you know your in the middle of nowhere when...

Hey! I havent blogged since I left tanzania a month ago.. the internet here is almost non existent.. we are in the middle of nowhere.. I don’t think I have ever had the opportunity to be as far from civilisation as I am now… heres a few things to give you an idea of where were at..

You know your in the middle of nowhere when…

-if you want a good meal, you befriend people so they invite you over for dinner

-the only dairy product is in the form of powder

-your listening to your ipod when a teenage girl comes up to you and asks the name of the foreign object in your hand that plays music

-if you want to eat meat, you have to buy a live chicken/fish and kill it at home (at least its fresh).

-you get excited when the electricity turns on.

-they don’t know what a washing machine is.

-you have to build a fire if you want to cook your food.

-your house is overrun by animals..birds build nests in the walls, bats in the rooms and bathrooms, huge spiders and cockroaches, rats in the toilet (tried to poison to no avale), cats and dogs come in when they please and monkeys chill out on the roof.

-everyone stares at you everywhere you go and if you stop for any reason you will have a crowd of 20 within seconds.

-you’re the first white person they have ever seen..

-there’s only one computer in the entire town, and you can only use it when there’s power

-you make children cry bc they don’t know what you are

-fastest mode of transportation is biking

-people bathe in the river as their social outing

-everyone laughs at you bc when you attempt to speak their language, you say everything wrong

-your easter brunch is french toast made from hamburger buns and the only thing to put on top is sweetened condensed milk

-you paint your easter eggs with nail polish

-its completely normal to pump water from the well outside and carry the bucket inside when you want clean water.

on another note...

I have been reading one of donald millers books and thinking about my life this past year. He talks about how life is better when its harder. He states…
“God is saying.. enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. If one of the reason we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants… if the point of life is the same point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.”

This has made me reflect on how although my year has been hard and challenging and not easy. When you make it through all that, the experience almost makes it worth it. Making it through some things you thought you would never make it through transforms us and makes us feel more alive than ever, because I know when I go home I will appreciate the things I never appreciated before..like opening up the food cabinet and having food and a stove that I can cook it on, like understanding people when they talk to me and them understanding me when I talk to them, like walking along the street and not having 20 people crowd around me if I stop for 5 seconds.. the things I grew up knowing but have now become a luxury bc I have realized how much I do have but then also learning how much I don’t need to be happy…content… stress free…

When I go home, I will probably want to grab people and be like… appreciate your life! Your life is so good ! you have it so easy…but now I know some people won’t realize this bc they are fed daily that you aren’t satisfied till you have the latest and the greatest and they will have to go through something hard and challenging to appreciate things and God beginning to show them areas they need to set right in their lives so they can begin living again.
thats all for now.. Bless you!