My dad makes cornbread and a pot of hearty beef stew for me sometimes when it’s getting ready to snow. He still always calls me to update me on the weather forecast to make sure I know to stay off the roads during winter days even though I’m almost 26 years old and I check the weather on my own. I miss that.
My mom still insists on saving me from digging into my wallet and takes me out to the Sunset restaurant for a BBQ sandwich and chocolate milkshake sometimes during lunch. She calls me just about every other day. I’m usually out of service which means that when I come into town my phone is full of voicemails from her asking me to call back. I miss that too.
I’m going into month 9 of constant transitions through foreign cultures and I can feel it in more ways than one. Honesty in blogs comes mostly through prayer requests, ministry details, God’s monthly miracles and gnarly adventures; but there is another side to it that is stretching me also. “Life on the field” as they call it. Your day-to-day living. It is absolutely different each month and nothing like home. Aside from the given things such as my family, boyfriend, and close peeps that I have missed since month 1, it’s the little things that I’m wanting now.
Do you know how incredible the workings of a hot shower are? You open your shower door to turn a couple of knobs and there is actual pressure shooting hot water out. Seems simple enough, but my gratitude towards it has made its way to the top of my “thankful for” list. 4 out of these 8 months so far have only had the option of bucket showers. A shower where you fill a bucket up with water, lock yourself in a room with a concrete floor and use a cup to pour the water over yourself. Estimating how much water I need to wet, shampoo, rinse, condition, body wash, and re-rinse again became the usual during month 1 in India. I now know that I can accomplish all of that with 3/4ths of a bucket, and no, the water isn’t warm.
4 out of 8 months with bucket showers means 4 out of 8 months with an actual shower head! Really good odds actually. The only catch is that out of those 4 months with a shower, only 2 of them spit out warm water. This month happens to be one of them, however, the heat in our house is broken and the indoor temperature ranges between 40-50 degrees. Hot water or not, that’s very cold air to get wet in, and most of us have braved showers a total of 2-3 times this month. When it’s more miserable to get clean in month 8, you’ll just choose to be dirty.
I can’t imagine being back in my home with a hot shower whenever I want it. It’s even harder to imagine the ability of adjusting the heat or A.C. to my daily comfortability. India ranged around 90 each day with no A.C. and the cultural dress included leggings. I distinctly remember pressing myself against the floor every day because it was the coolest thing I could find while I was sweating through my kurta for 10 hours straight. Cambodia was even hotter. So hot that I chose to lay on the floor instead of my sleeping pad and sweat each night with hardly any sleep at all.
Now that I think of it, Saturdays and Sundays in Thailand and my 3 weeks in Vietnam have been the only days since I left home that I’ve had any temperature control at all. And as I’m on my living room couch writing this now, you may be amused to hear that I can actually see my breath.
There are 7 fleece blankets on my bed and sometimes when I boil water for coffee I stand with my hands over the steam to gain feeling back in my frozen fingers. Also, french braids are life. They leave your hair looking nice and put together. Even when your hat has only left your head to pray before meals throughout the last 4 days. I don’t even take it off for bed time most nights. It accompanies the 3-5 layers of clothes that remain on me here no matter if I am sleeping or working.
Clothes… that brings me to the next American blessing. A washer and dryer. Yeah, i miss those. Handwashing my clothes through Asia and Africa has left them worn and stretched out a size too large. I have yet to live in a single home, hut, apartment, hotel, or tent that came with a dryer. Our washing machine this month is a blessing, but I choose not to use it due to the fact that we are at 14,000 feet and the clothes take 3-5 days to dry in the mountain air. Down time and personal money can be used to goto the city to find a laundry mat to fufill your wishes of clean clothes that have been shrunk to their normal size again.
How could I ever complain about doing laundry once I get back home? You throw it in a magical box with whatever soap your nose is pleasantly inclined too and you press a button. Then you do absolutely nothing until you switch it to another box and press one more button.
There is this saying mother’s use with us, “The laundry isn’t going to do itself”….. Well, sorry mom, but ironically enough it basically does. It kind of makes me giggle thinking of it actually. In Rwanda there was one well for the village that set at the bottom of a hill. A man I knew would make 3-5 trips down and back up that hill each day with 5 large water jugs strapped to an old bycicle that he pushed to bring water for laundry, showers and cooking.
