I did not get everything done I wanted to this week, and yesterday especially seemed the day for things being delayed until next week. Getting a proper breakdown of a phone bill and paying for my tickets to SA both have to wait until Monday. I had put my language helper off on Wednesday, so we met yesterday. It was rather a frustrating time, it seemed like we spent more time disagreeing about tiny points of grammar (either he’s not explaining properly, or I’m just dense) than doing anything constructive. Today I went to look at a few more places for a possible new location for the bookshop. This time I told my “guy”, just someone who doesn’t work and has time to scout out properties and doesn’t mind asking people if they want to rent or sell, to look for places for sale, because I saw a wonderful place last week, but suddenly the price was higher when I went to speak to the owner, and she categorically doesn’t want to sell. The only snag is that I have no idea what properties are supposed to cost. I wasted some time at first, because the concept of agreeing on a time and place to meet didn’t quite get across, but got some nice capulanas to take back to SA as gifts, so it was okay. I went home and left about an hour later to work on those magazines. It took me a ridiculously long time to figure out how the heat sealer that our FIEL colleague in SA, Karl Peterson, had sent to me, works – when all else fails, read the manual! It’s such a cool little machine, though, and sealing the packages goes a lot quicker than putting the magazines in in the first place!
My friend Cori wrote a series of blog posts recently about “Relinquishing control”, and that has made me think about all these days that things don’t work out as planned and I tend to get so frustrated. I have been trying to tackle my days with more of an attitude of being willing to accept whatever the Lord brings across my path, content in the knowledge that He knows best how to resolve situations and use my energies. It sort of ties in to the CS Lewis quote I used a few weeks ago, about listening to that other Voice when all our hopes and expectations for the day come rushing at us in the morning. It definitely requires a conscious, disciplined effort from me!
The Lord was really good to me this afternoon – there were 10 girls in my orphanage group! The kids have school holidays at the moment, but it didn’t even occur to me that some girls might come who are usually in school, and of course I didn’t have nearly enough handouts. I’m not sure how much of what I wanted to achieve really came across, because we were competing with the kids who were practising music for some church thing, but that’s in the Lord’s hands.
Last week was lovely and cool, although still summery there was definitely something fresh in the air and I had more energy, I loved it! It wasn’t meant to last though, since Sunday it has been increasingly hotter again. Although I need to go do the rest of these magazines tomorrow morning, I am so glad to be able to rest after this very long and tiring day…
