Back To The Drawing Board

I am a very visual person. I was a visual learner in school. You know the kind of kid that takes a test and remembers the answers based on where it was on the study pages. I “looked the answer up” in my head. I have no affinity for numbers, dates, prices, etc., but can tell you what shade of blue my sister’s mother-in-law wore to her wedding twenty something years ago.

Keeping all this in mind, I have realized that I don’t like to blog just words. I really need a picture. I think that is why I don’t write as often as I would like.

Now the truth also is that I have a harder time reading blogs that don’t have pictures. Sorry to those of you that wax eloquently and paint your pictures with words. I do read a lot of them. I am more inclined to spend a little more time there if you have a nice splash of color.

Here is a totally random picture that I just like because it has nice light and shadow. The Adakonu building has a strip of roof missing from the center of the building and on one particular Sunday morning rays of heaven were shining beautifully through and casting the greatest shadows around the ground.

Anku, left our church fellowship for another legalistic brand of church.

Kpatanyo, left her village and the church to become the mistress of a witch doctor.

Nkoli, left his wife to take another one in a nearby village.

We sat in our room, discouraged, confused, broken, hurt.

All these leavings just months before we leave Togo.

I asked the questions we were both feeling “Are we really supposed to leave now?” “Will it all fall apart after we go?” “Have we been wasting our lives here?”

Answers didn’t come.

Until Wednesday.

I was walking the dog around the perimeter of our house to the jazzy tune of Nicole C. Mullen singing about Every Nation. I was hearing the words, but my heart was doing its own talking. I was still asking God those hard questions. In an instant, he replayed the last two years for me.

We asked where to go, he showed us Rwanda.

We asked for teammates to go with, he gave us Crowsons, Reeves, Millers and Robinsons.

We asked for additional support, he gave us a new church that already had eyes on Rwanda.

We asked so many questions, and the resounding answer has been “Go to Rwanda.”

Logic.

Listening to Him doesn’t require it. Like Abraham, sometimes we just have to go on faith. Trust that we asked the right questions. Trust that we heard the right Voice. Trust that the One giving the answers is worthy of trusting.

Obedience.

The only acceptable response to hearing Him. Trust that the going is what he seeks from us. Not that we do everything ‘right’, but that we ‘do’.

Peace.

That’s what comes from the trusting and the obeying.

I have had my 10/40 window. Yes, for those of you that don’t know, I am a leap kid. Born on the 29th of February. In order of celebration, we traveled to one of my favorite places in West Africa: Casa Del Papa in Benin. Our teammates, the Crowsons and our two teachers and Lauren, our peace corps friend joined us for two nights there. I was treated very well.

I was presented with lots of tens. Lists of ten favorite things. Ten things about me. Ten birthday songs sung (in several languages).

My boys graced me by sitting through a family photo shoot without complaining. Here is one of the results:

One of the special things to me was the time of reflection I had on the beach. God has blessed me with forty wonderful years. 40 years to get to know Him. 40 years to learn that He has given me family, friends, purpose, talents and even beauty. 40 years to learn that I don’t know as much as I thought I did. I spent time thanking him for the last forty and committing to give him all of the next forty, if He wills I have that many more. I hope that the theme of the next 40 will be not what he has given me, but what I can give Him.

Now the relevance of this post is almost laughable. You did read what I last posted, right?  Keep in mind this burden for thirsty people as you read this . . .

A few nights ago, I was sitting in the living room with Emily and Rachel looking at pictures of our furlough. The boys were getting their baths. Which means the water was on. Marty was being rescued by Murphy from the broken truck saga (another post, surely).

Our faithful night guard lets out a distressed cry for “Madame” from the front yard. Fearing that he was sick, I ran to the front door. With his added words “the water!”, I remember that I had started a load to wash just after dinner.

You see, since our washing machine broke, the teachers (saints that they are) insisted that we take theirs and their houseworker would go to Christine’s house to do their laundry. This is humbling, yet so helpful. Well, that machine fills really slowly, so like any good improvisor, I rigged up a hose to the faucet to fill the drum.

