Where To Start?

Since we didn’t have internet while Mom and Dad were here and each day was full of activity, I am not even sure where to start blogging our time with them. This morning we said our “goodbyes” and even though we will see them again soon, I felt that familiar pit in my stomach. I wonder when/if this goodbye business will ever be easy...We had some incredible quality time.

Jon and I are both results oriented, being American, it is a cultural value. Living in a context where results are difficult to measure and with an entirely different worldview, it can be confusing and discouraging. Most of this is pressure we put on ourselves and most of it is not healthy or godly…it’s something we are always learning to balance. Sometimes I have days when I wonder how it could possibly be worth it, to live so far away from our family and then be making so little impact in our new corner of the world. I’ve told Jon, “I feel like I am just playing Little House on The Prarie”. As we make friendships vastly different from ourselves, we scratch our heads if they are authentic. So when our guests were here and the invites outweighed our time to fit it all in, I had the thought, “Yay!  We do have real friends here!”  :) I also realized how much God has knit the people we live among in our hearts. 

And because I don’t know how to start wittling these pictures down and I have this weird problem now when I am connected, as I frantically upload and work, I actually get a butterfly feeling, increased heart rate, extreme irritability if someone interrupts me and sweaty hands as I race against the next internet outage, Don’t get me started on trying to buy something online!

Okay, enough on that tangent, here’s my disjointed. ;)

Learning the greetings (this was day #1 in Injibara, Peter and Kim were still with us)

At the insistence of our host, Jon gave a “gorsha” as a sign of respect to his parents. 

Coffee, a national act of love. 

Grandma, sitting through a restaurant ran by the Littles.

The group who hosted a sheep butcher at our house last Sunday...

More coffee...

Food and fellowship...

Surprise! More coffee!

A ladies tea party with Debbie.

Here’s a picture of us going the worst possible way to a friends. Yeah, a little steep. Do you see the man waiting for us on the ledge in the top, right corner? We still had a ways to go.

Okay, just a few more for today!