Certainly not Obvious

I seem to always think once the next issue is finalized, we will have a straightforward and known path. But that is never really true. I don't deal with uncertainty really well, so it is very ironic that I am living in West Africa! Every day is uncertain. A store may be open or may have closed. The item you want to buy may be stocked or may not. We may have electricity or water, or we may not. We may have an unexpected visitor demand our attention suddenly, or even two or three in a day.

El Padre recently experienced the uncertainty of doing things in another culture where you don't know the obvious way to approach things. He wanted to try to build a cooking stove out of the local material they use for mud-brick to see if it would take the heat better than the concrete he tried before. It seemed obvious that we would go to a place where they were making mud-bricks and buy some of their material. But our neighborhood guides instead brought us to a low-lying mud-hole at the edge of town. After the farmer who was in the field said it would be no problem, we dug out three big sacks of clay-mud from around the watery part (after we got through the top layer of plastic bags and garbage that congregates at the edge of town). Then we proceeded to mix hay in for our own homemade mud-brick that is working out well, but not at all what we expected when we set out to acquire something to take the place of concrete.

On a larger scale it feels like this is happening a lot with our family right now.  Recently we had plans for the CHE program trainings, including my parents flying in to help with the family while El Padre would be gone for over a month. The plans and program seemed to be moving forward well and then for different reasons all the timings and places need to be completely changed. For a while it will be all up in the air and that makes our family life in limbo too. It is like this with our adoption plans too, as it seems so obvious that there is need for children to be adopted here but then with more exploring about children at the orphanages we haven't been able to identify another child in a situation that will work legally. Here, people will just say, "slowly slowly," or "it will happen if God wills it," or "if a person wants to reach the heavens, even stepping on a mat will get him closer to his goal."

-- La Maestra