22 Days!

Over the past 22 days I’ve been without a computer. I made a few trips to the cyber café and used their computers to do a few things, but for the most part I’ve been doing everything without one. As I said in my last blog, I’ve had to find a new way to do many things, and for those of you who look at my blog regularly you know that it has been that long time since my last post. So for this post I thought I would just share with you some of the things that I’ve done over the past 22 days.

New notebooks that I purchased and started using – 3
Hours spent watching African French Television – about 6 (which includes 2 soccer games)
Stories from the Bible that I can now tell in Pulaar – 3
Times I shared one of the stories – 10…ish
Trips to the Hospital – 1
Minutes spent unconscious – I was told about 5
Number of times it has rained – 3
Trips to the new “white man” store – 5
Time spent talking to God - too much to count (priceless!)


Don’t worry I know that I need to explain some of those in more detail.

The new white man store, I love it! It even has ground beef, and it makes me really happy.

The rainy season is almost over. That also makes me happy because all the crickets and frogs are almost gone now!!

About the unconscious thing…I had an infection on my little toe. It had a bubble coming off the top of it that was the size of a marble, which was right next to a broken toe that I stubbed in the middle of the night. It hurt a lot so I went to the doctor to get it checked out. They told me the medicine I needed to get and sent me to another room to get it cut off. They broke the thing open and then cut off the extra skin from the bubble. They wrapped it up and then said that they were done. But that's when I guess everything caught up to me, the sleepless night, forgetting to eat breakfast, and the pain. I fell right off the table and hit the floor hard. That was Oct. 15th and I’m still nursing the bump on my head (from the fall) and the hole that was left in my toe because of the carving, but everything else is fine. I'm back to 100% other than the fact that I’m going to wait probably another week or two till I can play some soccer again.

Now that I got email, feel free to send me a note sometime. I have a computer I can have a respond within a week!

ANSWERED PRAYER

I think you all know what it's like to pray for something. Sometimes the answer is "yes," sometimes it's "no". About a month ago I prayed that God would help me do a better job of organizing my day so that I could more efficiently and effectively learn this language to share with the people of Kolda. So how does He answser? He answered with a big fat "YES" by taking away my technological brain (you might call it a computer). I asked to be better organized..He he takes away the tool that I use to organize myself. I have had to covert my calendar, my journal, and many other things over to paper. Do I have more time? I'm not sure, but I will be spending more time communicating with the locals here.

Since one of my partners here in Kolda is taking a trip to the USA, she will take my computer to be repaired. That's a relief but for the next weeks I will be without my "brain". I will have to rely on visiting cyber cafes to communicate with some of you and that adds to my "to do" list. Pray that I will adjust to my new organizational tool and I will be able to take advantage of the time. Who knows. Maybe some new opportunities will come from this. I will not be praying for patience. I can only imagine how He'd teach it to me!