You already see the picture don’t you? It was like a scene from “I Love Lucy”. There stood this Lucy with not Fred and Ethel, but Emily, Rachel and Benoit, in a room several inches deep with water. I now see why every laundry room should have a drain in the floor. As I stooped to bail with a dustpan, I saw the freezer plugged in the corner and realized why we had it up on blocks. I had visions of the old cartoons when one getting zapped looked like they are behind an x-ray screen.

Thankfully, we got the mess cleaned up and the only frying done was a jolt Emily got when she went to get a fan from the house and tries to unplug it without her shoes on.

Marty came home and I fully expected to hear ” Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do!” He let me off with a good laugh.

The picture was taken by my friend Jenna, when we went skiing and visited the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown , New York. See the resemblance?

When I am in America, I don’t think about things the same way I do here. Like when I want to wash clothes, I simply go to the machine, put the clothes and detergent in and presto: clean clothes. I forget that there are a series of forces that must all be operational for ‘presto’ to happen.

1. A working washing machine.

2. Electricity.

3. Water.

4. Adequate pressure behind that water.

Today, the forces had a hard time lining up together. Only three of the 20 loads of laundry got done. The low water pressure caused the filling process to take hours.

At one point in the day, when the water had stopped altogether, two of the boys wanted to “make mud” in the yard to play in. To my relief, the water being off delayed that fiasco.

Of course, the water did come back on. And in one of my brilliant “good mother” moments, I said “go make mud”. And the fun was on . . . on Tanner’s head, Trevor’s face, in their ears and maybe even up their noses.

Then the fun was over and they wanted to get clean. Going to the spicket, Tanner found the water to be off again.

So as I drained some of our precious water reserves to clean two muddy rats, I thought about this water.

Water that is life for people all over the world. And yet many don’t have it readily available to them. If they have it at all, it is dirty. It isn’t a matter of their machines not working, or their electricity being off. It is so much more of a basic issue than that. They don’t have a tap to go to. They have a well, or a city pump, or a muddy river. And they use a bucket worth to clean a whole pile of clothes.

Now that is a ‘High Efficiency’ machine.

And doesn’t that make you think differently about your laundry room, too?

Where do we begin? We have been back in West Africa only a little over a week, and so much has happened that it seems like a month. We had a long, but uneventful return by plane and van. We found our houseworkers doing very well. Koffi even said he had not had malaria once while we were gone. But we didn’t find our house in quite the same health state. We had hot water heaters not working, no telephone or cell phone or internet services, a broken washing machine, and a broken water filter. The Tabligbo water company was trying to make repairs on a busted main, that required several days of cutting the water supply completely. The electricity was off for a ten hour stretch, which led us to the discovery that our generator would not run either. Marty will be spending some time in Lome attempting to get repairs done on the truck. He had to leave it in Lome at the mechanic’s, so we will have to make our trips on foot for the next couple of days.

One of the tragedies that has occured concerns our Christmas decorations. We had a mice problem while we were gone and some of them took up residence in the storage containers where all of our ornaments were. When I opened the box, sitting right on the top were about eight little gray mice. I think they even smiled at me, before they turned tails and burrowed into the pretty bobbles. After Kossi and Koffi got them out, I had the task of cleaning and culling the ones that smelled too bad. I had to throw away a third of our ornaments. It was very sad indeed to trash some old heirlooms.

As we were cleaning up the storage area and putting things away, we found a bit of a roach problem. After opening a can of spray on the buggers, we swept up quite a pile of them.

The week has not been filled with only challenges, we had our first team meeting, where we welcomed and oriented our new teacher Miss Rachel along with our returning teacher Miss Emily. All this took place poolside at a favorite spot in Lome. Then we celebrated Tucker’s 13th birthday. Yes, we are the proud parents of a teenager. He is growing into such a fine young man, we are so proud of him.

And finally, the highlight of the week was Taylor’s rebirth. Friday evening Taylor was baptized. As is the tradition here for our boys, he drew some of the water from the well himself and carried it to the cement baptistry.  He has always had such a sincere, seeking heart; it was a delight to see him make his faith public.

I fully expected the time to fly by, but now that it has flown, I am wondering :where did the time go?” We have done so many things during this furlong, and yet there now seems to be so many things left to do and very little time to do it in. I also expected to keep up with the blogging, afterall we have been in the land of reliable internet.

