learning to imitate a rubber band.

If there's one thing I have learned and re-learned from every time I have been to Africa (and now as I live here), it is flexibility.  We have a normal schedule for each week, but the weeks never look the same.  And that's totally ok!  I like schedules, but I am finding more and more that I also really like change, even though sometimes it is scary.  I think I like it, because it makes me rely on Jesus, the One who never EVER changes.  What a comforting thought!  Anyway...

*Some school kids at the Paringa Primary School, the school that is near to the compound.*

This week I...took a baby with an ear infection to a clinic 30 minutes away, watched a snake be killed, watched Chunky (or Chunks or Chunkster) the rat escape Whitney's arrow again and again and again, learned more language, learned more about the Toposa view of women, learned about the very negative stigma that AIDS has in the Toposa culture, made French fries and popcorn using oil, got over 60 bug bites, worked in a Toposa garden, memorized the first AIDS curriculum story, told the story of Noah in a school (in a culture where the rainbow is considered evil, the word rainbow also means Satan, because they see it as an end to the rain and this is bad for crops), heard the mournful cries of a widow in a nearby village where the sub-chief passed away, was cussed at by little girls at the fence, drove to Kapoeta again this time with Toposa and American passengers (finally got my start to be un-bumpy, that is...after giving Davis a busted lip and the Toposa women a little scare with a big bump...Davis forgave me and he is totally fine), saw so many new things looking through the Old Testament now through the Toposa worldview (it's crazy how so much of what God says to the Israelites could be spoken to the Toposa today-but not so crazy, because God knows every heart, every tribe and desires that all peoples come to know Him!), spent 30 minutes with Whitney and Emmanuel trying to figure out how to translate the people of Israel in a way that the Toposa would understand it was like God's tribe, watched the movie Sahara with the team and some Toposa kids, tried and succeeded at sending texts from skype, got three more proposals, and laughed a lot.  

And that's all I can remember in this moment.  

Learning to imitate a rubber band.  It stings a little sometimes, but being stretched and made more flexible is good.  Learning what it means to rest in His hands.  Best place to be.  The only place to be.