later you can get out, and your skin feels refreshed, and you hit the cold night air at the hot pools you are visiting (because that's the only time and the only place I would ever be near a sauna). So you get transported instantly from humidity to beautifully cool and fresh. Here you open the door of your sauna, only to find that outside, it's a sauna too. It's humid. And after a year or so of living in a sauna, then you get to have a reprieve when you go on holiday to a non-humid country, like NZ. Moral of the story, people who live in NZ don't know the meaning of the word "humid".

As I was saying, before I got onto a tangent, the wet season is terrible for being humid. All that rain, then all that sun, it'll hit 35 degrees or so. Boy, that's a recipe for a humid disaster.

But for a week now, we haven't had this stormy afternoon, rainy night and hot humid days, we've just had plain, straight, non-stop, Rain Rain Rain. Honestly, almost all day and night for the past seven days it's been rainy. There's been a few moments or hours of just spitting, or dark scary clouds, but for the most part it's been rainy. Steady and slow... or down right down pours!

On Friday for a few hours we had a bit of sun. The temperature went from 25 degrees to 35 degrees in 30 minutes. That was a killer, and that was humid. But it was good because it lasted long enough to get a few loads of washing dry that weren't drying in the wet 25 degree temperatures we were experiencing.

But now, it's back to rain rain rain. Everyone is curled up in their beds, not stirring, not venturing out. Locals hate it when it rains. It's so cold for them. 25 degrees means, for them, make a hot milo, get your blankets around you, and feel miserable because it's cold and wet. As one friend put it, "No eni wan lo hia seki seki" - no one's around here's moving at all.

To me it's luxurious, because it's cool. Hmmm 25 degrees. This is what I dream of for 337 days of the year (the days when it's 35 degrees).

Anyway, the week was a bit of a blur (rain). Wednesday we spent most of the day trying to keep Theresa entertained at court while we waited for a chance for our case to be heard.

At 3:15 finally the judge came to hear our piece, well, of course, our lawyer did all the talking. And he did it well. Anyway, after 26 minutes of explaining why we fit all the legal requirements to adopt Theresa, the judge said, ok, I'll have a look at the application and get back to you! What?! Apparently, that's normal. So now we have to wait more. How long? He didn't give any indication. Hmph!

Thursday I visited Bethesda Disability Centre to drop off a friend. Ok, we'd had bad rain, and it was pooling up in a few areas:

but after we unblocked the drains, our water flowed away out to sea with all the other surplus water that's been hanging around Lungga. Bethesda however is a different story. They get all these small creeks that flow into their property when the creeks overflow, plus rain, and compound that with the fact that they don't have any place for the water to run. Equals - they had a lot of water around the place. The water came up to my knees when I was walking around the property. They were moving things out of the office and up onto tables, because the water was flooding the place... maybe about hmm... 7cm to 10cm as a guess. Not that much, I suppose, but enough to be annoying and have to move things around.

I snapped these photos.

It feels unreal in a sense. In NZ, well, where I grew up, we never had floods. Rain didn't effect us that much. Here it's a way of life. Most houses are off the ground on poles. Floods are devastating. They come. They destroy. Everything gets wet, ruined or mouldy. Then they go.

And you move on. It certainly teaches you not to hold on to possessions. If it's not the moths getting in to them, or the rust destroying them, it's the water. So don't get to hung up about them, you know what I mean? Someone said to us before we came here, don't take anything with you onto the mission field, that you don't mind losing. Cos it might get stolen, broken, damaged, destroyed. But I think that's good advice for life. Don't have anything that you don't mind losing. Because, it's not worth holding onto something so tight that you lose out in your relationship with God.