First you start a small fire on the ground. It has to be small for a pot to balance on top of three bricks over it. You use old wood and gasoline and matches.
Then the water heats and you throw in these plastic bean things that make it thicker.
After you wait for it to ‘boil.’
Then you pour the steamy liquid into a plastic bucket and began to mix the lighter-than-air white powder.
When it becomes thickish, then you have done it. You have made primer, the African way.
This was a process that I watched, helped with, and then completed on my own (not that successfully)
It was in the midst of priming one of the walls made with homemade bricks of the almost complete trading center that I learned a most important lesson about community.
If I had to sum up month four in one phrase it would be learning to love and live in community. Four months or 16 weeks or 120 days later and I am only scratching the surface of what it looks like to truly love others and to love them well.
“Trying to create or control the community we desire kills it, but loving the community we are given makes it.”
–A very wise person quoting another wise person in an email from someone wise.
As I primed, the Lord revealed how I used to “love community.” It was easy in my mind to connect letting things go that offended me, not getting annoyed, or angry was loving the people around. I would just ignore those things and let them go. What I didn’t realize was that there is a difference between letting things go and letting people.
I was shown that I was really dropping people and not talking about things, I wouldn’t talk about issues and just chose to be shallow with people who I was uncomfortable around. I was dropping people and not things. I could be nice to people I was uncomfortable around as long as I just hung out with other people more and didn’t push through to a real relationship.
God showed me that isn’t love. Love talks through things to understand and withstands the uncomfortable. Love pursues others and doesn’t drop them.
