when life hands you dakdaks, make stone soup.

Dakdak (n.)-the Toposa word for bump in the road

Learned this word travelling back from Nasikal where we tried for the third time but did not meet the commissioner.  (We finally met him yesterday, and he opened wide the door for us to do AIDS ministry in this area.  Pretty exciting!  Plus, it was good to meet with a government official face-to-face!)

It has been raining the past couple of days, and this morning when I got up to read my Bible, rain came pouring down for at least 15 minutes.  Joy!!!

More problems with what we thought were our solar panels actually turned out to be a problem with our refrigerator.  So, yes, before you ask, we have gone two days without full power, and, yes, there have been some food causalities. 

But first, I must tell you about another smell besides that of the old, moldy food.  It was definitely dead flesh.  Carrie, Whitney, the boys, and I tried to find out what it was, but it was Shannon who removed the electric outlet where flies were swarming and found the two dead lizards inside the outlet!  Nasty.

Well, our fridge revealed white and pink cucumbers, gray fuzzy macaroni cheese casserole, bluish beans, white tomatoes, grayish green beans, and other things that I would rather not remember. 

And our freezer held nothing frozen anymore.  The one chicken I had bought in Nairobi had leaked bloody juice all over the freezer.  So we had one solution: make chicken that night!

Whitney and I boiled the chicken in one pot and poured an onion, some good beans (from the night before that had an innumerable and probably unable to be replicated amount of wonderful spices), a can of peas, some noodles, and some spices into another pot of boiling water.  We mixed it all together after it was cooked and tasted our creation.  It was delicious.  Best soup ever.  And we called it Dakdak Stone Soup, because when life hands you dakdaks, you make stone soup.

Other minor dakdaks, that are quite comical and actually just other things that lead me to reliance on God, are the bat and mouse that abide in our bathroom and our washing machine that only works when it is off-balance. 

And right now, the bugs are getting to me, as in they are biting me and becoming annoying.  My instinct is to get angry and to complain, or it’s to get prideful and pat myself on the back and then claim that I am really suffering for Christ.  I was doing that for a few minutes when Jesus reminded me of what He taught me this morning. 

Hebrews 3:1-2, 6

“Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.  He was faithful to the one who appointed Him…But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house.  And we are His house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

Hebrews 12:1-3

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author or perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Ten bugs that fly at my face are NOTHING compared to what Christ suffered for me.  This is not suffering.  This is just a little bit of discomfort and an inconvenience.  I love what Elizabeth Elliot, once a missionary in Ecuador, said about love: “Love is a willingness to be inconvenienced.”  Love is putting others first at all times, no matter what it may cost you.  Christ has called me here and given me a love for the Toposa people.  And I think that I can handle a few bugs in my face.  “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  (Philippians 4:13)  Not that if I couldn’t take the bugs, God could not still reach the Toposa people without me.  Because He so can!  But I think He is teaching me in the smallest of ways what it really means to love like He loves. 

I made myself fix my thoughts and my eyes on Jesus, and I prayed that instead this becomes my instinct, my first reaction always.   That I would turn to Him, and remember His sacrifice for me, remember His faithfulness to suffer mocking and beatings and a crown of thorns and a pierced side and the cross for my sake.  To remember his endurance, that I will not lose heart.

After all, when life hands you dakdaks, be it in the form of no electricity, creatures around toilets, or little annoying bugs, you just have to make stone soup.  And who knows, maybe God is teaching you something new about Himself or leading you closer to His side or molding and shaping you to be more like Him. 

And even though it might be hard to come up with and uncomfortable to try…

It might be the best soup you have ever tasted.

PICTURES:

1) Muddy sign on side of truck

2) First time to make bread from scratch!

3) Walker on couch in kitchen area

4) Clothesline with kitchen area in background

5) Moldy macaroni casserole—eeew.

6) Giant bug!

7) Davis with Whitney and I on his 9^th birthday--we had a scavenger hunt for him (hence the sticky notes of places on the compound) and his prize is in his hand!

8) Geniet cat in tree on the compound--it has been attacking the chickens and was chased up a tree by the boys at 4:00am this morning—really pretty but it had to go!

9) Determined fighting jenet cat gang

10) Edwin using his slingshot in the tree

11) A close-up after it was killed

12) The skin of the geniet cat—our language helper took the meat home for a feast!