A real quick recap:

God gave us a new co-sponsor for our work, The Glenwood Church in Tyler, Texas. And we have been so blessed by new relationships there, and even a few old acquaintances renewed.

We ventured into many battlefields as we relived history in America.

Tucker and Taylor both shot their first deer at the family deer camp in Monticello, Arkansas.

Marty and I were honored with the Young Alumni award at Harding’s Homecoming.

We were thrilled with an almost spontaneous ski trip to upstate New York with our dear friends, the Bunners. We visited the Lucille Ball Museum in her birthplace, Jamestown, NY. The boys all took to the slopes like crazy and I enjoyed shopping with Jenna in the quaint village and taking pictures of the snowbunnies, yet staying warm with a cafe mocha in the lodge.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with our families, for the first time in eight years!

We rang in the new year with old friends in my hometown, Kevin and Katey Deasy and their sons. After a bon fire, the boys got to see “the ball” drop for the first time in their lives. they all thought it was a little boring and had much more fun with the assortment of fireworks Kevin had bought.

We have traveled thousands of miles, eaten way too much fast food, resulting in too much weight gained, and are now packing the last moments in with our Warrenton family while we literally pack it all in . . . the suitcases. We have only nine days until we board the plane.

Pray that we get it all done and manage to be refreshed in spite of the late hours we are putting in.

My good friend Diane Wheeler was born an only child, but she has practically adopted me as a sister. With that honor has come the privaledge of loving and being loved by her family. Diane’s Uncle Dick came to live with them a few years ago, just before we returned for a furlough. We stayed with the Wheelers in spite of the fullness of their house. During that time we got to know Richard Norton and he became our “Uncle Dick” too.

Last week, Uncle Dick turned 90. Diane asked me to create a slide show of his life from old photos. Her husband Nic scanned over 100 pictures and I put together a 20 minute show, that would rival a History Channel production (even if I do say so myself!). He was born in 1917, raised during the depression and fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War Two. He sported some great suits in the fifties and drove a few great cars. He fell in love with a tall thin beauty and they traveled the world.

The hours I spent on the show were thrilling for me. It was like watching this boy grow to be a man right before my eyes.  The greatest treat was seeing his reaction when he viewed the show for the first time. As he watched his life set to his favorite big band pieces, like “In the Mood”, he was speechless.

Incidentally,  I am toying with the idea of marketing this type of production. What do you think of the idea?

One of the things I looked forward to most about having a furlough during the school year was field trips. We are doing limited homeschool, but we are hitting American History while we have a chance to walk through so much history.

We have a really nice bank accounts manager. (You may ask what in the world she has to do with History?) Marty was telling her that we hoped to go to Williamsburg for a field trip and she insisted that we use her house on the James River. So we went over on a Sunday and spent three days in the Williamsburg area. We got to take the Ferry across the James each day, which was as big of an event for the boys as anything. We visited Jamestown, which is a big deal since this is the 400th year of its founding. We also went to Yorktown. That covers a huge chunk of American history right there!

As you can see, Marty and I got what was coming to us. Amazing that the boys didn’t just leave us in the stocks.

When we left Missouri, we spent another week in Huntsville with my family. This time I spent some time with friends from high school. There are seven of my girlfriends, two of whom I had been in school with since kindergarten, who have always kept in touch. We had a great dinner together. Since then, we have formed a group called 7 Sisters of 86. Amazingly enough in this generation, all seven of us are still married to our first husbands. Each Monday, we will join together to pray for each other’s marriages and children, no matter what our location. I think thats pretty cool to have that kind of relationship with childhood friends.

We traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee and spent the night with our longtime friends and mentors, Mark and Sandy Berryman. Mark’s many years in Africa have trained him to be ready to entertain at a moment’s notice. We made our reservations at the “Berryman Inn” only four hours from arrival. Sandy treated us to chocolate fondue, even though she had been out all day. I do not think it is possible to catch them unprepared or inconvenienced. What models they continue to be!

We arrived home in Virginia around bedtime Sunday night. We were all so glad to be in one spot. It felt like coming home, even though we had only slept in those beds a couple of weeks before traveling. The next morning seemed like Christmas to the boys. We have all been so glad to have some space of our own. Marty and the boys will soon begin work on the golf course going in behind the house. More about that later.