Reality...At Least So Far

To be honest, blogging is a very difficult thing for me at the moment. I sit and stare at the keyboard and haven’t the foggiest idea of anything important I have to say. It’s frustrating. That being said, here’s my best effort…

As Rachel and I try to learn how to balance running an efficient business with pouring ourselves into the people we have come here to help, we are finding it is a more challenging balancing act than we would care to admit. Rachel came home earlier this week and shared with me an experience she had. She had been walking home from visiting some of the Suubi women and noticed a young girl walking very slowly with her hands over her face crying. Upon getting a little closer to the girl, Rachel noticed she was bleeding from the mouth. The young girl’s mother had beaten her because she was not working hard enough at home. Rachel took her to a clinic, got her some medicine, treated her to a banana, Coke, and doughnuts and wasn’t sure what to do from there. The girl insisted she was ready to go back home and she understood how to properly apply her medicine. Although Rachel’s response to this experience was, “How can I send this young girl back to a mother who beats her,” my response was, “imagine the good you did in this little girl’s heart even if it was just for a couple hours.” This is an experience in which one feels they are really helping, even if it’s for a brief moment. Yesterday, I spent the majority of the day gluing tiny stickers on small beads and walking all over town just to find a particular zipper I was looking for. These are experiences in which one questions whether they are really helping at all. Although it’s not always glamorous, the reality we are experiencing is most of what we do is not, as Dave Hansow would say, sexy. Most of what we do is not seen or heard about in inspiring documentary films or talked about on cool hip websites. That’s probably the way it should be. What I can say is what we do is necessary, is important, is making a difference. It’s the efficient piecing together of the small mundane things with the big inspiring things that really allow us to truly help. Realizing this has helped me a great deal.

I have really been enjoying my time with some of our friends around the compound. Betty takes care of the house for us. She lives behind our house on the compound with her son Kimby and her cousin Sharon who is in grade school. George is our night guard. We see him from about 6 pm on during the week. They have all become such a delight for me to be around. We are all starting to become more integrated into each other’s daily routines in terms of conversation and relational dynamics. This has been such a joy for me to experience.