Life and Beauty

Life in Africa is never easy. Even the Africans get frustrated with themselves! But its not the Africans that make Africa hard, its life. The fact that mail service is 2x as slow as anywhere else in the world, that you can never predict when the power is going to go out (or someone is going to steal your cables-which is what happened this past week), that in harmattan every breath you take feels like your drowning in quicksand and in rainy season that if you breathe wrong, you might choke on the air. I could go on and on. But there are many positive points as well. The people are the most friendly and willing to learn (generally), how Christians are so dependant on God to keep them financially stable and in good health, and how you really learn how to appreciate Gods creation (cause its only living half the time here!).
We recently had an "African stress-out" over the overseas shipping. Us kids had ordered a DPI (the Christian version of a DDR) with the Christmas money from grandpa. Well we had planned for it to come out with a friend of ours that just arrived. YES! Its here! So we take all the mats and examine them closely and then we realize. The installation CD isn't here. Where is it? We spent about an hour looking, rechecking and driving out to the Heberts house to see if it got lost in some other luggage (which is a 30 mins drive from here). No success. Now, in Canada or the states this wouldn't be a problem, cause you could just write the company and get another copy in a couple days. Well, although this isn't a big problem, it can still cause a lot of stress.

The scenario in Canada would be this:
-CD missing
-Call company
-Get CD within next week
-Play Game

Scenario in Togo:
-CD missing
-Search EVERYWHERE (can a CD fit in a pepperoni package? well, we looked!)
-Question weary travellers
-Write back to the states asking if the spouse of traveller can find it
-Wait for response
-CD not in States
-Write Company
-Wait for response
-They say they will send it
-Figure out who is coming out in the next month
-Write to that person to ask them if they can bring it
-Wait for response
-Write back to company telling them where to ship the CD
-Pray the CD gets there and they remember to pack it
-Wait for them to come out
-Pray that they will not get searched in customs
-Wait for someone to come up north so that we can have possession of the CD
-Finally: Play the game
As most of my other paragraphs are, that might be slightly exaggerated but I think you get the idea. Never the less, every day is filled with excitement and stress. Gives a pretty balanced life- fun from 6am-1pm-frustration from 1:30-6pm (1-1:30 is the transition time).


During a chat on NS I realized recently that girls are never told enough how beautiful they truly are. Every single girl is beautiful. There is not one in this world that another girl wouldn't say "Oh My Gosh! I would so love to have ____fill____" Every other girl has something that we "want". And the world isn't helping at all. Every where you go, whether its Canada or Togo, there is an expectation for how you look. Didn't know this did you? But out here, its not cool/stylish to be skinny, its cool to be fat! How do I know this? Because of the multiple comments I got when I came back from ferlough ("Oh Bethany, you look so good! You've filled out so much more! You look like a mama!"). I also found out that they like long hair (hehe, as the guys at the orphanage told me never to cut my hair, and were horrified when they found out that I do). Sorry, off topic. As I illustrated to some others, God makes each one of us right? And what does the world make? The world makes us one. God wants us to be diverse, the world wants us to be the same. The worlds view is so perverted that when it looks at the beautiful creations that we are, they just see a blur, a canvas that is one colour. Because this is all they see, they assume that we must all look like that. But if you removed the blur, you will see a beautiful canvas full of every colour. What many secular guys and girls see is the blur, and they want the blur. The blur is named Prince Charming and Barbie and is created by Satan (he's not very creative eh?). But the canvas, the same one that God made and filled with many beautiful colours, is called Beth, Annie, David, Charles, Sean, Sarah, Chelsey and on and on. This list never ends. Why can't we learn to love the painting instead of the haze? Why can't we learn to love anything and everything that God decides to view as so significant that He allows them to live and breathe? We can...