Now none of this is said in spite of how I’ve had to live around the globe. I wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything. And none of this is said with the desire that any American should feel guilty of the appliances and eased living we have access to. I will have to come home with the awareness that I shouldn’t feel guilty for having these things. Rather than guilt, I will have gained a great appreciation. Thinking of the conviency of microwaves, hot showers, water pressure, heat, A.C., washers, dryers, cars, cell service, pay checks, and availability to vast options of American food moves me in great emotional ways more than you would deem to be normal. In all reality, it’s just reverse culture shock waiting to happen.
Life on the field is my normal life upside down and backwards. 95% of the people I meet don’t speak my language. This is particularly amusing when it comes to taxi drivers or food orders. And what about dishwashers, dumpsters and efficient indoor plumbing? Today I washed my dishes in the shower. I carry toilet paper everywhere I go because most places don’t have it. I run the trash out to the garbage truck when I hear it’s carousel like piano music blaring a block away. Last week I visited another team and helped re-dig the hole in their back yard that the shell of a toilet sits over for their bathroom. It was no surprise to us at this point that the shovels we had to dig with had no handles. 
I’ve been living out of a 60 liter bag for 8 months. My quick dry towel just smears water around on me rather than drying it off after showers. Wearing the same shirt 4 days in a row has been absolutely normal for the past half year. My friends goto the doctor for treatment from mosquitos and parasites instead of the flu. My past 700 meals have either been rice, soup, or some form of potatoes. Dog meat, cow heart, stomach lining, or fresh fish that was plucked from the water and thrown in the pan with it’s eye balls still intact haven’t been far or few. Ice for your drink doesn’t exist where I’ve been.
Bathrooms range from western toilets to a 4″ inch wide hole outside in the dirt with a tattered tarp hung on one side of it. Each month I fall in love with the people I am serving and each month I have to say goodbye and leave another piece of my heart behind.
And it’s almost month 9…
And honestly, I’m tired…
I’m tired of eating mystery meat. I’m tired of handwashing my 4 outfits that don’t fit right anymore. I’m tired of being cold and hot. I’m tired of improper plumbing and holes in the ground for bathrooms. I’m tired of cold water, buckets, and carbs for every meal. I’m tired of my quick dry towel and never meeting English speaking strangers. I’m tired of sharing a room with 6 other people.
And honesty in blogs comes mostly through prayer requests, ministry details, God’s monthly miracles and gnarly adventures; but there is another side to it that is stretching me also. “Life on the field” as they call it. And if I had one wish right now? Honestly, it would be for a shower with 15 minutes of hot water and a heated home. My heated home. With my perfect bed. All of this is true, every single word. But it’s all about me me me. And while I enjoy giving you honest insight about my struggles, the point of this blog is actually to tell you that even with all of this…. it’s not about me.
It’s about the Kingdom.
And just because I’m tired doesn’t mean that I’m done.
It’s never been about me, or us, or comfortability. And perhaps the most honest and hard thing through this last 3 month stretch for me will be digging my mind and soul into that fact and continuing to live it out. From the moment I applied, it was never about me. Going to 11 countries and leaving my home for a year scared me and was hard. Raising $18,000 was intimidating and not the funnest thing to do in my spare time. And I didn’t raise it to stay in 5 star hotels while I travel. None of it is in my personal account or wallet. It doesn’t buy my coffee or pay for my laundry to get done. It doesn’t endorse me outside of a daily food budget that allows me to eat differently or better than the people who host me. It doesn’t pay for my adventures or the Wi-Fi I have bought to communicate with family and friends sometimes.
While it is changing me in great ways, I didn’t come to live in Asian, African or South American villages and cities for myself. If I had come for me there would be a washer and a dryer. A hot shower and a bed. Heat and more food variety than rice… Mindset is everything right now. While I am honestly feeling tired of multiple things and missing homely comforts, I am also mindful that this abstract life I’m living is normal for these people. I will go home to American living in 3 months, but life will never change or be easier for them.
For my attitude to choose to rather be home than here… For me to decide that it is actually about me instead of the Kingdom… What does that say?… That my comfort is more important than an impact on their eternal salvation?
No…. I refuse.
I may be tired of it, but it’s not about me. It doesn’t matter that I handwash or spend money on my 4 stretched out outfits. It doesn’t matter that I will eat meal numbers 701-703 of rice, soup and mystery meat today and tomorrow. It doesn’t matter what kind of toilet I have and if the shower is cold again in month 9, 10 and 11. My quick dry towel that smears water over my skin instead of drying me off will remain a part of life until late June. I’ll be cold and I’ll be hot. And I may be tired but above all I’ll remember with a good attitude and thanks that it is not about me. I’ll keep doing it for the Kingdom because it’s the only reason that is reason enough.
