Have you ever tried to do business administration work in the slums of a developing 3rd World Country?
We have, and it’s chaos. Here’s my series of unfortunate events from last week:
-Paper and pens are harder to come by than you think. We spent two days roaming the streets looking for somewhere to buy paper to make some samples of gift tags for the project I’m working on! We thought maybe the illiteracy rate here in Cambodia made writing supplies a very minor shopping item. Time was out, and I had to get creative. I found a book fair in the market, where there were a few bins of children’s books. J I bought one that had a lot of solid color backgrounds, and cut my samples from that!
-Have YOU ever tried to create a clean, straight slit in paper with a straight pin? What I would do for a razor blade knife…
-Come to find out… there was an entire market about a 5 minute drive away that has all the paper and craft supplies you could desire. Figures.
-You KNOW you’ve completely lost it when you start rebuking the evil inside of a printer.
– It took all day to print 8 gift tag templates. That’s only 8 one-page documents. You can only imagine the joy of the computer and printer we are working with.
-My zip drive wiped out and had to be reformatted. That means I lost everything on it. Luckily I’m a smart girl and it was all saved on my personal computer… but I didn’t bring my laptop to work that day. AND…it’s a 30 minute walk home.
-Jess and Brad almost got wiped out on a motorbike taxi ride back to work. I got hit by a motorbike while walking.
-I think our team has gotten over 1,000 mosquito bites from this month. I’m NOT exaggerating. Will has half of them, alone!
– I thought the best way to cure the electronic blues one night was to get some dessert. The restaurant we went to, that had about 10 dessert selections, somehow was completely out of dessert. You know you’ve hit your emotional limit when a lack of chocolate cake makes you want to cry.
Even though these are very silly things, they were the icing on the cake of some deeper issues going on. Miscommunication and misunderstanding has really had a hold on our team this month. Satan seems to have that stronghold over this place, and it took a few emotional breakdowns on the team for us to realize the depth of what’s REALLY going on. We’ve realized that we are at the point of the world race where “the honeymoon is over.” We’re real people with real human flaws, and we have to choose to love one another. We can’t afford to NOT put each other first when our emotions have already been defeated battling evil printers and motorbikes.
We took a weekend retreat to the beach to get away and just chill for a bit, just the 5 of us. It was SO needed and SO relaxing! This month each of us has taken on our own project for Destiny Rescue, and it has been very easy for each of us to get lost in our work. I knew this month was going to have a lot of lessons on “life after the race…” and this is definitely one of them. We allowed too much time to go by without really seeing what was going on inside each other, and we all got caught up inside ourselves. This weekend was DEFINITELY needed to truly touch base and to re-focus priorities. There’s NO way we’re going to give our ministry contacts our best if we’re not even able to give each other our best. One thing I’m SUPER thankful for is that our team has always been able to throw our concerns out on the table when they hit. They’ve been acknowledged, identified, and targeted. We’re fighting through this together. We’ve all CHOSEN IN. We’re gonna love the crap right out of each other. 😉
Jess came up with a brilliant way to encourage our love for one another. J (Yes, I said brilliant…and with an English Accent. The Aussie/Euro influence is coming out in me.)
The Love Fest
…and I’ll be sure to blog about it. J
(Jess’ blog on the same topic: Check it out!)
