What A Day

Let me just preface this by saying I don't want to sound like I'm complaining and being a whiny baby. I know I'm in a crazy place and Satan is trying to do whatever he can to discourage anyone, no matter where they are, from being effective in sharing the Truth about who Jesus is. Being overwhelmed is part of the deal.

Today was overwhelming because of the little things. Have you ever had one of those days? Don't lie.

2-5 AM: Rat number THREE appeared on my bed. I have no idea where/why they are coming into my tukel but I am about done with the middle-of-the-night showdowns. As much as I would love to be the tough girl who can battle it out and catch rats, I just can't. I freak out and want to put as much space as possible between me and it. Enter Alyssa, world's best partner and rat-catcher extraordinaire. Our final solution at 4:50 AM was to give up trying to chase it out of the wicker chair it had crawled up into and we just hauled the whole chair to our outdoor kitchen area.

So we were both missing about 4 hours of sleep that we really needed to be fully functional today.

After lunch Shannon, Carrie, Alyssa and I scoped out all the possible places in my tukel that a rat could squeeze in and unfortunately, we found a lot. Most of the areas are in the roof where the tin sheets don't quite line up together against the wooden beams. Shannon then literally blew up 2 rat nests in our shower area and one in our kitchen area with his leaf blower. Alyssa and I moved our bags of laundry soap in the kitchen and two HUGE rats ran to the fence before Alyssa we could try to catch them.

Also in this time frame we discovered that water had gotten into our big cooler so there were worms all in the bottom and it smelled horrible. Disinfectant and bleach, coming right up.

Alyssa and I still don't currently have a language helper so we went to Nanok's village to practice what we know. Nanok started telling the story of Jacob and Esau but then said she wanted me to tell it in Toposa so I butchered my way through the basic version and she filled in the details for the other people who were sitting with us. Alyssa followed up with the story of Jacob's dream as he is running away from Esau. Also included in our conversation this afternoon was a discussion of how many babies I want to have (they want me to have 12), whether or not my children will go to school every day in America, why people have C-sections, why I won't buy them tobacco, and which one of the men from their village I should marry (so many wonderful options!). Oh, and when we were singing some Toposa songs about Jesus some of the women started to karot to the song, which meant I got to jump up and down in circles around them, too. And at one point a lady plopped some sorghum/nyaronyit (peanut-ish) mixture into Alyssa's hand so we were "requested" to eat it. It looks like vomit and tastes only marginally better. One of the ladies was building a new hut out of grass so it was pretty cool to see the thing half-finished.

Overwhelming day? Totally. Am I looking forward to another rat potentially crawling onto my bed tonight? Definitely not. Am I convinced God cares about the small things like rats and sitting in Nanok's village? Absolutely. As you pray for all of us in Toposaland, pray about the little things. And maybe an extra prayer that the rats stay out of my tukel!