Expectations...

Lily was feeling much better and back to her normal happy self when she woke up the next morning. PTL.

Mariah seems sluggish and maybe warm tonight. Unfortunately, the thermometer is coming in our shipment of stuff which hasn’t arrived yet. Ben’s going out to buy one. Please pray that she will not be really sick. She has seemed kind of “under the weather” and fussy the last few days. On a positive note, she just got her first 2 teeth J (the bottom ones).

I think that mom must have prayed that I could get some cleaning done on Wednesday, because the girls slept for almost three hours, at exactly the same time! I got the hall scrubbed down, the last of the suitcases unpacked, and the master bathroom cleaned and “Odo-baned” (this is a strong cleaning chemical) from the doggie poop that was on the floor when we arrived (more on this later).

We’ve made it a whole week. Reflecting back on our expectations and the conflict between them and reality sheds quite a bit of insight into the struggles of the week. I had expected (who knows why?) that our house here would be fixed up something like you might find at a simple cabin at Brown County, IN – something that looked like kind of like a home, had approximately everything that a home would have, and we’d basically just unpack our suitcases and resume life. Instead we arrived to house with plain white ceramic tile on every floor; a kitchen whose entire contents (except for the physical structures of cabinets, stove, oven, etc.) were in one medium sized box – an 80 piece “complete kitchen” set, made in China; dirty walls; doors with gray finger prints around every handle; doggie poop in the master bathroom; and pictures on the walls of modern art, that; when we deciphered the spots and splashes, we suddenly realized that we were staring at what Scripture refers to as “unseemly parts” in I. Cor. 12 (our landlord took these back to his house). However, there is a beautiful pool and bubbling tub (which can be heated, but who wants that when it’s so hot outside?!) in our backyard, leather couches in two rooms, a guard at the gate to our neighborhood, a freshly painted exterior, and clean floors and bathrooms (except the master bath floor) when we arrived. I sense a strange dissonance, and it’s hard to make any sense of these very conflicting experiences.

Life is far more “American” (ie, what you’d find in the continental 48) than I expected, so that has been a pleasant surprise. However, it makes the un-American parts of life seem all the more strange and frustrating.

I went to a women’s Bible study (they even have free, quality child care!) at Calvary Chapel this morning – heard about it from a lady at our church. Though we may not agree totally with their theology, it was a blessing to be with other English speaking believers, and I left encouraged by the fervency of their prayers and desire to walk with God.

So, I guess we’re going to stick it out here for a while.... Stay tuned as the story unfolds.