Wait for the Lord

I find it interesting that the bible verse I have listed on my Facebook page is this:

Psalm 27:14 "Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD."

With each passing day I am finding this harder and harder. What do you do when you are losing heart? When your not strong? You are tired of waiting? This is the place I find myself in currently.
I wish I could say I have hope, I am waiting patiently, that trusting in God is all I need.

I would be lying if I said those things. Right now I want to scream, to cry, to hide, to give up. So I am having a battle between my heart and my flesh. Sadly, in this moment, my flesh is winning.

No words of hope, no words of encouragement.. just an honest reflection of where I am right now.

So... I continue to wait. I continue to pray. I continue to cry. To hold on with the faith of a mustard seed (although I doubt I even have that much right now.)

Change and Challenges

Living here is somewhat of a challenge. Forget the cultural differences, driving on the left side of the road and shopping at a butcher with a machete. The real challenge is having friends. Jinja is a small town with quite a few ex-pat's and missionaries, volunteer teams and NGO's. You would think that we would be a close-knit community with get-to-gethers all the time. That would be wrong thinking, of course maybe they are going on and we just don't know about them.

But this is not a post to complain about that.. this is a post to talk about just how hard it is to feel alone. No sooner do you invest in someone, than they are leaving. Just in the past month or so two guys who were here for different reasons kind of walked into our lives. Within the last week they have both gone back to the States.

I am at the cafe all the time, so I am constantly seeing new people. There is a fine line between intruding on customers and being hospitable. I don't think I have that figured out yet. I am an introvert anyhow, so just the thought of going up to each customer and striking up a conversation is frightening to me. Yet I wonder how many friendships I have missed, or better yet, how many lonely people I have failed to reach out too. If I am feeling lonely, and I have family and some friends here, how many people come through here who don't have anyone.

Opening my heart over and over to people who might or might not being staying seems overwhelming and tiring, and at times... pointless. So I struggle between the fear of the flesh and the will of God. I have to admit that too often the fear of my flesh wins. To be the light of the world, the salt of the earth.. how can I be light or salt if I chose to not engage, to not invest in people? So although it is hard and it hurts at times I know that God wants me to reach out.

Weather

Last night a storm blew through. I woke to the palm trees waving back and forth like crazy. No sooner had I tapped Jon to say, "There's a storm coming," when it felt like a hurricane was on us. The power went out. The rain blew in through all the windows.

I went to close our windows and was met with an icy blast of water to the face. Next I headed to the boys room. Rain was coming in from both sets of windows. Again, I was showered with the cold rain. At this point the thunder picked up and Declan shot out of bed and wanted to go to our room. Quickly I led him down the hallway as I still had Kenna's room and the downstairs windows. As I am tucking Declan in our bed with a small light, I hear a crash downstairs. I realize Jon is no longer in bed. I head to Kenna's room and walk through a puddle of water on the floor. Rain had poured into her front window and had soaked the floor. I race downstairs to see how Jon is fairing. The whole downstairs is howling. The wind was blowing through the windows at the back of the house so strongly that it had blown open the front doors. The whole living room was wet. The floor, the furniture, the electronics. Picture frames had blown over, the glass now broken. Jon was trying to tie the doors together to stop the wind from blowing through. We are both soaked.

I head to the kitchen. The countertops are all soaked, the floor a puddle of water. I tried to close one window, but when I opened the screen... well, I screamed. I got a face and front full of icy (at least to me) cold water. It shocked me. I closed the screen, without closing the window. I open the screen again, hoping it will be less of a shock. I am wrong, at least this time I manage to close the window.

The storm howled. We were soaked. Both boys are now in our bed. Then, the dogs start barking and barking. We try to aim a flashlight down in the direction of where the dogs are barking, but we see nothing. Eventually the security guard comes and sees that two Maribu storks have fallen from the trees into our property. They can't fly, so the dogs are trying to attack. The security guard manages to "shoo" one out the front gate. The other one, he eventually lifts up and throws it over the fence. This is no small feat. The storks, Ugly birds to us, are huge. One doesn't just go up to it and lift it up and throw it over a 10ft fence. (picture to the left is an Ugly bird defending itself from a baboon.. notice the size compared to the baboon.)

At least by now the storm is passing, the dogs are not barking, the boys have been moved back into their beds.... sleep at last? I have no idea what time the storm started, but by the time it died down, and the storks were taken care of, it was 6:30 a.m.

Needless to say, it was a long night with not much sleep. I still love storms in Uganda though.

Why a blog? Actually, I have no idea. Our other blog just hasn't been active, so I thought maybe if I write a personal one that maybe I will update it more. (maybe)

So, welcome to my blog.