A new month, a new bed, new people, new ministry, new food.
Once again the World Race cycle of activities begins.
Hostels, buses, finding internet, catching up with squad mates, figuring out a new city, unpacking, repacking, posting pictures, finding hot showers, getting a non-instant cup of coffee, going through clothes to see what to put on the free table.
So month 8 begins.
This month my team and I are staying at a Pastor’s house in Mbarara, Uganda. We are in a village living in a community with no electricity or running water. This means eating by candle light and headlamps, using the buddy system for washing hair, and navigating a small hole to use as a squatty potty outside. I have never lived like this before and surprisingly have not had much experience with this on the race either.
Our ministry this month is directed by our contact; Pastor Solomon he has taken us to a nearby school to help in the classroom and play soccer with people in the community in the evenings. We went to a local hospital to pray for people and will be leading his church services. We are doing a variety of things and each day looks different.
My life is slowed way down compared to my typical daily life at home. I wake up around 8 wash my face using a pitcher of water, brush my teeth with my water bottle, use the outhouse squatty potty, make some tea, eat bread with peanut butter and banana, and wait for instructions for the day.
Waiting is a theme for this month. Waiting goes along with patience, it is a lot more pleasant to wait if you are patient. I can be patient in a lot of situations but it is not my favorite. Well, patience is what God told me I would be working on this month and the first day of this month my patience practice began.
As a team leader I am responsible for getting my team from our hostel to our ministry location. This really is not a big deal and is usually accomplished with little difficulty. This month just couldn’t be that easy. I bought tickets for my team the day before and agreed to be ready for the bus to pick us up at 11am. Sounds simple but I left the bus station feeling like something wasn’t going to go as planned. Sure enough the next morning when I called to verify the bus coming at our agreed upon time the man’s phone was off and it had a network error. Hmmmm, so not off to a great start. After over an hour of attempting to call he finally had his phone on and said he wanted to come now which was at 9:45am well not everyone was ready and some people had gone out to breakfast.
Communication is much more difficult here than at home, even if I explain something as clearly and as simply as possible it seems like for some reason I am not understood. This is extremely frustrating. It is difficult to understand the accents of people in Uganda and the way we explain things leaves gaps for understanding between both parties.
So many things happened that morning and in between 18 phone calls back and forth with the bus company over a 2 hour period a bus finally came and picked up my team. When we arrived at Mbarara after a 4 hour bus ride I tried calling our Pastor to come pick us up. Well, now his phone was not working. So 12 of us were sitting there with all of our stuff waiting for someone to hopefully come pick us up. After 2 hours of waiting it was going to be getting dark soon and we still had not heard from our contact. Myself and the other team leader; Alex tried unsuccessfully to find the church we were working with on a motorcycle. No one we talked to had heard of the church and we still had not heard from our contact.
I tried calling him again and he finally answered….. apparently his phone was not charged. He said he that he would be there to get us soon. He arrived 3 hours after we had gotten off the bus, I was thankful to see him and to finally be going to where we would be calling home this month.
The definition of patience is this: The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.
I am in desperate need of improving on patience and I am sure that this month will give me daily opportunities to practice. Patience is a skill that will help me throughout my whole life, if I am able to legitimately wait and be patient in situations out of my control this will only help me and my state of happiness.
Maybe the next time you are in a situation you do not like you can take it as a chance to practice your patience. It might take a few times in order to perfect this attribute- I know it will take more than one time for me.
